Votes, Parties, and Seats

Vani Kant Borooah is Emeritus Professor at Ulster University, Northern Ireland, UK, having held the Chair in Applied Economics there from 1987 to 2013. After receiving his PhD in 1977 from the University of Southampton, UK, he worked as a Senior Research Officer at the University of Cambridge's Department of Applied Economics and, concurrently, was a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, UK. His research areas include unemployment, inequality, poverty, and economic development. His most recent publications are Europe in an Age of Austerity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Caste, Discrimination, and Exclusion in Modern India (2015); and Education in a Divided Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

“This is a remarkable book, reflecting the author’s wide-ranging expertise of political economy in general and India’s complex election process in particular. … This book … deserves to be welcomed as a very detailed and systematic study encompassing all the national elections since Independence … . I think the book stands out as a trend-setter in the field of applied political economy.” (Dilip M. Nachane, Journal of Quantitative Economics, May, 2017)

• 1. Introduction.- 2. The Anatomy of Indian Elections.- 3. Estimating the Likelihood of Winning Elections.- 4. Incumbents, Challengers, and Electoral Risk.- 5. Analysis of Vote Shares.- 6. The Relationship Between Votes and Seats.- 7. The Concentration and Distribution of Votes.- 8. Conclusions.