India’s Democracy In Patronage-Origin And Characteristics

For comparative political studies, the informal institution of a country is ratherimportant than formal institutional arrangements. India’s parliamentary democracyhas been taken effect for more than60years, but its governance performance is stillinsufficient compared with other democracy such as Britain and the United States. e.g.Corruption as well as impoverishment is difficult to be solved. From the governancesence, the advantages of democratic system is not well represented in India. In theauthor’s view, the distortion patronage exerts to the democracy is the reason forIndia’s poor governance.At the same time, the emphasis of the patronalism in India provides anotherexplanation of India’s voting phenomenon. Despite they can get little benefit from it,the marginized are still go to vote with great enthusiasm. Such voting behavior iscontrary to the interpretation of the popular election theory, that political participationis positively correlated with socio-economic status of the citizens. The author suggeststhat the patronage democracy promote the voting rate as a mobilization mechanism.The ethnic party, vote-gift change as well as the local authority deeply affect theirvoting behavior.The main view is that the historical together with the many political factorscontributed to the emergence of India’s patronage democracy. After its dependence,patronage combines with modern democracy in India and contributed the so calledpatronage democracy. Because of its unique voting mobilization mechanism,patronage democracy exerts great influence in India, that high turnout does not meanhigh level of political participation, and what it brings is not the prosperity ofdemocracy and improvement on governance. Also we must notice that even thoughpatronage distorts India’s democracy, the lateral mobilization mechanism of ethnicparty play a certain role in promoting the process of democratization of the ruralgrass-roots government in India. Moreover, with the economic system reform as wellas civic consciousness, patronage factor in India is gradually becoming weakened, bycontrast the democracy shows a deepening trend.