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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
Need for achievement and strategic predispositions among political party elites are hypothesized to have an important impact on the success parties enjoy in elections and in coalitions. More specifically, this study develops and tests a model which suggests that parties whose leaders have high need for achievement and are predisposed to pursue a mixed competitive/cooperative strategy are more likely to do well in elections and in coalitions than are parties whose leaders are low in need for achievement and oriented to either cooperative or competitive strategies.
When the Indian political party system between 1967 and 1971 is used as the data base, the success or failure of political parties is correctly predicted by need for achievement for thirteen out of fourteen variables. By means of multiple regression analysis, as much as seventy-two per cent of the variance in the electoral success of Indian parties is explained by the model.
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17 Further discussion of the criteria for selecting subjects, all of whom were interviewed between October, 1969 and June, 1970, may be found in Bueno de Mesquita.
18 The 31 potential subjects who were not interviewed were missed generally because of logistic or scheduling difficulties. Many of them were defeated in the 1969 midterm election and so returned to their homes which were often situated in remote villages or inaccessible regions of the country. One potential respondent was in jail, and three were engaged in prolonged hunger strikes at the time it would have been feasible for me to interview them. Among the 88 who were interviewed, 83 were interviewed in English, I interviewed 1 in Hindi, 3 others were interviewed in Hindi, with the aid of an interpreter, and 1 was interviewed with an interpreter in Malayalam. Other details concerning the interviews may be found in Bueno de Mesquita, Appendix II.
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21 Bueno de Mesquita, chap. 6.
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