Prime Ministerial Power and the Selection of Ministers in India: Three Decades of Change

In: International political science review: the journal of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) = Revue internationale de science politique, Band 2, Heft 2, S. 137-157

Abstract

The process of selection to the national council of ministers in India, as well as the role of the institution, has changed immensely during the past three decades. While ministers exhibit the characteristics of political elites generally—through their form and level of education, their occupational endeavor, and their pursuit of politics as a vocation— ministerial selection has been a function of prime ministerial strategies to assert the dominance of the prime minister's position and to augment its power. Strategies pursued have been determined by personal temperament and reactions to the leavening of public sentiment, the induction of new classes and generations of elites into the public arena, and the changing configurations within the party system. In this article the selection of ministers to the central cabinet in India is examined in terms of this context of power through a comparison of the reigns of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.