The Model Code of Conduct (MCC) is a central instrument through which the integrity, fairness, and credibility of elections in India are maintained. Although it does not have statutory backing, the MCC has evolved into a powerful normative framework governing the behaviour of political parties, candidates, and governments during elections. Its effectiveness lies in the…
Interplay of Structure and Agency The Election Commission of India (ECI) occupies a pivotal position in India’s democratic architecture. It is not merely an administrative body conducting elections, but a constitutional institution whose effectiveness depends on a dynamic interplay between structure and agency. While the constitutional and legal framework (structure) provides authority, autonomy, and safeguards,…
The study of elections requires systematic methods that can capture both the observable outcomes of electoral processes and the underlying meanings, motivations, and social contexts shaping voter behaviour. Over time, election studies have relied primarily on two broad methodological traditions: qualitative research and survey (quantitative) research. Rather than being mutually exclusive, these approaches are increasingly…
The field of election studies represents a systematic scholarly effort to understand electoral behaviour, institutions, and outcomes within democratic systems. Over time, election studies have evolved from descriptive accounts of voting patterns into a sophisticated, interdisciplinary domain drawing upon political science, sociology, psychology, economics, and statistics. This evolution reflects broader changes in democratic practice, methodological…
The relationship between electoral laws and the party system is central to understanding the functioning of representative democracy. Electoral laws provide the legal framework within which political competition takes place, while party systems reflect the structured patterns of interaction among political parties. Together, they shape the nature of political representation, competition, governance, and democratic legitimacy….
Electoral systems constitute the institutional mechanisms through which votes cast by citizens are translated into political representation. They play a decisive role in shaping democratic outcomes by influencing party systems, representation of social groups, government formation, and the overall legitimacy of the political process. An electoral system is therefore not a neutral technical device; it…
The study of regime types is central to understanding how modern states organize power, authority, and legitimacy. While liberal democracy often presents itself as the normative endpoint of political development, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reveal the persistence and resurgence of non-democratic and hybrid regimes. Fascism, authoritarianism, and populism represent distinct yet overlapping regime forms…
Security has become one of the most powerful organizing principles of the modern state. In contemporary politics, states increasingly justify extraordinary powers in the name of protecting society from threats such as terrorism, crime, migration, and disorder. Critical political theory argues that security is not a neutral or purely defensive objective; rather, it is a…
This unit examines how the modern state governs not only through law and coercion but through more subtle, pervasive, and everyday techniques of power. Moving beyond classical theories that focus on sovereignty or class domination, critical political theory highlights governmentality, welfare governance, and biometric technologies as key features of contemporary state power. Together, these frameworks…
State formation is not a uniform or linear process. Modern states have emerged through historically specific trajectories shaped by war, capital, coercion, colonial domination, and post-colonial transformation. Comparative political theory emphasizes that the European experience of state formation cannot be treated as a universal model. Colonial and post-colonial states developed under radically different conditions, producing…
