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This paper takes up the question: how did India?s economic liberalization affect the state?s decisions about nuclear weapons and disarmament? While it focuses on the India case which I have studied in depth, it critiques the general Liberal account of the political economy of nuclear development. This account posits that internationally-oriented actors resist nuclear ?acceleration? out of fear of adverse international reactions, or because they oppose the concentration of resources in statist and non-productive uses. The paper shows that a comprehensive conception of national security, a state-led economic strategy, the compulsions of the global market itself, and a fractured and inconsistent international sanctions regime alleviated such concerns in India. Unlike Realist accounts which argue that economic factors were irrelevant in explaining India?s decision, this argument takes the entire economic context?particularly elite beliefs?into consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of religious parties poses a challenge to secularists for whom the persistence of religious beliefs and the success of religious parties is a curse for democracy. In this paper, I pose the question: Are religious parties antithetical to democracy as secularists would have us believe or do they play a positive role in democratic politics? I argue that religious parties are characterized by dual tendencies of moderation and extremism. It is not inevitable that they will take the extremist path and undermine democracy. This paper examines the relationship between religious parties and democracy by looking at the Hindu Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in India and the Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. I argue that the BJP and the AKP combine strategic moderation with extremism, which creates tensions for democratic rule. While institutional and electoral constraints prevent these parties from taking a consistent turn toward extremism, until religious parties abandon strategic moderation in favor of ideological moderation, they are likely to continue to pose a danger to secularism and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the constitutional ideology of the social revolution in the context of liberal economic reforms in India. While India?s new economic policies emphasize the benefits of competition and free markets her constitutional preferences remain embedded in legal provisions and traditions that favor social engineering in the name of economic, political and social equality. As liberalization as well as the global marketplace have become firmly established in the rhetoric and practice of elite politics, the political momentum towards economic change falls short of the numerical majorities to amend the Constitution. Consequently, India?s Supreme Court judges are taking centre-stage in the field of economic liberalization, having the power to either stall or accelerate the reform process by means of judicial review. Unrestrained by the political obstacles of democratic politics the court has sketched a dialectical reform of the constitutional political economy exercising judicial restraint as the means and modes of production are freed from state control and exposing judicial activism as the judges advocate the interweaving of the distribution and consumption of wealth with the goals of the social revolution. Based on an analysis of judicial policies as well as constitutional reform debates the paper maintains that the constitutional ideology of the social revolution acts as an important, if not constructive, constraint and guideline as India?s policies are shifting from "empirical gradualist" (Morris-Jones) socialism to empirical gradualist liberalization and globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadly defined, affirmative action encompasses any measure that allocates goods ? such as admission into universities, jobs, promotions, public contracts, business loans, and rights to buy and sell land ? on the basis of membership in a designated group, for the purpose of increasing the proportion of members of that group in the relevant labor force, entrepreneurial class, or university student population, where they are currently underrepresented as a result of past or present discrimination. The programs involved vary substantially across countries, regarding the identification of their intended beneficiaries (ethnic, national, or racial groups held to be economically or socially disadvantaged, aboriginal peoples, women, people with disabilities, war veterans?), the form of the programs involved (quota/non-quota), the level of the legal norms from which they derive (constitutional, legislative, administrative), and their domain of implementation (whether restricted to the public sector or not). Drawing from previous research on the United States (« Judicial Uses of Subterfuge: Affirmative Action Reconsidered », Political Science Quarterly, 18 (3), 2003, p. 411-436) and France (« Affirmative Action at Sciences Po », French Politics, Culture, and Society, 20 (3), 2002, p. 52-64), the paper will compare affirmative action programs in the United States, India, Malaysia and South Africa, considering each of these four parameters and the relations between them. It will focus both on the intended results and on the different side effects of the policies and of the justifications advanced on their behalf. In particular, I shall argue that in India and Malaysia, reducing the inequality in the distribution of social goods between the different groups involved is not conceived as partaking of the more utopian project of reducing the saliency of group boundaries within the nation-state. Giving communities their proportional share of social benefits is not supposed to lead to the blurring of the lines that keep them separate from each other in private, non-allocative spheres. In the United States and in South Africa, on the other hand, the connection between affirmative action policies equalizing patterns of economic distribution among various ascriptive groups and the ideal of societal integration is a much stronger one. This is reflected in the definition of the social outcome whose attainment would justify the eventual termination of affirmative action programs. In India and Malaysia, the proportionality criterion provides an obvious « focal point » in this respect, generally acknowledged as such. In the United States ? and, to a lesser extent, in South Africa ?, proportional representation is emphatically rejected as a distributive principle, even though it arguably operates covertly at the policymaking level, by providing the benchmark against which « discrepancies » and « deficiencies » will be identified and compensated for. Last but not least, the paper will distinguish among affirmative action regimes according to their degree of internal differentiation, attempting to account for the highly specific configuration found in India, where members of the group generally considered as the most disadvantaged ? the Untouchables ? are being granted some kind of preferential treatment also in relation to the policy?s other beneficiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines linguistic and cultural hegemony and resistance during the period of globalization at the beginning of the 20th century. The premise is that such an examination can broaden our conceptualization of contemporary linguistic and cultural globalization: Were the cultural implications of the earlier period of globalization fundamentally different from or nearly the same as those of today?s globalization? The paper first identifies the nature of cultural hegemony in the early 20th century. Ranajit Guha, one of the founders of Subaltern Studies, has argued that British colonial rule in India exemplified cultural domination rather than hegemony. The British never penetrated the Indian cultural zone of autonomy, as Partha Chatterjee has put it. Yet by the nineteen-teens, Mahatma Gandhi was clearly concerned that a preference for the English language was widespread amongst Indian nationalists. Gandhi?s admonition against British linguistic hegemony was, however, constrained by the local language politics of North India. The renown historians, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, have suggested in their seminal studies of imperialism that resistance to colonial rule is patterned according to local culture and environment rather than to imperial practices. Similarly, cultural and linguistic imperialist patterns may well be determined by local politics in the metropole. By comparing resistance to differing linguistic policies and practices in the early 20th century, the paper weighs the importance of the local and global contexts of cultural hegemony and resistance. For purposes of comparison, the focus of the paper will be on the English language in British India and French linguistic hegemony during the same period of rapid economic globalization and liberalization in the early 20th century. The paper concludes with a longitudinal comparison of this early era of globalization with linguistic globalization of today, the latter outlined in my recent book, The Local Politics of Global English: Case Studies in Linguistic Globalization (Lexington, November 2003). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamics of livestock policy reforms in two Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. Livestock policy reforms have been shaped by the intersection of domestic politics and power relations, international actors?especially foreign governments and development organizations, and international trade regimes. The international policy environment and global trade regime has set the context for India?s market-oriented reforms, but it is largely domestic political leaders, institutions, bureaucratic structures, and organized interests that have shaped the form and extent of reform in this sector. Marked differences in the reform trajectory of different livestock sectors in the neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa show how domestic politics can shape the implementation of global reforms. This paper focuses on the politics of reform in the large ruminant (cattle, buffalo) and animal health and breeding subsectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During the transformation of formerly planned economies, the development and regulation of securities finance is an important and poorly understand process. For the governments involved securitization - the creation of securities and the shift of financial assets from banking into securities- has been a complex political challenge. For students of political economy, securities finance can seem a particularly opaque sphere in which the interests, incentives, and important institutions are often unclear. This paper presents a framework for analyzing the political dynamics of securities finance in developing and transitional economies. The distinction between equity and debt on the one hand, and the distinction between issuers of securities and investors in securities on the other hand, together create a useful framework - the asset-class/financial-position matrix - for political analysis of the creation, exchange, and use securities. Based on documentary, quantitative, and interview-based evidence collected during field research between 1997- 2001 the paper deploys this matrix to explore the politics of securitization through case studies of stock exchange development in China and India. I find that the autonomy of central-state-elites within the dominant coalition and the structure of property-rights help explain varying outcomes in the governance of securities finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presumption in the theoretical literature on ethnic mobilization is that voting for ethnic parties is a purely expressive act, not subject to cost-benefit calculations. Models of strategic voting, meanwhile, typically make no reference to the ethnic identity of voters and parties. This paper challenges the presumption that voting for ethnic parties is primarily an expressive act. It develops an argument predicting high levels of strategic voting for ethnic parties in ‘patronage democracies,’ where such parties have historically been most visible. The argument is investigated using multiple sources and types of data on the voting patterns of Scheduled Castes in India: individual level estimates of voting behaviour generated from aggregate election results using EI, the method of ecological inference developed by Gary King; ethnographic data from the election campaigns of the BSP, the ethnic party courting Scheduled Caste voters; and survey data from the Indian National Election Studies between 1996 and 1998. In addition to the literature on ethnic mobilization, the paper identifies three new areas for theoretical and empirical investigation for the literature on strategic voting: First, it suggests that, other things equal, the levels of strategic voting in patronage-democracies may be higher than in other types of democracies. Second, it suggests that the type of strategic voting in patronage-democracies is likely to be distinct. Third, it highlights the importance of ethnic demography and the ethnic profile of political parties, in addition to opinion polls, as an important variable structuring expectations about likely electoral outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores recent U.S. initiatives to conclude arms control agreements as well as confidence-building measures (CBMs) between India and Pakistan and assesses the prospects for progress in these areas. After U.S.-led negotiations in the wake of the 1998 India-Pakistan nuclear tests, India and Pakistan expressed renewed interest in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). In contrast, U.S. efforts to convince India and Pakistan to adopt the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and to disarm have failed. Since January 2001, the Bush administration has continued to promote CBMs and Nuclear Risk Reduction Measures (NRRMs) between the two countries. Since 2002, the administration considered offering missile-defenses to Pakistan and India, which might improve conditions for arms control and reduction. Indian officials have expressed interest in missile defense and noted the links with arms reduction. However, Pakistan and its ally, China, suspect that U.S. and Indian missile defenses are intended to neutralize their deterrents, which could open the door to an accelerated arms race and even preemptive action. A contradiction explored in the paper is that, while the United States tries to negotiate arms control agreements in South Asia, it has moved away from the ABM treaty, the CTBT, and other arms control measures. Another issue is what the United States can achieve as a mediator through arms control and CBMs, such as cooperative aerial monitoring, a more rigorous ‘hot line,’ and a cooperative threat reduction (CTR) program. A related issue that is explored is the connection between arms control and missile defenses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the pattern of economic reform at the sub-national level in India: why some states have moved in the direction of market reforms while others have not (if any) in the face of systemic pressures towards reform coming from the central government and the international environment. Furthermore, I am also interested in the question of the patterns of reform in those cases where apparently similar policy outcomes have occurred. This paper, thus, aims to illuminate the dynamics of policy change in ?federal systems,? through an in-depth analysis of the Indian case. In particular, I will argue that 1) there are a number of factors pushing all states in the same direction (towards ?reform?), namely, political and economic pressures from the centre and the private sector, as well as a widespread resource shortage triggered principally by an earlier period of intensified intra-state competition and 2) variation in ?reform orientation? among the states can be partially traced to the political strategy and degree of influence at the centre of state elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the construction of data sets, and in particular the incentive structures which shape the type and quality of information. The paper is divided into four sections. We begin with a brief outline of some problems with existing data sets and a discussion of why it is important to address these problems. Next we briefly consider non-incentive based reasons for problems with data sets. In the third and fourth sections, we discuss incentive structures which we believe raise serious questions regarding the integrity of data in social science research: the incentive structures among the producers of data ? those who collect and collate the data; and the incentive structures among the consumers ? the users of the data, the academic and the policy making community. We present evidence from a variety of contexts but especially Africa, China, India and Russia and to make this case. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does ?ethnofederalism,? a federal political system in which component territorial governance units are intentionally associated with specific ethnic categories, tend to promote state survival or collapse? Comparative findings have been mixed, with cases like the USSR and Yugoslavia pointing to collapse but others like India and Switzerland suggesting survival. This paper identifies an institutional logic that explains some seemingly contradictory findings of other studies: Ethnofederal states are more likely to collapse when they contain a core ethnic region, a single ethnic federal region that enjoys dramatic superiority in population. Such regions tend: (a) to promote the rise of ?dual power? situations that are frequently found to lie at the heart of state breakdown and revolution; (b) to increase the potential for ethnic security dilemmas; and (c) to facilitate the collective imagining of a core-group nation-state separate from the union state. Conversely, in ethnofederal countries where one group dominates in population but where that group is divided up into a number of separate federal regions rather than united in one core ethnic region, the dominant group faces major obstacles to collective action that inhibit it from creating the most serious dual power situations, that reduce the threats underlying ethnic security dilemmas, and that hinder the efforts of political entrepreneurs to promote the collective imagining of an independent core nation-state. A study of all world ethnofederations since World War II finds that all such regimes that have collapsed have possessed core ethnic regions. Likewise, not a single ethnofederation lacking a core ethnic region has ever collapsed. A discussion of key cases, including Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, the USSR, and Yugoslavia, provides strong evidence that the logical mechanisms specified in this paper were in fact at work in producing the collapse or supporting the survival of these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts at illustrating how the distribution of power within political parties affects the mixture of goods provided by incumbent governments. Using subnational electoral data from India from 1977 till 2004, the authors argue that if power is centralized within the political party of the incumbent government, then public goods will be provided, and if decentralized targeted goods will be provided. The paper seeks to argue that party organization can be a confounding factor that has remained unconsidered in party voter linkage literature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolving counter-terrorism regime obliges and permits countries to make changes in their domestic policies. It also requires them to cooperate with other states, thereby influencing foreign policies. At the same time, policy-makers in state capitals are trying to mold the global regime so that it fits their projects better. For example, India's policies on terrorism are structured by regime norms, yet, simultaneously, the country is seizing an influential position at this formative moment in the evolution of the counter-terrorism regime. By examining this instance of structure-agency interaction, I demonstrate that while structure can constrain actors' choices, actors can also shape structure. Indian policy-makers leverage the normative bases of the regime in order to modify the evolving regime and forward their preferred policies at home. However, India's policies—and eventually—its identity, are slowly but surely being influenced by the regime.The first section of the paper argues for a co-constitutive approach—that is, viewing the international regime and the individual state as mutually determined. In Section Two, tracing the Indian experience with four regime mechanisms (definition, categorization, institutionalization and enforcement), I show that Indian decision-makers are engaged in the task of reinventing the state's very identity within the regime and the larger international context. Section Three shows the other side of the relationship—India's influence on the regime. By reaching for and deploying normative resources, a relatively weak state like India can create strategic space for maneuver. In Section Four, I suggest that becoming a member of the regime is producing shifts within Indian policy which will eventually change the country's identity itself. The paper concludes with implications for regime theory and for counter-terrorism policies in Section Five. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the literature on India has historically held the idea of class politics as of minimal importance, certainly secondary to ethnic politics. Recently, there has been a response wave of literature that has argued that class politics is something that has been overlooked, but is nevertheless evident in India. My paper builds on this latter set of literature and argues that, instead of a more generalized analysis, the best way to study class politics in India is to look at the two states in which it has historically been prevalent: West Bengal and Kerala. Both states have had communist parties that have ostensibly been able to mobilize along class lines and have won numerous elections since independence. Yet, class mobilization appears to be less prevalent in all other Indian states. My paper thus seeks to analyze this following question: why have communist parties been able to mobilize along class lines in West Bengal and Kerala and not in other Indian states? Though a wide range of authors have studied either West Bengal or Kerala independently, there have been very few studies that bundle both cases together - despite their similarities. Moreover, most existent explanations may be able to explain why West Bengal and Kerala have seen class mobilization, but they rarely try to explain its absence in other Indian states. Though my research is still in its preliminary stages, I have a three-part explanation for the rise of communism and class-based mobilization in West Bengal and Kerala that attempts to both bundle these two cases together and explain why they are unique as compared to the rest of India. First, I argue that the Congress Party - India's most dominant political party, which won seven of the first eight parliamentary elections after independence - was exceptionally weak in West Bengal and Kerala, which opened up the political opportunity structure in those two states for other political parties. The communists struck quickly in both states and established themselves as a key early player. Second, it argues that the communist party in both of these states was an exceptionally well-run organization that mimicked the ability of the Congress Party to build coalitions and unite voters along class lines. Third, it argues that the long-run success of these parties is due to their developmental policies that expanded social welfare programs and created self-sustaining constituencies and an environment that allowed for their continued electoral success. In the remainder of the paper, I attempt to contrast the development of communism in West Bengal and Kerala with several failed attempts to develop communism in other Indian states. Furthermore, my paper also peripherally relates to the literature on ethnic conflict, which in regards to India has long held the belief that ethnicity trumps class. Through studying the states of West Bengal and Kerala, I will show two cases in which the reverse is true, thus reaffirming the need to reassess the role of class politics in India. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper examines the relative impacts of economic growth and goodgovernance on human development (HD) performance in the sub-national statesof India from the 1980s to the early 2000s to test whether the strong and positiveimpact good governance has had on HD in the Indian state of Kerala is anomalousor typical. The paper begins with a bounded and theoretically developedconceptualization of good governance to cover the three core dimensions ofleadership priorities, state capacity, and policy implementation. Measures of thesethree core dimensions taken from recent field study in India are then compiled intoa good governance index suited to the specific context of federal India's subnationalstates over the last three decades. Employing cross-sectional regressionanalysis and incorporating checks for robustness, we find that in almost everycase good governance explains more of human development outcomes (ineducation, health, and longevity) than does economic growth, per capitainvestment, or per capita incomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative study of Fujimori of Peru and Chandrababu Naidu of India, and their redistributive programs. The paper traces similarities between the two leaders policy strategies, and narrates the experience of the implementation of their respective development programs - FONCODES and Velugu. The paper argues that 'neo populists' like Fujimori and Chandrababu Naidu are capable of reaching the poor, but run the risk of making the poor worse off. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing literature on social movements and political mobilization has failed to give sufficient attention to the effects of patterns of political leadership on the trajectory of ethnic movements. This paper tries to answer questions like the following: Why and how does political leadership affect the process of ethnic mobilization and demobilization? What is the effect of the political competition between ethnic elites and state elites on separatist insurgencies? How does political competition between ethnic elites affect mobilization? Lastly, do the actions of competing state elites affect the trajectory of ethnic movements and how? I use a "most-similar-systems" design to compare and contrast two cases of ethnic insurgency in India- the Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab and the Kashmiri Muslim insurgency in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. These two insurgencies have had divergent outcomes- the Sikh insurgency has been "resolved" while the Kashmiri Muslim insurgency continues even today. The larger goal of this paper is to formulate an incipient theory or initial model of the effects of political leadership on the trajectory of separatist insurgencies. Thus, this paper has substantive, theoretical, and public-policy implications. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current social science holds that identities are socially constructed. Yet the insights of constructivism still have to be operationalized. Most political science studies have taken identities (whether ethnic, national, gendered, or otherwise) as independent variables, and used them to explain political outcomes. This paper reverses the causal arrow and contends that constructivism tells us that identities themselves require explanation. Accordingly, it takes identities and identity construction as dependent variables, and tries to explain how a given set of identities was constructed in one particular spatial and temporal context. Specifically, the paper examines how religious, gender, and national identities were discursively constructed in early postcolonial India, by examining legislative debates over the reform and codification of Hindu family law in the 1950s. Two key conclusions emerged from the analysis. First, the discursive construction of these different forms of identity was highly interconnected: the construction of religion and nationalism could not be understood without gender; nor could the impact of nationalism on religion and gender be captured by studying any of them in isolation. Both Hindu socio-religious tradition and secular Indian nationalism were gendered constructs: gender was constitutive of religious and national identity in this time period. Second, political factors were central to how these discursive identities were constructed, at least at three levels: the democratic political system; the state; and individual leadership. Accordingly, I suggest that identities are not just socially but politically constructed; and as such, unraveling and explaining these processes is a critical task for political science. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the rise of fiscal decentralization, it is worth examining the developmental experiences of two localities in China and India?Wenzhou and Kerala, respectively?which are considered developmental successes, albeit for different reasons. Wenzhou is best known within China as a locality that developed a vibrant private sector in the early reform era, i.e., before private enterprise was formally sanctioned by Beijing. Meanwhile, Kerala is known internationally as a locality that has a relatively low per capita GDP, but performs impressively well on human development indicators. In short, the Wenzhou model represents a successful case of indigenously generated petty capitalism, while the Kerala model represents a developmental success story in terms of literacy levels, quality of health care, and grassroots participation. Given the remarkable achievements of these localities, observers have suggested that their experiences represent ?models? that are worthy of emulation/replication. This paper critically analyzes the assumptions underlying popular conceptions of these models and makes three arguments. First, although both models sound inspiring, their success is contingent upon a particular mix of conditions that is unlikely to be found in other contexts?even within the same country. Second, over time neither ?model? has proven to be fiscally and/or financially sustainable. Third, local developmental strategies that yield productive results initially may ultimately undermine themselves over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can actors learn to consolidate democracy? In this paper, we begin to address this question by comparing how actors in different contexts bargained during crises so that we may see whether or not they learned to resolve crises and reinforce democracy. We investigate actors? behavior in five types of countries: stable democracies (Italy and India), transitions to democracy (Mali and Portugal), unstable countries (Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Philippines), transitions to autocracy (Indonesia and Myanmar), and stable autocracies (Ivory Coast and Zaire). Within these twelve countries, we identify forty-two political crises that occurred between 1950 and 1999. We construct a bargaining model designed to capture actors? behavior during crises that occurred in a single case ? Italy. We then apply this model to thirty-nine crises in our remaining eleven countries. We find that these crises were more likely to be resolved when actors learned to increase their offers, even slightly. Furthermore, we find that learning helps to strengthen democracy. In the future, we will extend this work in two ways. First, we will study more directly the effect of actors? behavior during crises on democratic consolidation. Second, we will examine whether actors learn not only within a single crisis but also across series of crises; that is, whether actors? behavior in previous crises influences them to resolve subsequent ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overcoming territorial inequalities in development is at the core of disputes over delinking at the international level and secession at the national level. Some contend that severing economic and/or political ties will foster development, while others argue that it will not. In this paper, we examine two successful, and two yet-to-be successful, efforts to create new states in India in order to address two questions: Is an important motive of secessionist movements seeking to opt out of an existing political entity the expectation that success will reduce inequalities? Does the success of a secessionist movement in fact lead to a reduction of such inequalities? We conclude from the Uttaranchal, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Vidarbha cases that relative underdevelopment is a core justification for new state demands, but it is not overcome as a result of secession. Rather, a myriad of other factors determine whether development occurs or not in a new state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assess the underlying structural factors that explain the "quality of democracy" in India and Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper shall compare the experience of a non government organization, government department and a private agency implementing microcredit programs in three respective states in south India. It is based on field research in three villages from each state, located where their borders converge. The villages share a similar socioeconomic background, making it easier to isolate extraneous influences over the beneficiaries. It will identify who is targeted to create microcredit groups, how benefits of group membership are distributed, and then examine why differences have emerged. It will conclude by identifying characteristics of institutions that matter to alleviate poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1996, the World Bank has been evolving a new ?focus states? strategy that concentrates aid in Indian states that it regards as committed to fiscal and governance reforms. This paper explains why India?s central government has permitted the Bank to extend its policy reach to the states, and evaluates early evidence of the strategy?s fiscal and political effects. It argues that despite India?s historic protectiveness of economic sovereignty, central coalition governments now view external conditionality as a useful instrument for encouraging state-level reforms without incurring high political costs. The findings support Robert Putnam?s ?two-level games? thesis that national authorities sometimes use international commitments in attempt to achieve policy outcomes that would be politically infeasible in the domestic arena alone?but they also show that such a strategy is not a panacea for solving internal policy coordination problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly five years after coming out of the nuclear closet and openly declaring itself as a nuclear weapon state, India finalized its nuclear command structure and formalized its nuclear doctrine in January 2003. The broad framework of India?s nuclear doctrine was drafted by the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) that was established by the government of India after the nuclear tests of May 1998. This draft nuclear doctrine of the NSAB had been in the public domain since August 1999. However, till January 2003, India?s nuclear weapons doctrine remained just that, a draft. This ambivalence was removed by an official announcement from the Indian government in January 2003 that not only adopted the essence of that draft as official policy but also announced a formal nuclear command structure under civilian control. This is a significant development as India is probably the only nation that has come up with a nuclear doctrine after an extensive debate and discussion within the country and abroad. Despite this, however, the Indian doctrine, like any doctrine, is not free of problems and tensions. This paper argues that while a clear enunciation of its nuclear doctrine and command structure will definitely go a long way in enhancing regional stability and assuring the international community, it is at the operational level that India continues to and will have to work harder to achieve the goals that it has set out for its nuclear policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been acknowledged that the British Empire played a role in fostering global inequalities. However, the extent to which the Empire was characterised by deeply contrasting administrative arrangements and developmental goals between the domestic state and the non-white colonies has not been fully explored. In this paper, I analyse institutional structures and budgetary data pertaining to the UK, India and three African colonies (Nigeria, Kenya and Tanganyika) between 1890 and 1960. The results of the analysis highlight a few major trends. First, while UK domestic politics became more inclusive over the seventy years, with new groups being granted full citizenship rights, in Britain?s non-white colonies political participation rights remained restrictive until very late in the period. This was especially the case in British Africa, where the basis of Crown rule was autocracy rather than representative government and where Africans were excluded from substantive participation in central government bodies until the 1950s. Africans were not adequately prepared for self-government and independence, which affected their country?s global position post-independence. Second, whereas in the UK government spending on welfare expanded substantially between 1890 and 1960, in Britain?s Indian and African colonies public outlays on social development were both non-growing and scant relative to other programmes of the state. Until after the Second World War, Indian and African public expenditures were concentrated in the agencies of control ? that is, military, law and order, general administration, and transportation infrastructure. The British contention of having developed the colonies beyond the military and commercial requirements demanded of any imperial power appears unsupported by the budget analysis. Because the British Empire pursued schizophrenic goals ? one set for the domestic arena and another for the non-white colonies ? it fostered inequalities between the two sectors during the colonial era. The legacy of those policies has extended beyond the Empire itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is the responsiveness to citizens’ demands by governments on the state level affected by different kinds of political participation? Is it affected by everyday social interaction in villages and towns? And does political participation and social interaction have different impacts have different impacts depending on historically evolved political structures? The paper builds on a unique data set of personal interviews with 3,200 respondents in five different states in India, covering 31 different rural and urban localities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we suggest new measures that gauge how district level party systems can be aggregated to the national level within a country. These can be used as measures of party linkage across districts. The degree of party linkage, which is the extent to which parties are uniformly successful in wining votes across districts, is an important but neglected issue to understand the nature of national level party system formation. We build on the party system inflation index introduced by Cox (1999), which measures the inflation from the district level to the national level party system size that occurs in the process of party system aggregation. We show that the Cox measure has undesirable properties and offer alternative measures. We first examine the concept of party linkage, followed by the discussion of Cox’s inflation index and its limitations. We then introduce our suggested inflation measures, and compare them with the Cox index by numerical simulation. We then apply our measures to the cases of Germany, India, Italy and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the debate over reservations for women in the Indian Parliament in terms of its potentially unsettling effects on the postcolonial sexual contract. To access this debate, I examine the minutes from the debates in the Lok Sabha, newspaper accounts of that debate and interviews with supporters and opponents of the bill. My reading of these documents will highlight the hopes and anxieties both sides of the debate project upon the bill, in particular regarding women’s ability to serve as effective legislators, the effects that women’s political involvement might have on the domestic sphere, and the potential of the legislation to have a ripple effect on other underrepresented groups. Exposed in these three aspects of the debates, I argue, are the fraternalist power relations underpinning women’s marginalization in politics, their subordination in the private sphere, and the fragmentation of the polity. I suggest that the potential of the bill to bring to crisis the postcolonial sexual contract--and destabilize the fraternalist resolution of the democratic authority problematic--is reflected in the unprecedented uproar surrounding attempts to introduce the bill in Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two key attempts at colonial reform by (arguably) liberal political thinkers: Edmund Burke’s leadership in the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings for corruption and despotism (1788-94), and John Stuart Mill’s involvement in the effort to prosecute Governor Eyre of Jamaica for leading the bloody suppression of the Morant Bay rebellion (1865-68). It argues that Burke used the Hastings trial as a vehicle for a broad critique of what he saw as a form of rule in which corruption and abuse of power were systemic and possibly ineradicable. Burke regarded British actions in India as indicative of broader moral and political failings in British society: moral insularity, indifference to distant and unfamiliar victims of British power, and unquestioning and presumptuous self-confidence. Mill, in contrast, by avoiding all references to the racial and colonial context of the abuses, chose throughout the Eyre trial largely to avoid confronting the question of whether colonial rule was inherently prone to abuse . Indeed, he pursued Eyre with such vehemence precisely to exonerate the system by pinning blame on what he insisted were the criminal actions of a few individuals. For all his ambition to use British colonial rule as a means of improving backward societies, Mill was largely blind to the moral burdens such an aspiration placed on those who presumed to use despotic means for the good of others. Although he was an acute critic of much about domestic politics in Britain, his critical imagination regarding colonial policies was limited. The differences between these two episodes reveal a good deal about the respective reformist ambitions of these two thinkers and something about the evolution of liberalism itself as a tradition of social criticism and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, middle-class associations have contested local elections in at least five major cities in India. This represents a significant departure in Indian politics where the middle class had increasingly withdrawn from electoral politics and instead influenced public policy through activism in associational life. This development also represents a blurring of boundaries between our current understanding of civil society, traditionally characterized by its "apolitical" nature, and political society that has largely remained the domain of the poor. Based on five months of fieldwork in Delhi and drawing on evidence from other metropolitan cities, this paper attempts to understand the factors that have led to the rise of middle class neighborhood associations and their subsequent advent into formal politics. This understanding could be a first step in conceptualizing the nature of the middle class political movement in India. The unique institutional environment of the capital and a government program that institutionalized citizen participation through these very associations makes Delhi a particularly interesting case. I find that neighborhood associations with pre-existing networks within government agencies were more likely to remain apolitical, while the ones without these networks sought to become part of the government machinery through electoral channels. Further, decentralization policies instituted by the federal and the State Government have been instrumental in this change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an established body of scholarship on the long-term developmental effects of agrarian institutions. The causal mechanisms of the over-time transmission of these effects have remained contested. One line of theorizing has highlighted "institutional persistence," suggesting that cross-national developmental and democratic variations could be explained by the carry-over of political and economic institutions and social structures of domination that they helped produce, from the past into the present. Other scholars have highlighted human capital as an alternative channel of reproduction of developmental and democracy variations. Our paper engages these debates by conducting comparative analysis of agrarian legacy effects on sub-national development and democracy in Russia and India. We find that although in both countries, agrarian institutions shaped human capital during the colonial and imperial periods, the mechanisms of transmission of past agrarian institutional effects over time are likely to be mostly through human capital, rather than institutional, reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with an examination of how social movement success may be operationalized in a comparative context and then considers the impact of transnational networks on two social movements' success levels. Activists in the Indian women's movement have access to a powerful network of global feminists but too often find themselves frustrated with the relationships. A conservative religious movement in India finds itself with access to a small but wealthy diaspora network which is supportive without smothering national level initiatives. These two movements and their transnational networks demonstrate the complex ways in which the supranational environment affects social movement success and failure. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an organizational theory to explain the success of social movements. Coherent organizational structures within the movement, integrated organizing strategies to recruit new members, and autonomy from transnational networks lead to successful social movements. The theory develops through an extended comparison of a religious nationalist and a feminist movement in India. This model explains variation in success over time as it draws attention to organizational aspects of social movements. The major finding is that the success of a social movement depends on mundane community activism rather than networks of transnational activists or framing of ideas. Social movements that have clear channels of communication and cooperation among the various organizations that constitute the movement are more likely to be successful at developing a public agenda. Movements that invest time and money in local communities are better able to recruit new supporters. Their cooperative organizational structure enables them to match new recruits with appropriate organizations and activities so as to sustain commitment through engagement. Transnational networks are most important as sources of financial aid for Southern social movements. Fundraising based on individual contributions allows organizations to remain flexible and responsive to local communities. Fundraising through institutional donors runs the risk of agenda capture by transnational networks and fragmentation within the movement as a result of competition for funds.The data are drawn from fieldwork in South Asia and the United States of America. Interviews, primary documents of social movement organizations, and participant observation techniques are used. This study provides a framework to study social movements in comparative, historical perspective and addresses the more general question of successful social transformation. The study also provides practical implications for the management of civic associations that are part of a social movement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the policymaking process leading to the creation of India's 2005 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).We emphasize two key aspects of this process. The first characteristic of the creation of NREGA is that it was iterative. Civil society activists pushed the legislation from two angles, through their contacts with partisans and through legal action at the Supreme Court. Each of these institutions, for different reasons and of their own accord, magnified the demands of civil society actors and pushed them forward. This in turn provoked further civil society mobilization and further policy shifts. It is this back and forth that we refer to as iterative. The second characteristic we draw attention to is partisan entrepreneurship. One of the key reasons why NREGA appeared on the political agenda at this time was because the Congress Party leadership was searching for an issue with which to stabilize and expand its deteriorating base. In addition to choosing this policy in the interests of party-building, the Congress also actively pursued the creation of an electoral "mandate" after their surprise victory in the 2004 election. This mandate was not received but was instead engineered by partisans to help push through their legislative agenda. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how domestic politics influenced the July 2005 agreement between India and the United States for civilian nuclear technology transfers to India. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What political factors influence the allocation of economic patronage in democracies? Answering this question is vital to improving our knowledge of how states and markets interact. In this paper, I argue that changing levels of party centralization can drive important changes in the allocation of state largess. When governing parties are centralized, national party leaders will control sources of patronage, targeting benefits to particularly influential regions and industries. By contrast, when governing parties are decentralized, influential sub-national party leaders will advocate for their constituents, allocating patronage evenly through a national logroll. I find evidence for these relationships by comparing India's distribution process for industrial licenses and government finance under a decentralized Congress Party (1954-61) to its distribution process under a centralized Congress Party (1969-75). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India finalized its nuclear command structure and formalized its nuclear doctrine in January 2003, nearly five years after coming out of the nuclear closet and openly declaring itself as a nuclear weapon state,. While a clearly enunciated nuclear doctrine and command structure are seen by some as essential in enhancing regional stability and assuaging the concerns of the international community, its implications for the civil-military relations in India remain far from clear. Strategic imperatives and political pressures concerning civil-military relations seem to be pulling Indian nuclear policy in opposite directions. This paper examines Indian nuclear doctrine and command structure with an attempt to decipher its implications for the future of civil-military relations in India with respect to the management of its nuclear arsenal. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the literature on ethnic riots, few existing analyses have considered the broader economic conditions under which they take place. In this paper, we examine how economic growth affects the outbreak of Hindu-Muslim riots in India. We find that a decrease in the growth rate from the median in our sample (2.33%) to one standard deviation below it (-4.93%) results in a 46.9% increase in the expected number of riots. This result is robust to the inclusion of a number of control variables that have been identified in previous research as being important factors influencing the occurrence of ethnic violence. We also address possible endogeneity problems by employing instrumental variable estimation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing a positive relationship between the spiritual and the political, between the pursuit of moksha and that of artha, has been one of Gandhi’s major contributions to political philosophy. He was helped in this by the theory of the purusharthas. The four purusharthas, in his view, were best understood as interacting with one another rather than counteracting each other. Interpreters in the past had little difficulty in defending the need for the ethical (dharma) to interact positively with the spiritual (moksha). However, they were not willing to concede a similar role to the political (artha). Going beyond them, Gandhi sought to establish a positive relationship not only between the ethical and the spiritual, but also between the political and the spiritual. In what follows I shall first give a brief account of what he meant by the spiritual. This will be followed by an analysis of his concept of the political. Next I shall examine the three means that he believed were needed for the maintenance of the right relationship between the political and the spiritual, viz., prayer, virtue and training. I shall conclude by comparing his conception of the relationship between the spiritual and the political with that of contemporary South Asian Islamic fundamentalism. The point of the comparison is to highlight the fact that not all theories that promote a close relationship between the political and the spiritual, ipso facto, promote peace and amity in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxation depends on governments establishing a basis for collective action to pursue common goals. In part, this depends on a social contract among citizens and between citizens and the state. In federal systems, negotiating social contracts around tax is more complicated, as multiple and overlapping jurisdictions must overcome competition and achieve cooperation and consensus. The current project examines the operation of federalism and taxation in India and Brazil. For a long period in India, cooperative federalism was possible through a powerful central government armed with centralised decision-making institutions and single-party dominance. Over time, these mechanisms for imposing cooperation began to fade, and a more competitive federalism emerged in which state interests and coalitions diverged and the central government lost its ability to impose cooperation. In Brazil, federalism has swung between cooperation and competition, and at different moments party systems and decision-making institutions have operated to facilitate or complicate cooperation around tax. Interestingly, both countries faced fiscal challenges in the 1990s, when expanding tax capacity was necessary. In Brazil, institutions that aided cooperation allowed expanded tax capacity, but the lack of consensus within the party system meant that state interests could not set aside competition. In India, neither decision-making institutions nor the party system were propitious for cooperation around tax, and adjustment has been avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the controversy over reforming Islamic law in India in the 1980s. The issue could have been defined in multiple ways: as an issue of religious freedom; minority rights and multiculturalism; nationalism; or women?s rights. Different groups defined the issue according to their political interests, and the power to shape legal reform lay to a significant extent in the ability to define the issue and thus, the terms of the debate. In the 1980s, both opponents and supporters defined the reform of Islamic law primarily in terms of religious identity and minority rights, rather than in terms of gender rights, and this definition was legitimized by the government. Because the reforms were not defined primarily as an issue of gender rights, the legislation passed by the government as the outcome of the controversy has been of dubious benefit to Indian Muslim women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the controversy over reforming Islamic law in India in the 1980s. The issue could have been defined in multiple ways: as an issue of religious freedom; minority rights and multiculturalism; nationalism; or women?s rights. Different groups defined the issue according to their political interests, and the power to shape legal reform lay to a significant extent in the ability to define the issue and thus, the terms of the debate. In the 1980s, both opponents and supporters defined the reform of Islamic law primarily in terms of religious identity and minority rights, rather than in terms of gender rights, and this definition was legitimized by the government. Because the reforms were not defined primarily as an issue of gender rights, the legislation passed by the government as the outcome of the controversy has been of dubious benefit to Indian Muslim women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India belongs to a minority of post-colonial states that have made a successful transition from colonial rule to a stable democracy. In spite of the shadow of Kashmir on her democratic achievements, India ranks among countries where citizens choose the wielders of power in free and fair elections. But the path that India has taken to reach this coveted status is radically different from her western counterparts. Western democracies are the products of popular movements from below, resulting from industrial revolution, leading to the slow but inexorable rise of working men and subsequently women into political visibility, their violent struggle for participation, and finally, the achievement of universal adult franchise. In contrast, there was no full scale industrialisation in India before Independence. Large scale changes in society and the economy lay in the Indian case not behind but ahead, as a beacon and a worthy goal for the nascent post-colonial state. Hence the puzzle - how could a democracy from ‘above’, based on alien values of individualism, and institutions of foreign origin such as political parties and the rule of law, strike root on Indian soil, strengthening the foundations of the form of parliamentary democracy adopted at independence? Or, even more pointedly, how could the simple majority first-past-the-post electoral system based on single member constituencies, survive intact in spite of the apprehensions that this particular form of vote counting creates among minorities? A detailed answer to these complex questions is beyond the remit of this chapter. Instead, it concentrates on the catalytic role of the electoral system in the transition from colonial rule to popular democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to apply quantitative tools in Political Science, it is necessary to characterize phenomena numerically. The process of converting phenomena to numbers has produced two kinds of problems: First, the numerical data sets that are developed may be inaccurate, i.e., they may involve miscounting and/or the assignment of magnitudes that do not represent accurately the reality they purport to represent. Second, the simplification required in order to characterize a concept numerically often guts it of the meanings those who use it impute. Clearly, the second problem may contribute to the first, though it may be studied independently. We will examine the cases of quantitative indices for "domestic protest" and "democracy" in India, specifically, the Arthur S. Banks’ Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive figures for "riots," "strikes," and "demonstrations" and the Freedom House and Polity IV figures for "democracy." We will focus more on the former than on the latter because its referents are objective, rather than subjective, thereby facilitating an empirical evaluation of what may have been excluded in the numeration of events. Our justifications for the selection of these indices are that they are widely used in Political Science and that they deal with matters of particular importance in India. The size and complexity of India is likely to make more obvious problems associated with numerating these concepts than would a smaller or more homogeneous country. Although we address briefly the problem of the accuracy of the numbers, our primary focus is the problem of distorted meanings. We ask the general question: "What is left out when events within a state are characterized numerically?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Raj novels raise and answer a question that has attracted scholarly attention in fields as diverse as postcolonial theory and international relations. Can someone from one culture, a distinct historical community, come to understand and embrace authentically the people and place of another culture, or must members of one culture always appropriate the Other in a mode determined by the community they come from? The novels explore the question through competing theories of history, including Heideggerean existentialism and a historicism of moral progress. In doing so, the novels enlarge the political critique of existentialism, while simultaneously demonstrating the inadequacies of modern liberal thought to meet the intellectual challenge posed by this twentieth-century pinnacle of anti-liberal philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralizing authority to democratically elected local government can be counterproductive if elites capture power at the local level. What safeguards can help facilitate more equitable and participatory decentralization? This question is examined with the help of an original database, compiled for 53 panchayats (village councils) in two states of northern India, including individual interviews with over 2,000 local residents. Wealth and social status matter relatively little, it is found, for who participates and who has influence within panchayats; education and information count for much more. Education and information empower traditionally excluded groups to participate more often and more effectively in the processes and benefits of local government. Policies that enable people to educate themselves, particularly about their rights and about the processes of local governments, should precede or at least accompany decentralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governance concerns the performance of public organs. It is, on the one hand, a matter of procedures; of upholding certain modes of operation that accord with generally accepted codes of sound administrative behaviour (such as the principles of transparency, accountability and the rule of law). On the other hand, and more fundamentally, governance concerns the state’s capacity to deliver. Public organs shall not only behave in accordance with ‘the book’; they shall also get things done. The bottom-line, in other words, is effectiveness: the ability of state authorities to actually provide society with certain goods and services. It is generally assumed, however, that these two aspects of governance are in concert. Sound administrative practices (if properly applied) are believed to increase state efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian state at fifty presents a picture of considerable strength fringed with traces of fragility. Its strength and durability are evident in its ability to maintain a reasonable degree of internal security and external defence. Regular, free and fair elections have endowed the authority of the state with a high degree of legitimacy. Nevertheless, the authority of the state is far from secure. Put to the acid test of religious fanaticism, this authority has often collapsed. Democracy itself collapsed in the authoritarian interlude of the Emergency rule of 1975-77. The Congress party, long an effective institution based on consensus and accommodation, drawing its strength from its ability to intervene between conflicting primordial identities, has left the centre stage of the state, bowing down to a motley collection of over a dozen different political parties. At the centre of this ruling coalition is the Bharatiya Janata Party whose advocacy of bharatiya samskriti as the core of India’s politics is seen by many students of India as the portent of what is wrong with India’s politics today. The direct entry of social ritual into the political arena, without its necessarily long apprentice to modernity, is seen as an assault on the secular structure of the state. On the other hand, the fact that culture and ritual, in their multiple local and regional ways have steadily voted their way into the public space, is an indication of the vibrancy of the political process that has steadily expanded the scope and depth of modern institutions. Often at odds with human rights activists, advocates of free trade and cross-border terrorism with the tacit support of the plebiscite lobby, the Indian state has shown itself capable of endurace and new initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]