” Party Survival In The Aftermath Of India’s Independence”
By Spencer Peacock.
Imagine taking a glance at a ballot in the distant future and surprisingly notice that one of the major parties is not listed. While it may seem like a dream come true to some, part disintegration is something that is very real for some of the world’s political systems. This paper will analyze the factors contributing to a party’s survival and as a result will also analyze the factors contributing to a party’s disintegration.
Researching what influences a party’s survival is beneficial to understanding the political system of certain states because it will provide an in-depth look on how the initial development and party decisions influence party survival. Studying how an organization maintains its legitimate influence can help us know what is required for a stable political atmosphere. Knowing what is required for a stable political atmosphere is especially important when we undertake policy that would call for entering a country and significantly altering the dynamic of political parties, ideological groups and that country’s government.
One of the serious concerns that absorbed political attention at the turn of the century was the political alienation of citizens. Scholars and politicians have-at the same time- woken up to the increasing tendency of citizen disengagement from politics, so serious that one might diagnose it as political stagnation (Ji-Young 2005, 194). Thus it is important to understand what factors influence a political party’s stability so that h there is a more stable political system. IF there is a more sable political system, there would be less of a possibility for alienation, less citizen disengagement from politics and in its place there would be increased political participation.
This analysis looks specifically at India’s Congress Party and Pakistan’s Muslim League. My argument is that the survival of a party after a significant event-such as independence- depends on the initial design of the party and the party’s decision making process. The theory that serves as a basis of this research is the theory of path-dependence. The specific aspect of path-dependency that could explain party survival in Pakistan and India is the focus n the implications for decisions. Path dependency suggests that the decisions made early on by the leaders or creators of an organization have enormous implications for the future (Pierson 2004, 35). For this research, the analysis will not simply be a discussion about how the decisions made early on were a factor in a Party’s survival; the analysis will also include how the decisions made early on affected the subsequent behavior of a political party.
Paul Pierson has published extensively about the role of institutions and the implications that come as a result of an institution’s design. Pierson said that the beginning stages of an institution have serious implications for subsequent behavior. When these institutions are created, the leaders are not usually taking long-term aspirations into account. These institutions exist to serve the interests of those who created it. He continues with the idea that institutions exist to serve the interests of those who created it. He continues with the idea that institutions exist because they constitute an effective response to some kind of perceived problem. He explains that the initial moves of the actors are the most influential because these actions form a backbone for most of the historical turns in decision making (Pierson 2004, 61).
Path-dependency stresses that during the course of research we wish to know not just what the “value” of some variable is but the time at which that value occurred. Pierson adds that the ordering may be critical element of explaining the impact of decisions. Pierson labels the focus on the timing of decisions and “timing and sequence” (Pierson 2004, 54).
The timing of when the party developed and when actions were taken to spread influence and create unity is crucial to whether political parties maintained support and a presence in the political arena. Paul Pierson found an effective foundation for using the timing and sequencing of events to explain political events. He said:
Sociological attempts to explain particular outcomes or patterns of development typically involve the study of multiple rather than single trajectories. Most historical sociologists reject the notion of a single master process, acknowledging multiple processes that overlap and intersect one another. Explaining a particular outcome or pattern of development thus involves a particular logic of explanation: situating events or outcomes in terms of their location in intersecting (Aminzade 1992, 466)
Analyzing the context of certain decisions will help explain how different events interact with one another and how the timing of these decisions affected a party’s survival. Lowenberg and Patterson add to the theory of path-dependence and their research focuses on the context of decisions. They concluded that how political leaders make decisions, when they do so, and to what effect they do so have profound consequences for the survival of political systems (Lowenberg and Patterson 1979).
There are many theories on what lead the fractionalization of the Muslim League. Some of the most commonly referenced theories are the ethnic domination in government, over-centralization of power and conflicting perceptions of official party policy. As Pierson states “contemporary social scientists take a snapshot view of political life, but there is often a strong case to be made for shifting from snapshots to moving pictures” (Pierson 2004,2). For this essay, Pierson’s explanation of path dependency means systematically situating particular moments in a sequence of events and processes stretching over extended periods. When placing politics in their respective time, our understanding of social dynamics is greatly enriched. This essay will consider an analysis of several factors from the vantage point of decisions related to their temporality (Pierson 2004, 10). Other factors that will be analyzed are the factors of the initial design. If independence is a Party’s main goal, it is difficult to formulate policies after independence to ensure that party’s survival. Oberst suggested that the Muslim League’s fractionalization was due to the fact that the party had been formed to secure the independence of Pakistan and as a result never formed the coherent ideology to continue to be relevant in a post-Independence Pakistan (Oberst 2009, 178). Another factor explaining the Muslim League’s disintegration would be the context of decisions made concerning policies. To examine how the context of decisions influences a party’s survival, this research will analyze the timing of policies implemented to work towards unity and organization across regions and villages.
The Muslim League’s Design and Development
While the Muslim League did separate from the Congress Party, it should be considered a separate organization since the Muslim League was created after the leaders broke from the Congress Party. The Muslim League and the Congress Party were both organized to fulfill different tasks. The Congress Party was created with various objectives in mind. The independence of India was an initiated the Party endorsed and only one of the many functions the party carried out at the time. The Congress Party was created to govern India as a whole and when the party was created it was generally believed that the British would play a role in managing India’s political affairs. The Muslim League, however, was created with independence as its main objective. It wasn’t until after independence that it began to behave more like a political party instead of an independence movement. Not too long after Jinnah and the Muslim League Achieved Independence, Jinnah was assassinated alongside another leader who could have carried the Muslim League forward. Although many parties bearing the name “Muslim League” have surfaced throughout Pakistan’s existence, none of these political parties bear any resemblance to the original Muslim League led by Jinnah. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that the party led by the “father of Pakistan” disintegrated shortly after his assassination.
After Jinnah’s assassination it wasn’t clear who should take the reins of the Muslim League, the Muslim League was faced with numerous challenges. The Muslim League was faced with numerous challenges. The Muslim League met with the Constituent Assembly to adopt a constitution for the party. These examples suggest a lack of cohesion among Muslim league members and leaders. An alternate theory to path dependency could be an analysis of social trust and the influence that social trust would have on party survival.
The Congress Party’s Design and Development
The Congress Party’s website gives in-depth details of the party’s genesis and growth. The website also explains the party’s involvement in the “Quit India” movement as an endorsement which suggests that the “Quit India” movement was an initiative formed outside official party policy (All India Congress Committee). It wasn’t until after the initiative gained a following that the Congress Party joined the initiative.
Founded in 1885 with the objective of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians, the Indian National Congress was initially not opposed to British rule (Kochanek 1968, 128) Despite some Congress Party members being content with an India run by a coalition of Britons and Indians, there was a presence of people in the Congress Party’s membership who envisioned a Congress Party as the handmaiden of the victorious nationalist movement (ibid). Later on, others emerged such as Nehru and Patel. Nehru and Patel saw a new role for the party as a government which had a separate and distinct function with its own freedom of action and lines of responsibility (Kochanek 1968, 158). Discovering exactly what the Congress Party decided as their responsibility can be a helpful way to understand the impacts of a political party’s survival. While the most influential leaders in the independence movement for India came from the Congress Party, the Congress Party and the “Quit India” movement were two separate institutions. The Congress Party decided early on that its responsibility was to have a role in the governance of India along with the British.
Decisions made about the structure of a political party will ensure survival because it allows for policy to be discussed at every level. Kochanek offers compelling research that can add to our understanding about the implications of the Congress Party’s decisions made early-on when he talked about the structure of the party across regional lines. The Congress Party was aware that there were many areas which required some degree of national uniformity, even though it was customary to permit the provincial leadership to structure details to bee t widely differing local conditions. The Congress Party decided to rely on an extension of the party called the Congress Working committee. The major goal of the Working Committee was to achieve stability and to be an instrument of consensus making and nation-building (Desai and Joshi 1978, 1097).
During the early years of the Congress Party, the Working committee was not only a convenience but it was the only area where there was constructive dialogue between the National Party state Party leaders concerning policy (Kochanek 1968, 189). This platform for dialogue is significant and will be analyzed in further detail later on. While scholars point out the flaws of centralized planning within a federal system, the fact that there was a presence of decision making and that it was carried out on a federal level influenced the long-term effects of the Congress Party’s survival. This is because the working committee made sure the Pradesh Committees were up to date on the party’s decisions. If there are methods in which the outcome of decisions were present at various levels would evade any obstacles to achieving unity.
Weiner published an article which gave accounts of many historical turning points for India’s Congress Party. Weiner chose the Congress Party leadership’s willingness to make concessions as a possible explanation for the Congress Party’s long-life.
“Congress members realize that the Wardha group, more than any other section of the Congress, has retained its links with the countryside. Apart from sentimental reasons, strong as these may be, many Congressmen recognize that the Gandhian group is badly needed if the Party’s popularity is to be maintained throughout the country (Weiner 1954, 185).”
While there is evidence of rapid urbanization in India, a majority of the citizens still live in villages. This initiative to maintain links with the countryside gives the Congress Party a broad influence across different regions of the country. This can avoid the chances of villagers or repressed ethnicities feeling alienated in the case that the dominant party is in power.
If a political party decides early on to implement institutions that work towards party unity across regions, that party may be less likely to see the fractionalization that split up the Muslim League. Anwar Syed suggests that the inability for the Muslim League to mobilize the masses to cope with demands from alienated members led to the turmoil which disintegrated the Muslim League.
The context of decisions
In Paul Pierson’s analysis of historical institutions, an important feature of an institution’s role in politics isn’t just what actions are taken but when those actions were taken and in what context (Pierson 2004, 134). Additionally, the timing of actions taken in relation to other events could be an effective way to explain the Muslim League’s disintegration. This section will detail the analysis of possible explanations for the Muslim League’s fractionalization. One explanation for the Muslim League’s fractionalization is the poor implementation of actions with respect to their timing.
Unlike the Congress Party which had a strong presence in multiple states, the influence of the Muslim League was centered in areas such as Punjab and Sindh. There wasn’t much of an influence across state lines. Even when the League tried to gain more presence in these disconnected areas, such actions were implemented poorly. Once the Muslim League achieved an influence across state lines to a small degree, this influence still did not allow fur much unity. If a party implements its policies or creates institutions to work towards unity after there is already alienation, a party’s survival will be much less likely. This could be one way that the context of the League’s decisions brought about their decay. Perhaps the policies which were implemented to achieve unity across state lines were implemented poorly because of an inadequate assessment of how much influence the League had on the polarization or alienation of certain issues.
The democratic system in Pakistan, or for most newly independent countries where democracy was accepted, was generally visualized in terms of parliaments, political parties and elections at national and provincial levels. For Pakistan, there was no machinery to instill and enforce a sense of responsibility (Ahmad 1959, 201). This is significant because there was no machinery to carry out the politics to a lower level). This is evidenced by the fact that, after independence, the Muslim League found itself in a more precarious state than ever before. The Muslim League had most of its concentration at the center which, as a result, totally neglected the districts and villages in which a majority of the population lived (Ahmad 1959, 202). Because the Congress Party did have a presence in the villages, perhaps caused by Gandhi’s vision of the village being the ideal Indian life, it was able to form cohesive organization which kept the party from splintering into factions and disintegrating as did the Muslim League.
For Pakistan, it wasn’t until the second assembly that the need for a wider influence across Pakistan became apparent. Ahmad details the disorganization of the assemblies and the government in his article he states:
“When the second constituent assembly was convened, the League found itself totally without a voice in east Pakistan, faced with an uncertain future in the West and reduced to the position of only one of the three major parties at the Centre power alone, was recognized, was no guarantee of strength. The most notable step that was taken in this direction was the re-imposition of the ban on Ministers to hold party positions, which had been lifted in October, 1950. The combination of the two offices in the same person, if not the sole cause, was certainly a major contributory factor in the decay and degeneration of the League.” (Ahmad 1959, 145).
There wasn’t unity because state parties understood official party policy differently. This was an issue that proved to be problematic for both the Muslim League and the Congress Party. Both parties had to make decisions at some point as to how the lack of unity should be handled. Ahmad details the difficulty that came when the Muslim League leaders were presented with such problems. Once the problems became apparent, there was almost a type of Paralysis. Perhaps if policies to overcome the lack of unity were implemented earlier, the paralysis would not have been as extreme. It may not have been extreme because by the time any action was taken to gain unity, State Muslim League organizations had this miscommunication extended to their respective areas just as the center did with the states. The Muslim League was unable to collectively make decisions or even have dialogue concerning policies which could possibly solve the problems because things progressed to such paralyzing disorganization. Taking this into consideration, it becomes apparent that the institution of the Muslim League was faulty in its design because there wasn’t a well planned out way for leaders of areas to coordinate with other party leaders.
Class, ethnic and caste relations
Another decision that influences the survival of a political party is the decision about who to include as leaders with relation to classes, ethnicity and caste. This will set the stage for relationships between different leaders and the public.
How to structure a political party in terms of personnel could be a factor that explains a party’s survival. The decisions about party leadership influence relations between classes, religions and ethnicities. . One aspect of the Muslim League’s initial design that could explain why it was so riddled with fractionalization was that the Muslim League’s organization reinforced hegemonic relationships between party leaders and other members.
Decisions made regarding how personnel became leaders and who was in the Muslim League leadership could have caused ethnic domination of the Muslim League by Punjabis. Most of the leaders in the Muslim League were Punjabi. Even in recent years there are examples of Punjabi dominance. Cohen illustrates the effect that Punjabi dominance has on Pakistani politics and society when he points out that Seventy-five percent of the army is drawn from three Punjab districts. Access to the armed forces is a tremendous accomplishment for ordinary citizens since once one is in the military a certain aura surrounds that person (Cohen 2006, 224). The Punjab dominance in the military makes it so that there is a Punjabi dominance in the government jobs and leadership. This Punjab dominance would also extend to the Muslim League’s leadership as well. Part of the reason that the Muslim league was so riddled with fractionalization could be because the entire country was riddled with fractionalization and that ethnic fractionalization was reinforced by a Punjabi dominated Political party.
The Congress Party may not be able to escape accusations of elitism or class conflict in its history either, especially considering its nickname as the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty (Kochanek 1968). The congress Party brought together millions of people and did this specifically by working against caste differences and poverty. Additionally, the party helped work against religious and ethnic boundaries by helping all castes and religions have a place in the party’s leadership. Although the Congress Party is predominantly Hindu, it has had members from virtually every religion, ethnic group, economic class and linguistic group (Oberst 2008, 48) this suggests that the decisions about a party’s design are influential in explaining the survival of a party. When a party makes a conscious decision to work against ethnic, religious or caste lines in its beginning stages, the party will be more likely to survive.
Social trust, an alternate theory
Roger Putnam wrote a book about the reforms in Italy giving special attention to the role that institutions play in reforms. He uses the civic mindedness as an explanation for the lack of response observed in certain areas of Italy (Putnam 1993, 24).
The lack of cohesion between leaders could serve as evidence that social trust, rather than path dependency, would be an explanatory variable for the fractionalization of the Muslim League. The reason that social trust considered a factor in fractionalization is because of the inconsistency of adherence to official party policy. Much of this paper has focused on explaining the impact of decisions made in the early stages of an organization’s development. The Muslim League may have created policies to allow for differences to be reconciled but whether those policies are implemented correctly and recognized by every member is another issue entirely.
In Anwar Syed’s article he analyzes the fractionalization of the Muslim League in great detail. Syed’s article details a conflict between two leaders in the Muslim League. This example shows how the inconsistency of party leaders’ adherence to official party policy could have been a factor in the Muslim League’s disintegration. The inter-party conflict began when the president of the Punjab state Muslim League, Mamdot, was accused of shrugging his responsibilities off onto a few civil servants. After these accusations reached Jinnah, Pakistan’s governor-general, Jinnah sensed that the finance Minister, Daultana, was more able to be Chief Minister in Punjab. In the months following Jinnah’s assassination, the assembly members were caught in between this fueled debate between Daultana and Mamdot (Syed 1989, 56). Some members took advantage of this opportunity by asking favors and threatening to support the other side if those favors were not granted. By December of 1948, Daultana had secured an electoral victory and there was an official statement calling upon Mamdot to resign. Mamdot chose to ignore both the electoral victory and the official statement. This leader stood in defiance of official party decision which seems to convey a lack of respect for the party as a legitimate institution. This example suggests that there was a lack of cohesion in terms of how the legitimacy of the Muslim League was perceived by the members themselves.
Social trust is an effective approach for explaining the Muslim League’s fractionalization. It is difficult to know for sure if the lack of social trust is due to poor implementation of measures to achieve unity or because the party’s initial design didn’t have a well articulated plan for settling disputes and allocating power.
In conclusion, Paul Pierson’s theory of path dependency provides the most convincing explanation for the Muslim League’s disintegration. The decisions made early on could be the reasons why there wasn’t as much civic mindedness or social trust within the Muslim League itself.
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