Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India
Online published on 5 April, 2012.
The paper is a theoretical exploration to the field of factional politics. It is a discussion on definitional issues of factionalism along with practical references to the scenario throughout the world. References have been made to factional politics in India, especially that in Assam in order to discover new paradigm in that area. Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) a regional political party in Assam has been taken as a case study. The study is based on secondary data sources and historical approach is applied to analyze the facts of factional politics in Assam. In a nutshell, factional politics differs according to geographical, demographic and historical conditions. Factionalism in developing nations is more intense than that of in the developed ones. The societies with diverse ethnic groups like that in Assam, nurture more contentious politics which results in loose political organization building is a fertile ground for factional politics.
Factionalism, political mobilization and articulation, ethnicity and identity politics, leadership crisis
