"In this book, Jonathan Mendilow examines the party and party system transformations through the lens of the electoral campaigns that defined and reflected them. He shows that the relative stability of the dominant party system bequeathed from the pre-independence era was shattered in the 1960s, and replaced by cluster parties that vied for power in the ideological center, only to decline and be replaced in turn in the 1980s and early 1990s by ideological party blocs locked in centrifugal competition. With the separate direct election of the prime minister since the mid-1990s, there has been yet a third profound realignment in party structures, ideologies, and modes of campaigning, according to Mendilow."--BOOK JACKET.