2 - Party Politics: Disrupting Party-Movement Boundaries

Summary

This chapter explores party-movement relations and asks why some parties engage in political activism and forge alliances with social movement organizations. I argue that the prevailing assumption that political parties tend to become increasingly centrist and institutionalized has confounded our understanding of movement-parties in India. After discussing the relevant comparative and theoretical literature on political parties, I explore the embeddedness of many Indian parties in social movements. I then suggest that the BJP has been especially activist because of its ideology, organizational structure, and linkages to the RSS and VHP.

Comparative Perspectives on Parties and Movements

Students of political parties in democratic regimes believe that parties' most significant attributes derive from their relationship to electoral processes: nominating and supporting candidates for political office, securing resources, staffing bureaucracies, organizing election campaigns, and framing issues and policies. A party, as classically understood, is “any political group identified by an official label that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections, candidates for public office.” Mature political parties, according to the political development literature, construct and maintain boundaries against societal pressures. In this understanding, parties are the polar opposite of social movements. Movement work – forging collective identities, confronting authorities, and engaging in protest – is not designed for competition in the political marketplace.

There are indeed some important differences between social movements and political parties. Most parties address questions of identity, meaning and belonging only for pragmatic electoral purposes. By contrast, social movements are the conveyers of social and cultural beliefs and historical memories concerning identity, meaning, and belonging. Compared to parties, movements tend to be more radical, expressive, and skilled in forging collective identities. Their location within civil society enables them to act as translators, amplifiers, and transmitters of cultural norms and values.

Movements tend to employ evocative, symbolically rich appeals that encourage intense engagement. They do not simply transmit culture but also produce and reshape it. Movements are neither compelled nor constrained by the logic of electoral competition to make ideological compromises. Indeed, they often polarize identities and interests. Movements are more apt than parties to adopt extreme positions and engage in violence because they are not bound by the rules that govern parties.