Election Commission of India: Institutionalising Democratic Uncertainties

Responding to a pressing need for a focussed study of India's public institutions, Singh and Roy put together the first comprehensive monograph-length study of the Election Commission (EC) of India. They probe the consistent credibility that the EC enjoys as a non-partisan constitutional body entrusted with the responsibility of conducting elections in India. The EC is generally seen as a regulatory body which enforces rules to conduct elections effectively and efficiently. The authors argue that the EC must be seen as performing a range of functions, not all of which are regulatory. The EC is actively engaged in framing and implementing rules to ascertain procedural certainty in order to ensure the democratic principle of uncertainty of electoral outcome. Innovations in conducting elections which are often seen through the lens of electoral 'management' and 'electoral integrity' have become part of the deliberative content of elections. The work also examines the relationship between the legal-institutional frameworks of electoral governance within the larger institutional matrix of democracy, and the political field in which they are located. The latter, the authors argue, both limit and enable the effectiveness of the EC in the shared space of democracy in India.