How do Citizens Negotiate Multiple Realms of Political Participation? Examining Linkages between 'Ballots and Barricades' from the Perspective of Poor Voters in India

This paper aims to advance the theoretical discussion around democracy and citizens’ political participation by examining how different channels of democratic participation interact, and the consequences of such interaction for broader democratic functioning. Basing its title upon McAdam and Tarrow (2010) who noted that the linkages between elections and social movements were an important area of research, this paper specifically analyses how citizen mobilisation for collective claim-making intersects with their electoral participation. For its analysis the paper uses the case of urban poor citizens in India who engage with the government to push for their demands both through collective claim-making – mobilising protests, negotiating welfare policies, using legal and media recourse – and through electoral bargaining. The latter occurs informally at individual, small group or large ‘interest’ group levels and is typically termed ‘clientelism’ and ‘pork’. This leads to seemingly contradictory observations of the same citizens negotiating the same demands as “citizenship rights” in one realm but as “clientelist benefits” in another, or recurrent cycles of their voting for certain local and state level parties but then taking the support of civil society activists and NGOs to fight against those same parties for their rights. Empirical evidence suggests that this may further enable political capture of nascent social movements, and may prevent the poor from being able to hold government accountable or represent their interests through scaling up their mobilisation. In this context of a non-Western electoral democracy where rule of law is weak and legal recourse for enforcement of policies or welfare rights is largely inaccessible to the poor, an examination of political participation at the grassroots can thus reveal theoretically complex linkages between different forms of political engagement by citizens. The paper bases its theoretical arguments upon empirical evidence collected in the form of open-ended as well as structured interviews with slum dwellers, community leaders, grassroots activists and NGO workers across two cities of India with contrasting electoral dynamics (namely low and high electoral competition) but similar dynamics of contention around urban development. The paper hopes to contribute to key issues within democratic theory as well as the literature on clientelism within comparative politics, and throw a practical light on the question of how democratic institutions can help address the challenges of growing inequality in the developing world.