Using game theory to track and determine voting patterns

allison martens

To many, India is the storied land of Bollywood, Gandhi and the Ganges River. To one Concordia political scientist, however, it also provides an ideal model to study the rise and fall of governments in multiparty political systems.

Csaba Nikolenyi’s specialty is game theory, and how it can be used to predict the stability of coalition governments. “It’s very interesting, because even today, Indian party politics have not been studied from that perspective.”

For years, the Indian government was dominated by a single party. In the late 1960s, it started to lose ground to smaller parties. As they gained power, more so-called proto-parties would spring up to seek their slice of the action.

“Since 1989, there have always been hung parliaments in India. That’s surprising, because it has the same electoral system as Canada and Britain in which most of the time, you would expect one party to get a majority and form a government.”

Canadians often lament that with four major parties there is not enough choice. In the 2004 Indian national elections, Indians chose from among dozens, resulting in a highly divided (and perhaps unstable) government.

Nikolenyi’s interest in Indian politics goes back at least 10 years, while he was a PhD student at UBC. In his dissertation, he discussed how and why governments are formed in India within the context of rational choice theory.

In 1996 – an election year in India – he spent a year performing doctoral research in a town near Bangalore and in Delhi. He even managed to get an interview with the Maharani of Gwalior, the last Hindu queen.

He was one of the last people to do so before her death in 2001. He has also extensively studied coalition-building and coalition stability in the former communist countries, including his native Hungary.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, many post-communist countries were also overflowing with fledgling political parties.

“The same models that explain which types of governments are more likely to fall and which are more likely to be durable work just as well in India and Eastern Europe as they do in established Western democracies.

“The implication is that as long as you have a democratic party system – regardless of differences in culture, background or regional setting – that parties tend to behave in very similar ways.”

A government’s perceived stability – or lack thereof – can colour its relations with other nations or investors. They may be much less willing to negotiate with a government they suspect will be short-lived. The more stable a government it is, the more credible.

Nikolenyi is also interested in factors that impact voter turnout in India. He says the trend to increased turnout correlates with an increase in political parties and hence, choice.

His main interest, however, is how the timing of elections impacts turnout.

Until 1971, national and provincial elections in India were held at the same time. “It’s easier to vote when you have to go to the polling station only once, and you can take care of two elections at the same time. It all comes down to this separation of cycles.”

He will discuss this research at a Comparative Politics seminar sponsored by Concordia’s Department of Political Science, held Feb. 9 and10 in the Hall Building. For a schedule of presenters, visit News@Concordia.