The Way Forward

The Way Forward Israel and India as the two leading parliamentary democracies have traveled a long and difficult electoral terrain in the past 70 years toward political independence. Sharing commonalities on various socio- economic, religious and political issues, Israel and India also exhibit distinct differences on these issues. The successful holding of parliamentary elections from independence to date—twentieth in Israel and six- teenth in India—strengthens the spirit of their democratic survival. The political governance in the two nations in the twenty-first century assumes significance in view of transformation from politico–emotive issues to economico–pragmatic issues, especially in the aftermath of globalization of the 1980s. Their polities witness a unique feature of a shift from ‘one- party dominance’ to ‘multiparty coalition’, which came to be characterized by the term, ‘Coalitional Multipolarity’. The focus of the book has been more on the changing dynamics of the parties and party systems of Israel and India. As both the countries share common historical and colonial experiences, the party formations in the two nations before and after independence get unprecedented significance. Researchers on parties and party systems might not have witnessed extensive commonalities in the systems of two parliamentary democratic © The Author(s) 2018 343 S.K. Choudhary, The Changing Face of Parties and Party Systems, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5175-3 344 The Way Forward nations in terms of their electoral behavior, democratic pattern of governance, party dominance and uniform shifts in party systems. From this perspective, comparing democracies, parties and governance of Israel and India leave good scope for the new researchers to delve into the actual dynamics of the two systems. The formative years of Israeli party-building and Indian party formations reflect uniform patterns. Mapai in Israel and Indian National Congress in India emerged as the two principal political umbrella parties that sought to accommodate diverse socio-economic and political forces. The two leading parties actually spearheaded the national movement for political independence from their colonial masters. By virtue of catering to a diverse political culture, both Mapai and Indian National Congress came to attain a sacrosanct position in the pre-independence history of their respective polities. Though the two leading parties did experience political resistance and challenge to their hegemony from other forces like the rightist and religious parties, for example, Herut and NRP in Israel, and Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League in India, their dominant position remained unaltered until they finally took their countries to political independence in 1948 and 1947, respectively. The post-independence democratic polities of Israel and India witnessed ‘one-party dominance’ for nearly two and a half decades. The first eight Knesset elections and the first five Lok Sabha elections established the predominance of Mapai and Congress in Israel and India, respectively. The early elections were exclusively marked by the unchallenged supremacy of these two national parties. The undisputed dominance of Mapai came to be characterized as ‘Mapaivot’ in the sense that the Mapai in Israel constituted the key pivot on which the entire political machinery of the government revolved during the first two decades of post-independence Israeli democratic polity. During the first phase of the Israeli party system, no coalition could have been possible without the support of the Mapai. Similarly in India, the Congress was the main ruling party both at the center and in the states. The Congress System (alaRajni Kothari) worked on the principle of consensus. Congress maintained its hegemony by virtue of accommodating the aspirations of the Indian masses through The Way Forward 345 the democratic functioning of Syndicate—the intermediary structures of power consisting of important state leaders. However, both Mapai and Congress faced internal dissension in the late 1960s, leading to the first splits. A significant section of Mapai led by Ben Gurion left the party and formed Rafi. Similarly, the Congress also witnessed split in 1969 with the emergence of Congress (Ogranization) and Congress (Requisitionists)— the former by the parent group, and the latter by the Syndicate dissidents. This split, however, did not bring about any major transformation in the party system as the subsequent elections to the Knesset and Lok Sabha primarily reflected the dominance of these two parties. The difference, however, was an alignment going on among the Israeli parties, which led to the emergence of Israeli Labor Party, the precursor of Mapai. The party transformations in Israel and India also affected the evolution and growth of the rightist parties. While in Israel, one witnessed the emergence of Likud as the leading political formation to challenge Labor, in India such challenge to Congress hegemony emerged in the form of Janata Party. The Congress of the period also got transformed from Congress to Congress Indira. The high-handedness of the Congress regime under Indira Gandhi that led to the imposition of internal emer- gency finally brought all the anti-Congress forces on a common platform in 1977 in the form of Janata Parivar. The year 1977 has a very special significance in the electoral history of both Israel and India. The party politics in the two parliamentary democracies got the first major transformation this year, leading to the formation of non-left or non-Labor government in Israel and the first non-Congress government in India. The first right-wing party-led government in Israel under Menachem Begin of Likud came to be characterized as ‘Mahapach’, meaning transformation. In India, on the other hand, the non-Congress political formation under the motley combination called the ‘Janata Parivar’ also sought to reverse most of the anti-people regressive policies of the Congress regime. From the developments of 1977, it appears that the party systems in the two nations were getting crystallized under the two-party systems, called bi-block polarity. However, such an experience did not get materialized in the absence of a clear-cut ideological and organizational coherence of 346 The Way Forward parties in both Israel and India. While in Israel the two leading parties— Labor and Likud—came closer to form the National Unity Government, India, on the other hand, witnessed the re-emergence of a Federal Con- gress in the 1980s under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi. The democratic polities in the two nations witnessed emergence of the forces of Emerging Economy Stabilization Plan or EESP as well as Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization or LPG in both Israel and India, respectively. The forces of EESP and LPG, which were becom- ing strengthened in the late 1980s and early 1990s in both Israel and India, shaped the issues of governance. The Congress under Rajiv Gandhi underwent many policy changes by deviating from its parent party ideol- ogy and state-dominated governance called License Raj. The Rajiv Con- gress was considered to be more ‘federal and accommodating’ for accepting the federal demands of various parties and groups. In fact, the liberalization regime in India had actually taken roots during the regime of Rajiv Gandhi when the ‘permit-license-quota’ raj gave way to ‘Consum- erism’. Israel under the Labor–Likud conciliation on the other hand went for the National Unity Government in the 1980s, and the forces of globalization attributed more pragmatism in the Israeli governance, as was reflected in the first major Israeli shift toward reconciliation vis-à-vis the Palestinians. The coalition politics had actually made its firm entry into the Indian parliamentary politics by the late 1980s. The formation of the National Front Government under the support of the left and the right parties broadly corroborated the National Unity experiment of Israel. The post- 1990 parliamentary politics in these two parliamentary nations revolved around the issues of governance. The political and emotive issues took to the periphery in both these countries. It is really interesting to note that the two strong rightist parties— Likud in Israel and BJP in India—started shedding their core ideological agenda behind political governance. Once at the helm of governance, both Likud and BJP shelved their erstwhile main ideological planks centered on the Eretz Yisrael and Hindutva/Akhand Bharat, respectively. It is not surprising that the Likud, during its reign of governance from 1990s onward, went for greater conciliation and concessions to the Palestinians, especially on the issue of autonomy and self-government. The Way Forward 347 Similarly, BJP, as ruling the NDA in India, also discarded its core ideological agenda like Article 370, Uniform Civil Code and the Ram Temple. The electoral reforms in both Israel and India in the 1990s forced the political parties to ensure more transparency, democratization and accountability, especially in terms of giving representation to the weaker sections, women and other underprivileged groups within the party fora. Further, the electoral reforms also brought about significant changes in the electoral campaigns and the issues. Governance became the central theme in the electoral politics of the two countries, and the elections results from the 1990s onward started showing more volatility of the voters and uncertainty of the results. Though one can argue that these changes reflected

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