Party politics in a non-western democracy: A test of competing theories of party system change, government formation and government stability in India

The dissertation will address the ongoing debate in Comparative Politics about the virtues and pathologies of rational choice theory by testing competing hypotheses and predictions to account for three aspects of party politics in India: the transformation of the Indian political party system from a predominant to an even multiparty system; the politics of government formation; and the politics of government stability.; Overall, the dissertation will pursue two arguments. First, rational choice models and predictions can account for the empirical cases more consistently than hypotheses and predictions derived from other paradigms. Second, by using India as the case on which to test competing theories, it will be shown that non-Westcrn political phenomena are not sui generis and they may be accounted for in terms of comparative theory the same way as Western phenomena have been.