Epistemological lacunae in conceptualising political structure: a solution from field theory

It is surprising that scholars using the notion of political structure in their studies have yet to engage with the epistemological question of how to study political structures – that is, structures that are external to political actors, are independent of their subjectivity and can have a coercive effect on them in the event that they digress from the structures’ logic. In fact, such scholars appear to leap over this question towards their assumed ontology of political structure and then rush to empirically demonstrate its relevance for explaining a wide range of political phenomena.

In this article, I argue that scholars’ lack of engagement with the epistemological question of political structure does not mean that they lack an epistemological position altogether. However, by not acknowledging this position, they severely limit the explanatory power of their respective notions of political structure, as their particular epistemological stance on political structure allows them to view only certain features of political structure while blurring others. Thus, they unwittingly present one facet of political structure (the only facet they can see) as the entire ontology of political structure, and do not address questions related to the transformation of one facet of political structure into another. Furthermore, they do not develop conceptual tools for explaining the establishment and reproduction of the facet of political structure that is visible from their particular position. As a consequence, scholars using the notion of political structure as an explanans for various kinds of political phenomena remain unaware of the historical specificity of their particular form of political structure.

I explore these arguments by analysing the three most popular notions of political structure that are regularly used to explain the democracy consolidation process: the party system, elite networks, and political institutions. Briefly, I show that party system scholars’ belief that inter-party interactions shape political structure is based on their uncritical acceptance of a commonsensical point of view on politics: an unreflected view strongly influenced by incumbent political elites in state offices. Elite network scholars view political structure as an intricate system of ties among the elite – a view based on the perception of political actors as agents whose fate is dependent on their political networks. Political institution scholars believe that the rules of politics, whether formal or informal, mould the architecture of political structures; thus, they confuse their scholarly view of politics as a spectacle – a point of view nurtured within the academic field that perceives the social world itself as a spectacle – with that of political actors intrinsically engaged with politics for the attainment of practical ends.

I argue that, due to the implicitly held positions from which they develop their respective notions of political structure, all three of these groups of scholars fail to provide satisfactory explanations of changes in political structure and the consequences of such changes for the democracy consolidation process. Thus, in order to improve our comprehension of political phenomena, including but not limited to democracy consolidation, we need to adopt an epistemological position that allows us to view all facets of political structures, including their historical specificity and the processes leading to their establishment, reproduction, and transformation. I propose that Bourdieu’s epistemological strategy for studying field structures – to conceptually construct a field structure by taking into account field actors’ competing points of view on the true meaning of membership in their field – allows us to overcome the limitations of the available notions of political structure.

Having engaged with the debate on whether objective structure or subjective perception constitutes the fundamental reality of the social world, Bourdieu concluded that structures and subjectivity are not, in fact, two separate ontological features of the social world; rather, they are ontologically unified. Following this argument, he inferred that social actors have an intrinsic comprehension of their structural conditions. However, their comprehension is limited, due to the particularity of the position from which they view the structure of their social world. Since there are multiple positions, there can be multiple perspectives on the social structure, each capturing a particular aspect of its morphology. As a result, social actors have conflicting positions on social structure, shaped primarily by their interest in imposing their particular point of view on the true membership of their field on the rest of the field members. It is this conflict among a field’s inhabitants over the definition of true field membership that shapes the dynamics of a field structure.

This insight suggests that the structural dynamics of politics are shaped by conflicts among political actors over the true meaning of being a politician. At any given moment in a series of conflicts among political actors over the meaning of politics, the political viewpoint of the dominant elite defines the fundamental features of political structure. However, even though the plane of political structure gives the dominant political actor an advantage over the dominated political actors, the everyday struggle to reproduce the current political structure simultaneously creates the potential for making changes in it that can, under certain historical circumstances, radically transform it.

In other words, the adoption of Bourdieu’s epistemological strategy in the study of politics allows us to view different facets of political structure, comprehend how they are established, reproduced and transformed, and appreciate their historical specificity. I demonstrate the significance of field theory’s epistemological insights for studying political structure in my study of changes in the structure of the postcolonial Indian political field that led to the suspension of the democracy consolidation process during the Emergency (1975–1977) (Singh, 2016).

This paper is organised into four parts. In the first part, I illustrate the particular epistemological position of party system, political elite network, and political institution scholars. In the second part, I describe how Bourdieu identified the necessity of considering social actors’ points of view for understanding the structure of a particular section of the social world. In the third part, I illustrate how he used his epistemological strategy to develop his theory of political structure. In the fourth part, I discuss my study of the history of changes in the structure of the postcolonial Indian political field that led to a brief period of suspension of the democracy consolidation process.

The most conspicuous feature of politics as it is conducted in everyday public life is conflict among different political parties, which may seek to distinguish themselves ideologically from their rivals on almost every issue. Their conflict over politically charged issues is especially visible during election periods, when they strive to protect their core constituents from being influenced by rival parties, using mass media platforms to communicate their particular ideology. Thus, from the point of view of those who do not professionally practise politics (the public), the world of politics appears to be a system of interaction among distinct parties. This commonsensical point of view shapes the implicitly held epistemological position of party system studies.

The founding scholars of party system theory unambiguously believed that inter-party conflict is the fundamental structural feature of the political world (Duverger, 1954; Laakso & Taagepera, 1979; Sartori, 1976). Since the number of parties plays the pivotal role in creating various patterns of competitive interactions among parties, party system scholars focus heavily on classifying party system types in terms of the number of parties as the starting point for their explanation of any political phenomena. Regarding the democracy consolidation process, party system scholars have proposed the relation between party system types and democracy described below.

There is overwhelming evidence, especially from newly democratised African countries, that a one-party system decreases the future prospects of democracy, because it strongly leans towards one-party authoritarianism (cf. Mtimkulu, 2009; Nyong’o, 1992; Schlemmer, 2006; Zolberg, 1966). The multiparty system might initially appear to be an attractive option for the deepening of democracy (cf. Dalton, Farrell, & McAllister, 2011; Webb & White, 2007), but recent studies show that a multiparty system can also be a destabilising factor for a newly established democracy (cf. Lane & Ersson, 2007). Party system scholars, thus argue that the two-party system in enduring democracies like the United Kingdom and the United States provides the most conducive environment for stable democracy, as it avoids the threats of both single-party authoritarianism and political instability due to multiple parties (cf. Hermens, 1941; Mainwaring, 1993; Taylor & Herman, 1971).

Party system scholars typically do not attempt to explain changes in party systems. In fact, Lipset and Rokkan’s (1990) highly influential study on the party system uses the metaphor of ‘freezing’ to illustrate their point that, once a party system is established, it is highly improbable that it will change even if the parties’ ideologies change. However, recognising the fact that transformation in party systems does at least occasionally occur, Mair (2006) has attempted to explain such changes without challenging the ‘freezing’ metaphor.

According to Mair, in order to explain transformations in the party system, the party types must be classified on the basis of the pattern of competition for control over government offices and not on the basis of the number of competing parties (Mair, 2006, p. 66). Thus, he proposes two types of party systems: closed and open. In a closed party system (such as Germany, Austria, and Italy), control over the government alternates among entirely different parties or coalitions of parties; however, state policies remain stable in spite of changes of ruling party. On the other hand, in an open party system (such as Finland and Ireland), some parties remain in state offices while others move out, and the entry of new parties prompts changes in governing formulae.

Mair (2006, pp. 67–68) argues that, once a party system is established, it develops stabilising inertia for three reasons. First, as the members of the public become accustomed to a particular form of a party system, they begin to think of politics only in terms of the options available within that system. Second, political elites prefer to sustain a familiar system, regardless of whether or not they are currently in control of state offices. Third, the stability of the institutional structure within which a particular party system is embedded also contributes to the latter’s stability. Hence, those rare instances in which party systems have changed were the result of changes in the public perception of parties, the appearance of new political elites, and changes in institutional structure.

Mair considerably advances party system scholarship by developing an explanation for party system stability and transformation. However, his explanation is limited in that it does not explain the emergence of factors that lead to such changes. The reason for this limitation is that even though Mair attempts to do what other party system scholars avoid – explain change – his attempt remains ensconced in the party system scholars’ implicitly held epistemological point of view; that is, the commonsensical point of view of politics as involving neatly individuated groups. As a result, he develops his theory of party system change without taking into account two crucial features of politics that cannot be clearly viewed through the commonsensical perception: intra-party conflicts and inter-party ties.

Those viewing politics from the social space do not have the opportunity to see the role of intra-party conflicts in shaping party leaders’ political activities to the same extent that they are able to see inter-party conflicts. Unless party leaders’ failure to contain internal conflicts leads to a party split or the defection of rebel faction leaders to other parties, the public views a political party as an organisational whole led by a supreme leader rather than as a chaotic assembly of conflicting factions tenuously held together by a leader whose position is constantly under threat. Likewise, the public remains also relatively unaware of inter-party ties among the leaders of various parties. Except for a few ceremonial occasions, disengaged onlookers never have the opportunity to witness the amicable interactions among rival parties’ leaders that may shape their inter-party ties (cf. Domhoff, 1998).

Because the public typically does not get opportunities to observe intra-party conflicts and inter-party ties, party system scholars also commonly overlook these two properties of politics. Thus, they do not realise that the dominant actors in political parties have a vested interest in portraying ideologically driven inter-party conflicts among parties as the ultimate reality of politics. Such spectacles of political conflict, constructed primarily for public consumption, work as a perfect curtain to hide variances in party leaders’ control over their political offices due to incessant intra-party conflict, as well as to conceal inter-party ties that might cast doubts on their ideological distinctiveness.

Nonetheless, intra-party conflicts and inter-party ties play an important role in the chaotic process of party splits and party formation in any country. These features of the political world lead to alterations in both the number and the appearance of political parties. In turn, such changes create the possibility of changes in public perception and in the elite hierarchy. In particular, new political elites are likely to push for transformation in political institutions when their expectations are not being met by already-established institutions (cf. Brooker, 2013; Huntington, 1991/1993).

In other words, political actors’ intra-party conflicts and inter-party ties play a crucial role in generating Mair’s (2006) three factors for party system change: alteration in public perception, appearance of new elites, and changes in political institutions. However, relying on a commonsensical perception of politics, party system scholars like Mair fail to recognise the importance of these two political features, and thus their explanations of party system change and its consequences for democracy remain limited.

One of the most interesting features of politics is that, while dominant political actors give the public the impression that ideologically driven inter-party conflict is the fundamental reality of politics, they give political insiders the impression that elite networks constitute the fundamental form of political structure. Thus, whereas on the public stage they do not hesitate to display ideologically driven hostility towards each other, privately they are driven by their concerns for mutually beneficial ties rather than the conflicts resulting from their ideological differences (cf. Domhoff, 1998). Political elite network scholars, thus see beyond the illusion created by the political elite for political outsiders (the public) but not the illusion of amicable ties among ideological rivals that is created for political insiders.

Consociational elite network scholars argue that democracy in a newly democratised country is more likely to survive when elites of different ethnicities circulate and distribute state resources through their network ties (Lijphart, 1977, 1984, 1996). Elite circle scholars make a similar argument (Higley, 2010; Higley & Burton, 2006; Higley, Hoffman-Lange, Kadushin, & Moore, 1991) but differ on two points: they identify the elite as leaders of various occupational groups that may or may not be of different ethnicities, and they argue that an elite network is not a given but appears only under particular historical circumstances.

We can observe elite network scholars’ dependence on the dominant actors’ point of view for developing the notion of political structure when we examine those moments in the history of politics when a populist leader successfully challenges the incumbent elite. According to the viewpoint of populist leaders, politics is not about the circulation and distribution of state resources among network members, but rather about facilitating public access to state resources; thus, politicians’ ties with the public, not with their colleagues, constitute the fundamental structure of politics.

The rise of populist leaders in politics both illuminates elite network scholars’ reliance on the dominant elite’s point of view and challenges their assumption that a cohesive elite network is necessary for stable democracy. This assumption makes sense when viewed from the point of view of political elites who are dependent on their political network-embedded resources; however, populist leaders often point out that the political elite network is primarily responsible for incomplete democratisation, as state resources often fail to reach the masses who expect them.

Here, it is important to recognise that successful populist leaders are also in need of political network ties for the distribution of their acquired state resources among the public. However, in political networks under the control of elites who are dependent on political ties, network position is the ultimate source of political authority, whereas public popularity is the ultimate source of authority in networks controlled by a populist leader. Because elite network scholars rely only on the point of view of incumbent political actors, they do not recognise the possibility of changes in the elite network should a populist leader come to power.

Unlike consociational network scholars, elite circle scholars acknowledge that elite networks evolve over time, becoming conducive to democracy only under certain historical circumstances; however, they also argue that a network conducive to democracy, once established, does not change again (Higley & Burton, 2006, p. 12). In reality, elite networks change not only when a populist leader appears on the political landscape but also continue to change throughout the reign of network-dependent elites.

The significance of this point for comprehending changes in elite networks becomes evident when we examine the newly developed networking perspective, according to which ties among actors hold certain meanings and create certain expectations among the actors who share them (Fuhse, 2009; McLean, 2007; Mische, 2003; Mische & White, 1998). During interactions, new ties can form and the expectations or intensity associated with existing ties can change, thereby affecting certain actors’ access to network resources and consequently altering the entire network structure.

Thus, we can say that members of the political elite network compete with each other to increase their share of network resources. Such competition might change the meaning of ties among the network members (for instance changing friends to enemies or vice versa), while the overall network remains intact. However, both consociational and elite circle theorists ignore the active role of the elite in shaping their network structure, and thus fail to recognise subtle network changes and their consequences for democracy.

Lipset’s (1959) highly influential study on the role of socio-economic factors in democracy consolidation inspired modernisation scholars’ excessive focus on the broad socio-economic conditions of the public as the determinants of democracy, thus undermining the importance of institutional politics (cf. Gasiorowski, 1995; Gould & Maggio, 2007; Przeworski, Alvarez, Cheibub, & Limongi, 2000). Hence, political institution scholars started to examine the formal rules of political engagement as a means to bring institutional politics back into the discussion of democracy consolidation.

In one of the best-known versions of political institution theory, scholars argue that, for a newly democratised country, a parliamentary system ensures a stable democracy (cf. Abdukadirov, 2009; Fukuyama, Dressel, & Chang, 2005; Stephan & Skach, 1993), while a presidential system creates political instability. This reasoning is due to the possibility that the president (unlike the prime minister in the parliamentary system) may be of a different party than the legislative majority, creating a high likelihood of deadlock between them and potentially creating conditions for bureaucratic or military dictatorship. Unlike party system scholars, political institution scholars do not base their epistemological stance on the commonsensical perception (which is not much concerned with the formal rules of politics) nor on elite actors’ point of view (as they believe the formal rules of politics shape political actors’ actions).

However, the recent transformation of Soviet countries from communist dictatorship to democracy has challenged political institution scholarship’s belief in formal rules by showing that there are moments in a country’s political history when political actors change the very institutions that have driven them for decades. Furthermore, the United States poses a direct challenge to political institution scholars’ prediction that the presidential system of democracy is relatively more unstable than the parliamentary system. Similarly, there are various cases of developing countries in which parliamentary democracy collapsed and was replaced by authoritarianism (cf. Hiroi & Omori, 2009; Sayeed, 1959). Thus, neither the general assumption of political institution theory (that formal rules dictate politics) nor its particular thesis (regarding the type of formal rules that stabilise democracy) is strongly supported.

Acknowledging the criticism that political institution scholarship puts too much faith in the formal rules of politics, Lowndes and Roberts (2013) have attempted to overcome this limitation by acknowledging that informal political rules are as important as formal rules, and emphasising the importance of both formal and informal political discourses (such as stories or narratives) in shaping political phenomena. This, according to Lowndes and Roberts (2013, pp. 46–76), is the paradigm of new institutionalism in political science.

While one can argue that new institutionalism could improve political institution scholars’ explanations of democracy consolidation, it still portrays political actors as well in the background of politics and couches the explanation of their actions in the vocabulary of rules, whether formal or informal. Furthermore, the inclusion of political discourses in this conceptual apparatus also keeps political actors in the background, representing them as recipients rather than as creators of political discourse. Institutional politics scholars’ portrayal of political actors as passive agents in relation to rules and discourses strongly indicates that their epistemological stance suffers from what Bourdieu (2000, pp. 9–43; 1998, pp. 127–140) describes as the scholastic fallacy – that is, confusing the scholarly perception of the world with the perception of social actors.

Bourdieu (2000, pp. 16–25) has noted that academics are typically not participants in the specific parts of the social world that they are studying, and hence do not have an immediate comprehension of that world; thus, they fail to realise that social actors are more likely to be attentive to the unique spatially and temporally limited demands of their immediate situation than to reflect on formal or informal rules or discourses. Thus, by taking the rules of engagement in the social sphere as the generative engine of their inhabitants’ practices, academic scholars neglect the role of those inhabitants’ active participation in creatively using rules and discourses, which may lead them to act in ways that are contrary to expectations from the academic point of view. Thus, while inclusion of the new institutionalism paradigm will undoubtedly make institutional scholarship empirically richer, its explanatory capabilities will continue to suffer as long as it fails to account for the active role of political actors in shaping political institutions and the resultant effects on democracy.

In summary, the epistemological stance of party system scholars is based on the commonsensical perception; the stance of elite network scholars is based on the point of view of a particular section of the political elite; and the stance of political institution scholars is based on the academic point of view. Thus, none of these three schools of thought systematically take into account the multiple viewpoints of political actors. Since political actors are the ones who live and breathe in the structural conditions of the political world and, as such, have direct stakes in the reproduction and transformation of political structures, any discussion of political structure that does not acknowledge their point of view would appear to be based on the untenable assumption that these actors have no comprehension whatever of the structural conditions of their world.

However, despite the importance of considering the perspective of insiders, it is true that their point of view is shaped by their particular self-interest. How, then, can one rely on their subjective perception of politics to develop the notion of political structure? In the following section, I will show how Bourdieu resolved the generic form of this dilemma to develop his epistemology for studying social structures, and thus provided new insights into historically specific dynamics of political structure.

Bourdieu developed his epistemological position for conducting field analysis by engaging with the question of whether collectively recognised common rules form the ontology of social structure. He identifies Saussure’s theory of language (which describes language as a system of logically related rules on the basis of which social actors code and decode speech acts) as the primordial model for using rules as the raw material for developing the notion of structure (Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 30–31). Inspired by Saussure, a large number of social scientists adopted the epistemological strategy of unearthing the ‘rules’ of the social spheres they investigated, believing that logical relations among those rules formed the structural conditions of those social spheres (cf. Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 31–40).

Bourdieu criticises this notion, suggesting that it reduces social actors to the status of automata, whose logic of practice is simply the logic of rules. Following Weber’s insight that social actors follow rules only as long as they are ‘interested’ in following them (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 76), Bourdieu reasons that, during everyday interactions, social actors’ primary interest is to use the rules of engagement to attain certain practical ends in their everyday lives, rather than to exhibit their mastery of those rules.

However, Bourdieu does not deny the existence of structure as a system of logically related rules that manifests as an objective, external and coercive force; in fact, he uses insights from structuralism to illuminate the limits of phenomenological analyses that assume that a notion of social structure must be developed by using social actors’ points of view, rather than objective rules, as the raw material. While Bourdieu appreciates the zeal with which phenomenologists reintroduced social actors’ viewpoints to debates on epistemology, he criticises them for failing to acknowledge the fact that, because social actors are born into a social world whose various parts are already structured by different rule systems, we cannot fully explain their experiences unless we take into account the particular rule system that structures their categories of perception (Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 42–52). By failing to do this, phenomenological analysis ultimately limits itself to simply describing, rather than explaining, subjects’ experiences.

Thus, Bourdieu has criticised both structuralism and phenomenology for treating structure and subjective perceptions as entirely separate. Instead, he argues that they should be treated as extensions of each other, such that the rule system structures social actors’ points of view, and social actors’ practices reproduce the rule system (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 128–135).

In contrast to the common criticism that his ontology denies the presence of any creative spark among social actors (cf. Archer, 2010; Evens, 1999; King, 2000; Myles, 1999; Sewell, 1992; Vandenberghe, 1999), Bourdieu argues that, as actors encounter similar but not identical social situations, they creatively use their categories of perception, shaped by past experiences of similar structural conditions, to navigate through their everyday challenges (Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 80–98; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 19–26). Hence, Bourdieu uses his insight into the relation between rules and subjects to explain their reproductive relation without falling into the structuralists’ fallacy of viewing subjects as passive agents. This insight is the key to understanding Bourdieu’s epistemological strategy for developing the notion of structure.

According to Bourdieu, social scientists must develop the notion of structure from the point of view of a social world’s inhabitants, who already have an intrinsic comprehension of the rule system that structures that world (Bourdieu, 1990b, pp. 135–141). While phenomenologists make a similar argument, Bourdieu recognises social actors’ vested interest in presenting a particular image of their social world; thus, he goes beyond phenomenologists’ acceptance of social actors’ subjectivity by recognising the presence of multiple social actors, each depicting the social world in an egocentric manner. In so doing, he recognises the importance of systematically taking into account multiple social actors’ points of view in order to develop the notion of the social structure (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 224–235).

Unlike the phenomenologists, Bourdieu presents the acknowledgement of multiple points of view as the core principle of his epistemological strategy. Thus, he is able to recognise that multiple collectivities are often in conflict with each other – sometimes even to the point of refusing to recognise others as legitimate inhabitants of their social space – because of differences in their respective points of view on the rule system that structures their world (cf. Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 101–104). In fact, Bourdieu argues that the study of this contest illuminates the objective structural conditions of the social world, since each conflict takes place on a plane that has been structured by previous similar contests, where members of some collectivities are in more advantageous positions than others (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 12–14, 101–104).

Thus, Bourdieu demonstrates that it is not the internal logic of a rule system but rather the collectively recognised hierarchical relation among points of view on various rule systems that contributes to social actors’ efficacy in attaining practical ends during their everyday activities. When a particular rule system is collectively recognised by a social world’s inhabitants as the most legitimate means for shaping actors’ interactions, that rule system structures that particular social world and determines the relative chances of social actors’ success in attaining their self-interested practical ends. Furthermore, the success of dominant actors in their everyday pursuit of practical ends also ensures the reproduction of structural conditions that have already placed them in a relatively advantageous position. However, the ever-present tension between dominant and dominated actors also creates conditions for the transformation of the structural conditions of a particular social world.

Thus, by taking into account multiple points of view and the conflicts among them, and by observing whose point of view prevails, a sociologist gains insight into the historically specific structural topography of the social actors of a particular social world. However, it is not an easy task to identify the subjects’ point of view. According to Bourdieu, the commonsensical perception is the main impediment to the attempt to do so (Bourdieu, 2000, pp. 172–179; Bourdieu, Chamboredon, & Passeron, 1991, pp. 13–24; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, pp. 235–248). Sociologists’ objects of study are already a part of the popular discourse, and the commonsensical perception of those objects offers a reservoir of answers for sociologists’ questions. These answers may be difficult to resist, as this unreflected perception carries the appearance of being without social roots and hence misrepresents the viewpoint of a particular section of society as the universal viewpoint.

However, Bourdieu (2000, pp. 172–179) argues that the commonsensical perception is rooted within the structural conditions of the dominant social actors, especially those who dominate the state, such as political actors and their supporters, who use the authority of the state apparatus to create a system of classifications that presents their particular point of view as universal. Hence, in order to identify the point of view of actors inhabiting a particular social space, it is extremely important to objectify the commonsensical perception of that social space, as failure to do so can make one vulnerable to deceptions created by dominant actors for public consumption.

Bourdieu adopted these epistemological insights to conduct his empirical analysis of the fields of social space (1984; 1985), the academic world (1988), culture (1993), art (1996), and state elites (1998). He took the same approach to conceptualising the field of politics (Bourdieu, 1999). Like party system scholars, Bourdieu recognises the field of politics as a space of contest among professional political actors seeking to gain control over state offices. However, he also recognises that such conflict is not limited to the inter-party level but rather informs the dynamics of politics at all levels, including among and within the factions of a party (Bourdieu, 1999, pp. 188–192). Moreover, while party system scholars uncritically accept the commonsensical perception of politics as a credible source for developing the notion of political structure, Bourdieu treats this perception as an obstacle to, rather than a facilitator of, an objective understanding of any social sphere, including politics. He shows that the commonsensical perception’s exclusive focus on ideological differences between parties prevents it from acknowledging the common belief of all political actors that state offices must be pursued on behalf of the public.

Following this insight, Bourdieu argues that, in a democratic political system, the outcomes of apparent ideological conflicts are decided by political actors’ ability to produce the largest amount of support among the public, especially during elections, in order to gain legitimate control over state offices (Bourdieu, 1999, pp. 180–184). In fact, Bourdieu shows that political actors are so intrinsically aware of the role of the public in deciding ideological contests internal to politics that they usually treat their ideology as a function of their mass mobilisation efficacy (Bourdieu, 1999, pp. 185). Hence, according to Bourdieu, it is crucial to comprehend political actors’ mass mobilisation practices, and not conflicts among their ideological discourses, in order to develop a notion of political structure.

Bourdieu (1999, pp. 194) notes that, since a typical political actor relies on public recognition of his party to mobilise the public, it is necessary for him to be well connected with party leaders at every step of his political trajectory: to ensure that he will be the party’s nominee in legislative elections; to mobilise publics in his constituency via the party leaders’ resources; to ensure his nomination for a ministerial berth; and, finally, to ensure the survival of his government and his success in the legislature. Importantly, his political ties may extend to leaders in other parties, including immediate political rivals.

Bourdieu’s recognition of political actors’ ties in shaping their political trajectory is similar to the view of elite network scholars; however, he also recognises the presence of political actors whose popularity among the public, rather than among professional politicians, is the source of their political strength (1999, pp. 194). Charismatic and populist leaders are examples of such types of political actors, as are those whose popularity originates from fame in other fields (such as cinema or medicine).

Political actors’ points of view on politics are largely a consequence of embodying the mass mobilisation practices that they primarily use. Political actors relying on their political networks are driven by their interest in maintaining the institutional foundation of those networks – that is, the party organisation. After all, synergistic ties among leaders at all levels of the party organisation – national, regional, and grassroots – make it possible for the party to distribute state resources among its constituents and maintain its recognition among the public. A political leader uses this recognition (in the form of election symbols, party colours, slogans, and so on) to effectively mobilise the public during elections. In other words, such leaders’ relations with the public, whether reflected in ideological declarations or in their formulations of state policies, are mediated by their interest in the well-being of the party apparatus and the political network that it sustains.

On the other hand, political actors known for their popularity with the public are likely to focus more on reproducing that popularity than on concerns related to the party apparatus when shaping their discourses on ideology and state policies. Thus, in contrast to party-dependent actors, these political actors’ perceptions of ideologies and state policies are mediated by their interest in reproducing their public popularity. Because of these differences in the points of view of political actors relying on political networks and on public popularity for mobilising the masses, the conflict among them over the question of whose point of view on politics should be the universal point of view in politics becomes inevitable. The manner in which these contests are resolved deeply influences the answer to this question.

The political elite’s chances of winning such contests depend on their success in leading party leaders to victory in elections. Those who succeed in using their mass mobilisation practices gain the status of the dominant political elite within the ruling party. Thereafter, the dominant elite’s appreciation and depreciation of political discourses gain high credence among other political actors, including their immediate rivals within and outside their party. Thus, the dominant political elite of the ruling party establish their point of view in politics as the defining structure of politics. If the elite who rely on their political networks emerge as dominant, then the political structure is defined by their networks in politics. If, on the other hand, the elite known for their popularity among the public emerge as dominant, then those elements of political structure that facilitate their mass mobilisation practices will become the defining features of the political structure.

While the dominated political elite are likely to accept the point of view of the dominant political actors, they will also be acutely attentive to any appropriate opportunities for reversing the established political structure in their favour. Thus, the dominant political elite must constantly engage in efforts to reproduce their dominance during their everyday inter- and intra-party interactions. If they succeed, they can reproduce the established political structure in the next round of elections. On the other hand, if the dominated political actors succeed in exploiting appropriate opportunities to challenge the dominant political elite, the political structure will transform.

Bourdieu’s insight into political structure hints at the importance of political institutions (the formal rules of politics) to the elite attempting to establish their particular point of view on mass mobilisation resources, as their success depends in the first instance upon their ability to lead the party leaders during elections. Elections are an important part of democratic political institutions; hence, Bourdieu implies that political institutions provide the canvas on which political actors paint their political brushstrokes.

While Bourdieu does not explicitly deal with the question of political institutions in his study of politics, his general ideas concerning the relation between rules and social actors can be used to gain insight into the relation between political actors’ points of view and political institutions. As mentioned earlier, Bourdieu argued that social actors follow rules when it is in their interest to do so (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 76). Thus, we can argue that political institutions do not have any inbuilt ability to self-perpetuate; rather, it is the self-interest of political actors that perpetuates them. At the same time, as Rustow (1970) claimed in his discussion on the role of the political elite in consolidating democracy, it is true that political actors become habituated to following political institutions once they are established. However, this ability of political institutions to shape the interest of future political actors is a result of the self-interest of political actors in whose time period those political institutions were first established. In the section below, I discuss advantages of studying political structure from field theory’s epistemological position by referring to research on the changing fate of democracy in postcolonial India (Singh, 2016).

During the first three decades of independence (1947–1975), Indian democracy successfully survived five general elections, two successions of Prime Ministers, and a culture of protecting the independence of the press. However, on 26 June 1975, Indira Gandhi’s government proclaimed a state of Emergency, indefinitely postponing the next general election, arresting opposition party leaders, suspending citizens’ civil liberties, and heavily censoring independent media platforms (Bose & Jalal, 2004; Tarlo, 2003). Why did the process of consolidating democracy that had continued smoothly in India since 1947 come to a sudden halt in 1975?

A large number of studies answering this question refer to the political structures of the Nehruvian period that stabilised Indian democracy: the Congress party system, cohesive political elite networks, and the colonial legacy of parliamentary institutions. The Congress party system was a variant of a one-party system which allowed ideologically divided opposition parties to use their counterparts in the organisationally robust Congress party to access state resources. This arrangement between opposition parties and the ruling Congress party prevented the former from unifying against the latter to claim authority over the state and hence stabilised Indian politics (cf. Kaviraj, 1986; Kochanek, 1976; Kothari, 1989; Rudolph & Rudolph, 1987).

The Congress party system also encouraged the formation of cohesive intra- and inter-party networks of political elites, which also contributed to the stability of Indian politics (Higley, 2010; Lijphart, 1996). Furthermore, some scholars believe that the introduction of limited institutions of parliamentary democracy by the British colonial state had habituated the Indian political elite to parliamentary politics since the colonial period and hence contributed to the stabilisation of postcolonial Indian democracy (Bernhard, Reenock, & Nordstrom, 2004; Weiner, 1987).

Scholars attempting to explain the Emergency believe that these structural bedrocks of Indian democracy dramatically weakened during the Gandhian regime (1971–1977), creating conditions for the collapse of Indian democracy in 1975. The main limitation of these studies is that they confuse their correct observations on the changes in the Indian political structure with an explanation for the Emergency. Thus, it is true that during the Gandhian reign (1971–1975) the Congress party system was drastically weakened, inter- and intra-party networks were destroyed, and parliamentary institutions were not honoured; however, merely observing these facts does not clarify why these changes took place.

Interestingly, when we examine studies on the Emergency closely, they all appear to blame Gandhi for changes in the political structure. This tendency in their explanations is incoherent with their structural explanation, as it does not allow them to recognise the role of the elite’s practices in shaping political structure. Hence, they cannot conceptualise the relation between the political elite’s practices and changes in the political structure. A political field theory-based research strategy for studying the Emergency overcomes this limitation because its epistemological insights prompt us to re-construct the concept of Indian political structure by examining the history of conflict among the relevant political elite over the meaning of politics. Hence, it allows us to recognise the intrinsic relation between the political elite’s practices and changing political structures.

The application of field theory insights shows that Gandhi’s political habitus was a product of the Nehruvian period of Indian politics (1947–1964), during which there was intense conflict among the ruling elite over which of the two politics-specific capitals – popularity among the rural poor or ties among political actors – defined the identity of a true Indian politician. Nehru ultimately triumphed in this contest and established his popularity among the rural poor as the defining feature of the Indian political field. The combination of the facts that Gandhi was Nehru’s only child, that she was his closest confidante during his tenure as prime minister (1947–1964), and that his popularity among the masses shaped the structure of Indian politics, led to the development of her unique point of view on Indian politics, which recognised only popularity with the public, and not political networking, as the most legitimate means for gaining authority over state offices.

Nehru’s death in 1964 put Gandhi on the path of conflict with the Congress party elite who were known for their political networking skills. In 1969, this conflict resulted in the first major split of the Congress party into the Gandhi-led Congress (R) and the Congress (O) led by her rivals. Gandhi used her immense popularity among the rural poor gained during the Nehruvian period and her populist slogan of garibi hatao (remove poverty) to lead the leaders of her party to an unprecedented electoral victory in the 1971 general election, while her rivals in the Congress (O), who relied on their political networking skills for mobilising publics, were severely defeated.

On entering prime ministerial office in 1971, Gandhi started proactively devaluing the political authority of those of her colleagues with high political networking skills in order to prevent any future threat to her political authority. In the process, she also ended up destroying much of the Congress party organisation and the intra- and inter-party networks among the political elite. These changes in politics began to unify opposition parties, whose ideological differences had so far not allowed them to pose any significant challenge to the ruling party leaders’ political authority. In the mid-1970s, opposition parties began pooling their resources against Gandhi in the form of the Jaya Prakash (JP) movement (1973–1975), one of the largest political movements in postcolonial India, which demanded the ousting of Gandhi from the Prime Minister’s office.

Even though the disgruntled leaders of the Congress party viewed the JP movement as their opportunity to challenge Gandhi, they did not act upon this opportunity, as they were not confident that their networking skills would have the desired effect on Indian politics. However, the defeat of the Congress party in the 1974 Gujarat elections, in spite of Gandhi’s vigorous electoral campaign, gave the ruling party leaders their first solid reason to doubt Gandhi’s high popularity among Indian publics. Thereafter, the Allahabad high court judgment in June 1975, disqualifying Gandhi’s election to parliament in 1971, further fuelled their doubts. Thus, the decrease in Gandhi’s public popularity improved her rivals’ political field positions in relation to hers.

Later in June 1975, Gandhi came to recognise for the first time the negative consequences of her relatively reduced political field position when her colleagues refused to unanimously support her proposed solution for resolving this political crisis – to resign from the prime minister’s office and let one of her nominees take it over until the next election, to be held in 1976. Gandhi feared that the improvement in the political field position of those disgruntled party colleagues who were known for their high volume of political networks had revitalised their networking power. Now they could have successfully mobilised their high ties in politics to formally align with the JP movement leaders and form a coalition against her, the leaders of which would not hesitate to use the judicial system to end her political career. Gandhi began to realise that the political institutions of democracy – universal franchise, free and fair elections, and political and civil liberties – that had in 1971 facilitated her efforts to gain authority over her rivals were now doing the same for the opposition parties supporting the JP movement. Hence, Gandhi decided to suspend these political institutions by declaring the Emergency.

Political field theory shows that the changes in the Congress party system, elite network, and parliamentary institution – widely believed to be the structural reason for the suspension of Indian democracy in 1975 – resulted from Gandhi’s political practices for reproducing her dominant political field position, defined by her capital of mass popularity, in relation to the position of the elite known for their capital of ties in politics. The uniqueness of Gandhi’s political practices was a result of her populist point of view on politics, a view itself that was structured by the Nehruvian period political field, in which her father Nehru’s capital of mass popularity was the defining feature of Indian politics. Field theory’s epistemological insight here demands that we take into account the points of view of field inhabitants contesting the true meaning of membership of their field for conceptualising social structure. Applying this to Indian politics shows that the relational structure of the Indian political field, existing in institutional form as the differential distribution of political capitals (popularity among the masses and ties among politicians), formed the basis of the Indian political structure at the time and also political actors’ points of view on politics.

My main criticism of the available theories on political structure is that they do not engage with the epistemological question of how to study political structure. As a result, they end up unwittingly taking a particular epistemological position that leads to three limitations in their usage of political structure as an explanans of political phenomena. First, it prompts them to scrutinise only certain features of political structure while ignoring others. Second, it prevents them from accounting adequately for the role of political actors in the reproduction and transformation of political structure. Third, it precludes them from appreciating the historical specificity of particular forms of political structure. I have illustrated these limitations by analysing the epistemological positions implicit in scholarship that relies on the three popular notions of political structure – party system, elite networks, and political institutions – to explain democracy consolidation.

Party system scholars develop their notion of political structure from what I have described as a commonsensical point of view, one that uncritically generalises from a single viewpoint, often the dominant one. As a result, they fail to appreciate the significance of intra-party conflicts and inter-party ties among political leaders in changing the party system. Elite network scholars adopt the particular point of view of that section of political actors who view their networks as the primary form of political structure. As a result, elite network scholars cannot accurately appreciate the significance of populist leaders, who are typically opposed to leaders known for their networking skills, in shaping the political structure. Political institution scholars’ academic point of view does not allow them to realise that political actors follow rules of parliamentary democracy only as long as they are interested in following those rules.

Bourdieu developed his field theory by explicitly engaging with the pressing epistemological question of how to study social structure. Application of the resulting insights to politics shows that any attempt to define political structure without taking into account the points of view of political actors is a futile exercise, because the definition of politics is at the heart of the seminal conflicts taking place in politics. The point of view of the elite emerging triumphant in these struggles defines the political structure. Even though the struggle to define the meaning of politics continues, those in the dominant position in the political field are at an advantage in their capacity to universalise their particular point of view on politics. However, the uncertainties entailed in temporally unfolding everyday political interactions also create opportunities for the dominated political actors to radically transform the field structure.

Application of field theory to the case of the Emergency in India shows that postcolonial Indian politics was organised around the contest between those political actors who believed that their network of ties in politics defined the true meaning of politics and those who believed that their popularity among the masses defined the meaning of politics. It was this conflict, and the resultant dynamics of relational structure in Indian politics, that shaped the relevant political elite’s practices, ultimately leading to the destruction of the Congress party system, the drastic weakening of intra- and inter-party elite networks, and the suspension of parliamentary democracy. Thus, adopting field theory’s epistemological insights in the case of Indian democracy shows that the party system, elite network, and political institutions are epiphenomena of the much deeper relational structure of the political field that is shaped by the historical state of contest among political actors over the meaning of politics.

To conclude, I argue that the significance of Bourdieu’s epistemological insights is not limited to the study of politics. Their adoption by scholars studying any other sphere of the social world will prevent them from mistaking the commonsensical perception – a perception that is based on the misrecognition of the particular viewpoint of a dominant class for the universal viewpoint – for insiders’ perceptions. Furthermore, their adoption will help scholars to avoid the error of interpreting the outlook of dominant actors within a field as the stance of all actors in that field. Moreover, it will act as a salutary check on some academics’ proclivity for assuming that social actors are rational actors driven by explicitly articulated rules.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.