The previous chapter developed the argument that the implementation of local democratization offers government elites who lack access to effective party organizational networks, or who face competition for control over these networks, an alternative avenue for establishing a base of effective intermediaries at the local level. In subsequent chapters, I show empirical support for the argument using qualitative and quantitative evidence from India as well as from across the developing world. This chapter provides information on several aspects of the Indian context that help in the interpretation of the evidence presented in subsequent chapters. Using field interviews and secondary sources, the chapter shows how and why the scope conditions underlying the theoretical argument that have been described in the previous chapter are strongly relevant in the Indian context. In establishing these scope conditions this chapter constructs an account of local democratization and political party organizations in India that sheds light on how these phenomena shape, and are shaped by, various aspects of the larger Indian context.

The logic of local democratization presented in the previous chapter relies on three key background conditions that either are necessary conditions for the argument or make the argument more likely to hold: (1) politicians at the national and state levels rely significantly on local intermediaries for mobilizing political support and targeting patronage at the local level, (2) there is a potential for a degree of separation between governmental and organizational power, and (3) government elites at higher levels have a reasonably high level of discretion in the targeting of state resources to lower-level governments. To apply the argument to understanding the state-level variation in local democratization and devolution in India, a fourth condition that must hold is that state-level governments possessed significant discretion over the implementation of local democratization and devolution. The chapter shows how and why these conditions are particularly relevant in the Indian context. To do this, it provides some background regarding the implementation of local democratization in India as well as an account of the structure of political party organizations in India.