International Journal of Social Science Research (IJSSR)

Party Society and Hegemony in West Bengal: An Analysis

This article examines “party society” in contemporary West Bengal to explain how party-mediated governance becomes durable and normatively legitimate within a democratic setting. While existing scholarship highlights distributive politics, organizational embeddedness, and mediated access to the state, it insufficiently theorizes the processes through which such arrangements are stabilized as legitimate. Addressing this gap, the study reconceptualizes party society as a Gramscian hegemonic formation. The study adopts a qualitative and interpretive research design based on the analytical synthesis of secondary sources, including ethnographic studies, political economy analyses, and policy materials. It employs conceptual mapping to analyse the interconnections between welfare mediation, ideological production, and the transformation of civil society. The findings identify three interrelated mechanisms. First, consent is produced through the mediated delivery of welfare, where access to state resources is structured through localized party networks, transforming formal entitlements into relational benefits and generating political loyalty. Second, ideological mediation operates through what may be termed populist hegemony, wherein development-oriented and affective narratives are articulated in ways that embed political authority within everyday “common sense,” thereby normalizing and legitimizing party rule. Third, civil society is reconfigured into decentralized political networks, blurring the boundary between state and society. The study concludes that party society constitutes a durable form of democratic hegemony, sustained through institutionalized mediation, ideological normalization, and forms of populist hegemony, with significant implications for understanding governance in postcolonial contexts. Keywords: Party Society, Informal Political Mediation, Civil Society, Hegemony, Populist Hegemony, Postcolonial Governance, West Bengal