Democratic Backlash? Revisiting Competing Explanations for the 1977 Post-Emergency Electoral Verdict in India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6233493 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Malte Pehl (College of Wooster, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 303-331 |
| Publication date | 2008-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Asian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0218-5377 • E-ISSN: 1750-7812 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/02185370802504324 |
| OpenAlex | W2002015805 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
The general elections for the lower house of the Indian parliament, the Lok Sabha, in 1977 Time Magazine 1977 . ‘A Powerful Vote for Freedom’ , Time Magazine , 109 (14) , 4 April . Available at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947857,00.html . [Google Scholar] marked a double transition for the country's political development. After a 21-month period of emergency government, imposed in June 1975, the elections signalled a return to the democratic rules of the political game and at the same time they effected a significant change of government at the national level for the first time in post-independence India. The 1977 general elections seemed, according to most scholarly and journalistic assessments, to have been a resounding ‘vote for freedom’ and to have ushered in an era of democratic revival. Until today a more systematic evaluation of the power of the various competing explanations advanced for the 1977 results seems to be wanting. Based on the analysis of available data, this article finds that the 1977 vote on the whole was less a ‘vote for freedom’ or democracy and against the oppressive Emergency regime, but rather the result of successful collaboration of a number of former opposition parties and the consequent reduction in the fragmentation of the anti-Congress vote
Democracy · Freedom of the press · General election · Lower house · Opposition (politics · Parliament · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Verdict · Law · Public Administration · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Asian drama
Democracy without Associations
Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia
The New Cambridge History of India
The Formation of National Party Systems
Democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia
Family Planning Performance in India
The Congress 'System' in India
The Two Elections
The 1977 Parliamentary Elections in India
Towards a More Competitive Party System in India
Where Congress Survived
The Use of Aggregate Data in Comparative Political Analysis
India - the start of a new era
Indira's India
Political Will and Family Planning
Fertility Control and Politics in India
The Indian elections and their aftermath
Is India Becoming More Democratic
Mrs Gandhi's Emergency, The Indian Elections of 1977, Pluralism and Marxism
India's Election
Coercion in a Soft State
India's Political System
India after Independence
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |