Rajiv Gandhi's violent death in May 1991 signalled the end of
an entire era for the Congress Party: the long-lasting rule of the
dynasty was over. Subsequent developments in the party have raised
the question of change versus continuity. Has the end of the
dynasty led to the birth of a new Congress, or will the dynastic
party structures and organizational features continue into the
post-Gandhi period? The argument that I will be advancing
throughout the thesis is that structural continuity has
characterized the organizational order of the party in its postdynastic
period. The most obvious indicators of this continuity are
that the party continues to be a deinstitutionalized, loosely
structured coglomerate of political bosses with varying bases of
support; the party remains paralyzed by factionalism at all levels,
yet it escapes splits and schisms; and the Congress Prime Minister
continues to be at the apex of the decision-making pyramid.
The important question for political scientists to answer is
why continuity has taken precedence over drastic change. I shall
maintain that structural continuity in the party's organizational
order has come about primarily as a result of environmental
pressures exerted by the turbulence in the party system that was
undergoing a fundamental transformation. The Indian party system
changed from a predominant into a more competitive one in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the election results for 1989-91 period
suggest. Under this environmental condition, it has been the
requirement of organizational survival amidst external change that
both necessitated and facilitated the continuation of the old order
in the party. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/5483 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Nikolenyi, Csaba |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 5525398 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
Page generated in 0.0018 seconds