Power-Sharing in the World's Largest Democracy: Informal Consociationalism in India (and Its Decline?)

Abstract

India is one of the most diverse countries of the world but operates with a majoritarian Westminster constitution and simple plurality electoral system, albeit also with a federal structure. It was eventually coded as consociational by Arend Lijphart (1996) but this coding was questioned by authors such as Wilkinson (2000) and Adeney (2002). This article assesses the nature of both de jure and de facto power-sharing in India over its 70 years of independence and tracks the evolution of de jure and de facto power-sharing in relation to four dimensions of diversity: religion, caste, territory and language. It questions whether the electoral success of Hindu nationalism and the increasing acceptance of ethnic majoritarianism has reduced the degree of power-sharing in India.