ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to understand how political parties in Sri Lanka mediate between the state and society, the kind of representation they facilitate, and their implications for the current crisis. It argues that the two main parties (coalition centers) employing patronage network-based party organization to collect votes has allowed them to be less accountable to their constituencies and refrain from longer-term commitments to any policy or ideological position, which has paved the way for politicians to ignore the financial crisis that was forming for decades and continue to deceive their voters for electoral gains. Decades of two-party rule has also transformed their supporters from citizens to voters who do not themselves actively participate in ruling. Therefore, over the past seven decades these two catch-all parties have made the selection of rulers democratic, but not their rule.
