Party Politics And Clientelism:the Formation And Prevailenceof Electoral Clientelism In India

India is known as the largest democracy in the world,the enthusiasm of voters is even more than counterparts of developed countries.However,clientelism,corruption and ethnic conflicts make such "the largest democratic action" notorious of disorder.Such a competitive democracy doesn’t really improve the living status of voters in India,there is still a big gap between the rich and poor.Clientelism helps to describe the paradox between high voting enthusiasm and increasing social inequality.During 70 years of Electoral politics in India,the Congress Party system has been transitted into multi-party system,but clientelism still exists and even prevails.How does intense party competition influence clientelism and what is the relationship of these?We are trying to explain it.This article thinks,firstly,India’s parties depend on patronage network to mobilize voters,the intensity of party competition alters the structure of patronage network,and the center of network is shifting down,eventually leading to further penetration of clientelism.Secondly,in order to alleviate pressure of allocating patronage resources,parties prefer to strengthen resilience of patronage ties by means of emotional mobilization,finally resulting in the rise of.ethnic nationalism and intense of party competition,whichpromotes the second round of clientelism penetration and forms a closed self-enforcing loop.This article tries to explain the relationship between party competition and clientelism from the perspective of state-society.With regard to institutional framework,India’s centralist federalism and the establishment of panchayat provide institutional space for clientelism.As for social structure,heterogeneous and multiple society provides possibility for the change of party politics.Meanwhile,we recreate the patron-broker-client pyramid,and analyze material and emotional attributes of those patron-client ties,further to know about dynamic changes of patronage network under party competition.We use India’s party competition as the independent variable,clientelism and its patronage network as the dependent variable.By comparing the networks during multi-party system and the Congress Party system,we analyze the changes of composition of patronage networks and the change of interactive modes.During Indira’s term,in order to compensate for decreasing party authority after Nehru’s death,Indira starts to build prime minister-voters patronage machine by means of populism so as to circumvent The Congress Party’s traditional patronage network,ultimately weakening the vote base of the Congress Party the center of network is shifting down to each states.During multi-party period,India’s federal politics appears to be localized,local parties have leverage to the allocation of national resources,low caste and economic elites start to build their own networks to replace the traditional dominance of high caste.And the establishment of Panchayat allows clientelism to penetrate into village levels,clientelism appears to be more entrenched.At last we predict that India’s patronage democracy has its own structural decay,namely government relies on materials for mobilization and it will face to the distributing pressure like snowballing.Rent-seeking and corruption shall be difficult to eliminate.Any structural adjustments will weaken the party’s base,only through fiscal deficit will India postpone its democratic inflation.