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Pradeep Chhibber (www.polisci.berkeley.edu/Faculty/bio/permanent/Chhibber,P/) studies party systems, party aggregation, and the politics of India. His research examines the relationship between social divisions (class, ethnicity, and gender) and party competition and conditions that lead to the emergence of national or regional parties in a nation-state. Pradeep received an M.A. and an M.Phil. from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. from UCLA. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Party aggregation is the process by which parties link across geographic units to form either national or regional political parties. In The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Britain, Canada, India and the United States (Princeton University Press) co-authored with Ken Kollman we show that whether a country has a more national or regional party system depends on which government - national or provincial - has more power. For instance, we claim the two-party national system in the US emerged only after the New Deal which greatly expanded the role of the federal government.

In the area of party systems most my research has focused on the relationship of social divisions such as class, ethnicity and gender with party systems. The relationship of class and party systems was considered in two papers. The first co-authored with Mariano Torcal showed the influence of elite politics and state policy on the relationship between social cleavages and party systems in Spain. The second investigated the impact of government policy on economic divisions and partisan support of this phenomenon can be found in support for the religious party in Algeria. In Democracy without Associations: Transformation of Party Systems and Social Cleavages in India, (University of Michigan Press, 1999) I argue that the relationship between social cleavages and party systems as posited by Lipset and Rokkan is contingent upon the assumption of a fairly robust associational life. In situations where associations are limited in their reach and scope political parties can and do make some social cleavages more salient than others. I examine the gendered nature of representation in electoral politics in India in "Why Some Women Are Politically Active: The Household, Public Space, and Political Participation in India" a paper that assesses the value of various theories to account for women's representation in India.