“Competition Aversion in Parties: The Case of India’s Congress Party,” Shikhar Singh, Yale University
ISPS EXPERIMENTS WORKSHOP
Abstract: Why do politicians in a weakly institutionalized political party resist attempts to create more formal, competitive, and participatory institutions to coordinate political activity and mobilize citizens? This paper analyzes a failed attempt to introduce primaries-based candidate selection in India’s Congress party to address this question. I use a matched-pair design to show that primaries neither improved candidate quality nor party performance. I then conducted fieldwork in five districts over two years, interviewing party operatives and strategists to pin down reasons for this failure, opposition to intra-party competition, and re-institutionalization efforts. I find two reasons for competition aversion: first, intra-party competition reduces party cohesion, and accentuates factionalism; and second, it generates uncertainty and imposes considerable costs on careerists, both junior and senior politicians. I formalize these intuitions in a decision-theoretic model, and propose a test involving a survey and conjoint experiment on party candidates.
Shikhar Singh is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Yale University. Shikhar’s research looks at the role of social identities (ethnicity, caste, religion, or race) on political preferences (whether that be support for parties, candidates, or trade policy). He also studies the functioning of political parties, intra-party competition, and institutional preferences of political actors.