29 MARCH * 1 APRIL 2001
NOTTINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM
Political Parties in South Asia
As intermediaries between the state and society and in their capacity as agents of articulation and aggregation of interests, political recruitment, consociation, and the development of new social networks political parties have played a crucial role in the process of political transformation in South Asia. Considering that political parties are often seen as typically Western political institutions, the fact that they play a role in facilitating the interaction of the modern state and traditional society, specifically in post-colonial states, extends the scope of the comparative analysis of party systems.
* By SUBRATA MITRA
With the functioning of South Asia's political parties as its main focus, the agenda of the workshop problematized the current state of knowledge of party-systems in post-colonial contexts in two respects. First, it sought to answer the puzzle how political parties, being products of the political and social history of Europe in the nineteenth century, have become a part of the political process in South Asia even though its societies have not been subject to the same historical process, such as rapid industrialization and urbanization prior to the extension of suffrage. In the second place, drawing on a number of case studies of the main political parties in South Asia, the workshop attempted to analyse systematically the ways in which parties in their role as collective actors socio-political institutions have adapted to the environment in which they operate. With the political context of South Asia where modern states and traditional societies are often in conflict, the workshop paid special attention to the contribution of political parties to the creation of multicultural, pluralist, and democratic societies. Over forty participants from South Asia, North America, and Europe, including senior scholars as well as post-graduate students participated in the panels and continued the deliberations over the social occasions that complemented the academic meetings.
The workshop began with two introductory lectures on the new frontiers of party research, one by Professor Kay Lawson (Political Science and International Relations, San Francisco State University / Sorbonne, Paris) and Prof. Subrata K. Mitra (School of Politics, University of Nottingham, and Dept. of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University), the other by Mr Mike Enskat and Mr Clemens Spiess (both of the Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University). Over the following two days, specialists in the field presented thirteen papers. In order to generate debate and critically examine the links between the state and society, the panels drew on the knowledge of specialists of South Asian politics, comparativists as well as practitioners. The nation-wide political parties in India: the Indian National Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Muslim League were the first panel's subject matter. India's regional political parties were discussed in a separate panel, and in the remaining three panels the national political parties of Pakistan and Bangladesh, of Sri Lanka and finally those of Nepal were thoroughly examined.
The deliberations were brought to a formal end in a plenary session, which began with an opening address on Models, Methods, Areas: For a Comparative Study of Political Parties by Prof. Paul Heywood (School of Politics, University of Nottingham) and a paper given on Rethinking Party System Theory: Experiences from South Asia by Mr Spiess. This was followed by a vigorous general discussion on the themes raised by the workshop, which proved itself enormously rewarding for all the participants in terms of developing a general perspective on political parties, and reformulating some of the theoretical conjectures that underpinned the papers. The methodology of party research, particularly the contribution of indigenous concepts and social structures to the strengthening of party systems and the impact of multiparty democracy on the same indigenous structures and processes came in for close scrutiny. *
A summary of the papers presented at the workshop, and the discussants' comments will be published in a special issue of the 'Heidelberg Papers in South Asian and Comparative Politics' (ISSN 1617-5050 print, ISSN 1617-5069 on-line at: Http://www.sai.uniheidelberg.de/SAPOL/HPSACP.html
Revised versions of the papers will be published as a book, provisionally entitled the 'Political Parties of South Asia', edited by Subrata Mitra, Mike Enskat, and Clemens Spiess, in the Praeger series on political parties, under the general editorship of Kay Lawson.
Professor Subrata K. Mitra is affiliated to the School of Politics, Faculty Law and Social Science, University of Nottingham and to the Department of Political Science, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University.
E-mail: subrata.mitra@nottingham.ac.uk