Introduction

This chapter examines the case of postindependence India, a structural and evolutionary theory of the dominant alliance; an alliance between an economically dominant group and a state where the business strategies of the former and the development strategy of the latter are fitted to one another. In the political science and political sociology literature there have been several works positing the existence of alliances between the state and economically dominant groups in the histories of capitalist and precapitalist states. Several writers in the neomarxist school have written on the theme, among them Nicos Pouiantzas who sees the dominant classes from several coexisting modes of production united in a "power bloc." Dominant alliances are alliances in modern developing countries between an interdependent community of entrepreneurial firms and the state, specifically certain agencies of the state. The dominant alliance entails a cycle of reproduction uniting a growth process, a state development strategy, and a property regime.