Foreign Policy Salience in Indian Elections: Elite-Driven or Grassroots Demand?

• In Event: Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Conventional wisdom expects elite instrumentalization of foreign policy issues for electoral gains to dictate when and how foreign policy becomes a salient issue for voters, especially in developing democracies like India. A paucity of historical, representative Indian public opinion data has prevented further examination of this assumption. This paper draws on two novel data sources to better understand the salience of foreign policy in Indian politics: one, an original dataset of election manifestos from major Indian political parties covering each of India's 17 general elections (1952-2019); two, a dataset of newspaper articles printed in the Times of India. Using these data, we determine election years in which foreign policy salience is high by estimating the attention devoted to foreign policy issues in manifestos. We then identify whether high salience is due to elite-driven opportunistic electoral mobilization or bottom-up pressures from domestic audiences. Our findings suggest that while electoral mobilization strategies by political parties are one driver of foreign policy salience in India, their influence is overstated in the existing literature. Political parties respond to and craft their policies around existing voter concerns, which are elevated during times of acute security concerns or economic hardships.

Authors

• Emily Tallo, University of Chicago

• Eyal Hanfling, Massachusetts Institute of Technology