Consociational Democracy - The Curious Case of India

Submitted by: Pooja Singh (94)

Democracy as a form as government has acquired a lot of legitimacy in the past century. While
the Western World started the trend of transition to democracy, the rest of the world is
effectively and increasingly catching on. Multiple scholars have extensively researched on the
topic of democratization – what it means to be a democracy in the contemporary world and
how democratic regimes emerge, transform and function. Samuel Huntington in his work titled
‘Democracy’s Third Wave’ throws light on the stages through which democracy grew as a
legitimate form of organizing government and political leadership in various parts of the world.
He is certainly not alone in this endeavour. Scholars like Sun Peter and Robert Dahl also go on
to categorize various forms of democracy – substantial and procedural among others. Daniel
Caramani in his book mainly focuses on finding an appropriate and all-encompassing definition
of democracy, to analyse whether countries are worthy of being labelled as democracies.

Defining democratic regimes is a troublesome task since there is no consensus among theorists
and scholars as to what characteristics need to be undeniably present for a country to claim
democraric status.

In addition to defining democracies, scholars constantly attempt to categorize democratic

regimes on basis of power sharing, leadership, etc.

Democracies have been distinguished as Presidential and Parliamentary depending on who is

the head of the state and the kind of relationship that the executive and legislature share. For
e.g.: USA follows a Presidential system whereas countries like India and UK follow the
Parliamentary form of governance. Another kind of categorization is Majoritarian and
Consensus Democracies based on power sharing arrangements between units of a state. When
the voting system being followed is Proportional Representation then the consequential
democracy is more likely than not going to be Consensus Democracy and if the voting pattern is
Majoritarian, the resultant is all probability will also be majoritarian. All these forms of
democratic regimes have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of the
representation, accountability, choice for voters etc.
Joseph Sun Peter makes a case for Procedural Democracy where the democratic ideals are only
present in relation to rules and procedure of the governing system. In contrast, Robert Dahl
talks about Substantive Democracy. This kind of democracy, according to Dahl, imbibes
democraric ideals, procedurally and in practice. This is definitely more fulfilling than the
procedural kind and takes the form if an oligarchy.

Lijphart presents another form of democracy in his work by the name of Consociational
Democracy. This model was developed by Lijphart as a reaction to the political culture approach
propounded by Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba. Where they argued that regime stability and
political development are dependent upon the political culture of a society, Lijpahrt was of the
opinion that a strong and United political culture is not a necessary requirement for a stable
political system and institutions can instead bring much needed stability. Therefore, according
to Lijpahrt, even in societies that have a non consensual and fragemnted political culture and
are divided along the lines of race, class, caste, gender, ethnicity etc a stable political system
could be achieved with the help of institutions and other mechanisms.

Lijphart also goes on to claim that political culture of any society is dynamic and cannot remain
static. Therefore to argue that political culture provides stability to political system is a futile
argument as political culture in itself is an ever changing and evolving entity and cannot be
taken as a deciding factor for political systems. He finds the establishment of a national political
culture as problematic and instead claims in contradiction that any society embodies a
combination of sub cultures - elite sub culture, mass sub culture, other sub cultures etc. all of
which shape the orientation towards political regimes and systems.

In the case of India, it has been repeatedly argued that India follows a majoritatian form of
democracy given its First Past the Post voting system and a quasi federal government that is
more central than decentralized, it can be nonetheless firmly established that India is not
deviant to consociationalism, rather a confirming example of same.

India in its initial years of independence imbibed all the requirements of a consociational
democracy. The Congress System as termed by Rajni Kothari espoused a system which allowed
for intraparty democracy all the while ensuring that it remains a mass party representative of
all the sections of the Indian society. Therefore, even though a single party was ruling at the
Centre constantly, the demographic diversity of our country was being adequately represented
and the opposition parties inspite of their weak legislative standing ensures that the ruling
party did not cross a appropriate threshold.

In addition, there linguistic boundaries of the state ensure that the cultural autonomy of the
various groups remains intact. The fundamental right to establish and administer educational
institutions of their own choice provided to the minorit under Article 30 also adds to their
representativeness. Therefore, by no means does the numerical majority of Hindus translate
into a majoritian civil society.

Proportional Representation is also present in India, albeit under different conditions, that the
ones propagated by PR voting system. The reservations for SCs and STs in State Legislatve
Assemblies and Parliament is one way in which a wider representation is ensured. Furthermore,
the growing importance of State based parties also helps in countering attempts at establishing
a manufactured majority. States like Jammu and Kashmir and Nagaland enjoy constitutional
privileges that help them to raise voices against increased central control.

All these features, undoubtedly work in favour of establishing India as a consociational

democracy but the shifts after 1960s, especially during Indira Gandhi regime weakened this
consensus a bit. However the new trend towards coalition governments have once again
established a precedent for power sharing among various sections of the society.

Therefore, Indian democracy has undergone differnt phases under which it's consociational
democracy has either strengthened or weakened and power sharing arrangements have
progressed or regressed. But at no point can we claim that it has become absolutely devoid of
all consociational characteristics.