The Authoritarian Origins of Dominant Parties in Democracies: Opposition Fragmentation and Asymmetric Competition in India

What explains the electoral dominance of a single party over a prolonged period of time in a democracy? Focusing on the case of India’s former dominant party, the Indian National Congress, this article argues that authoritarian-era politics can influence the likelihood of single-party dominance after democratization. More specifically, the axes of political contestation in the authoritarian era interact with the process of democratization to shape democratic-era party systems. When the authoritarian era’s primary socio-political division becomes irrelevant because the democratization process roundly discredits one side of the division, the resulting party system in the democratic period is likely to feature a single major party and a host of small, disorganized, and inexperienced parties. Such asymmetric party competition is particularly likely to produce a dominant party. This explanation not only accounts for the fragmented nature of the opposition in early post-independence India, which was central to sustaining single-party dominance, but it can also potentially shed light on single-party dominance (or its absence) elsewhere in the world.