ABSTRACT
I have been fascinated by the problem of democracy in poor countries since the 1960s when Lipset argued that democracy is related to the level of economic development and hypothesized that the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy (Lipset 1959, 1960). Lipset’s study revealed that there is a positive relationship between democracy and various indicators of economic development. It inspired me to explore social prerequisites of democracy. I wondered how to explain the success of democracy in a poor country like India if it is true that a relatively high level of economic development is needed to support democracy. So I started to study politics in India in order to find out the social background of India’s many political parties and how the distribution of political power in India through its party system is related to the country’s social structures and conditions. My conclusion was that the success of democracy presupposes the distribution of economic and intellectual power among various social groups and their elites rather than a high level of economic development and that, therefore, democracy has survived in India in spite of its poverty. I assumed that if this hypothesis can be proved to apply also to other countries, the future of democracy in underdeveloped parts of the world would seem to be brighter than in the case that democracy is regarded to be possible only in countries which have achieved a high level of economic development (see Vanhanen 1963).
