Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- A Note on Terminology
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theory
- Part II Data
- 6 India as a Patronage-Democracy
- 7 The Bahujan Samaj Party (Bsp) and the Scheduled Castes (SCs)
- 8 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 9 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 10 Why Sc Voter Preferences Translate into Bsp Votes
- 11 Explaining Different Head Counts in the Bsp and Congress
- 12 Extending the Argument to Other Ethnic Parties in India: The Bjp, The Dmk, and The Jmm
- 13 Ethnic Head Counts and Democratic Stability
- Appendix A Elite Interviews
- Appendix B Ethnographies of Election Campaigns
- Appendix C Content Analysis
- Appendix D Description of Survey Data
- Appendix E Description of the Ecological Inference (EI) Method
- Appendix F Method Used to Estimate Ethnic Voting Patterns
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
10 - Why Sc Voter Preferences Translate into Bsp Votes
from Part II - Data
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- A Note on Terminology
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theory
- Part II Data
- 6 India as a Patronage-Democracy
- 7 The Bahujan Samaj Party (Bsp) and the Scheduled Castes (SCs)
- 8 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 9 Why Sc Elites Join the Bsp
- 10 Why Sc Voter Preferences Translate into Bsp Votes
- 11 Explaining Different Head Counts in the Bsp and Congress
- 12 Extending the Argument to Other Ethnic Parties in India: The Bjp, The Dmk, and The Jmm
- 13 Ethnic Head Counts and Democratic Stability
- Appendix A Elite Interviews
- Appendix B Ethnographies of Election Campaigns
- Appendix C Content Analysis
- Appendix D Description of Survey Data
- Appendix E Description of the Ecological Inference (EI) Method
- Appendix F Method Used to Estimate Ethnic Voting Patterns
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Where we are strong, people will vote for us: there is a wave effect.
First we were very resistant to the BSP people – we said Ambedkar [the Scheduled Caste leader from whom the BSP derives its ideology] is not a God so why should we believe in him. Most people here supported the Congress. Then later we shifted – there was no benefit from Congress for this village, and then, Congress was also getting weak.
Theprevious chapter showed that the preferences of Scheduled Caste voters across parties correspond directly to their representational profile. In this chapter, I argue that for substantial numbers of Scheduled Caste voters, preferences do not automatically translate into votes. Even though they prefer the BSP, these voters are likely to vote for the BSP only when they expect their vote to install the BSP in government, or to affect the victory or defeat of one of its competitors. Where they do not expect to be able to affect the outcome in one of these two ways, they are unlikely to vote for the BSP. These Scheduled Caste voters, in other words, are strategic rather than expressive actors: They treat the vote as an instrument through which to obtain the best possible outcome rather than as an opportunity to declare their preferences. This chapter does not offer a precise estimate of the proportion of strategic voters among Scheduled Castes. However, it does provide evidence to indicate that this proportion is substantial, and that without the support of such voters, the BSP could not obtain majority support among Scheduled Castes.
Expectations of efficacy, in turn, depend upon the distance between the numerical strength of the Scheduled Castes in the electorate and the threshold of winning or leverage imposed by the competitive configuration. Scheduled Castes know that others from their category also prefer the BSP to other parties. They also know that those groups not represented by the BSP (or its partner, where it contests elections in alliance) are not likely to prefer the BSP. Simply by counting heads in their constituency and in their state as a whole, therefore, they have the capacity to make some prediction about the efficacy of their vote.
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- Why Ethnic Parties SucceedPatronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India, pp. 222 - 245Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004