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Despite their seemingly different political paths, India and Pakistan have both experienced a shift from the national to the local dimension of politics. The reasons behind this shift are assumed to be of a quite different nature. In the case of India, this evolution is widely connected to the crisis that has affected the Congress since the late 1980s, and, secondly, to the political strategy followed by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s and the early 1980s of disconnecting the traditional links of the party to the regional notables. Both elements contributed to make the Congress increasingly dependent on regional caste/kinship-based political organizations. The similar evolution observed in Pakistan has been explained, in part, with reference to the structural weakness of the mainstream political parties - in particular the Pakistan People Party and the Pakistan Muslim League – and their dependence on kinship and religious structures and hierarchies, and, in part, with the impact of military regimes. The latter would have constantly aimed to depoliticizing society by putting formal and informal obstacles to the activities of the political parties, and reinforced the biradari (extended family/caste) loyalties at the provincial and district level. There is however a relevant difference between the two cases, in so far the role played by castes in India has been since long identified as a factor that favors democratization. A recent analysis has even emphasized a “vernacularization” of democracy (Michelutti 2007). On the contrary, in the Pakistani case, “caste” groups have been identified as an obstacle towards the consolidation of democracy. While in both cases the evolution of the political system seems to emphasize the relevance of political culture for the process of democratization, the result seems to be radically different. The paper will aim to discuss this paradox, through an analysis of the role played by descent groups in the electoral process and the political bargaining in an area of South Western Punjab in Pakistan.

“Europa” è un concetto geograficamente e culturalmente controverso, di origine greca, anche se altri genitori vanno riconosciuti alla balzana idea che essa sia sorta e si sia sviluppata senza apporti esterni. Uno di questi padri è sicuramente L’amour et l’Occidentdi Denis de Rougemont, il cui approccio “protestante” ai problemi posti dal subito apparire della poesia trobadorica è altrettanto fantasioso e insostenibile di quello “cattolico”. Invero, la passione trobadorica è una sorta di febbre gnostica reperibile in un’area più vasta dell’Europa “Cis-Dardanellica”. Ponendo a confronto i lavori dei Trovatori e di Dante, per esempio, troviamo somiglianze forse non sorprendenti – benché malnote – ma quando scorgiamo analoghe similarità tra Dante e il poeta persiano Hâfez, allora trasaliamo, anche perché l’affinità non si limita ai concetti generali, ma si estende alle immagini retoriche e all’espressione verbale. Qualche prova viene esposta circa questi (e altri) contatti letterari tra “Europa” e “Asia”. Il senso di estraneità che pretendiamo spesso di provare di fronte alle culture d’Asia è fatto abbastanza recente., The notion of “Europe” is geographically and culturally controversial. While of Greek origins, this unsteady concept also has other progenitors, unwilling to recognize any “external” contributions to their own culture. One of these progenitors is Denis de Rougemont’s L’Amour et l’Occident, whose “Protestant” approach to the problems posed by the sudden emergence of Troubadour poetry is just as fanciful and untenable as the “Catholic” one. The Troubadour passion, indeed, is a sort of gnostic fever to be seen in a much bigger context than the “Cis-Dardanellian” Europe. If we compare the works of the Troubadours and Dante, for instance, we find unsurprising similarities – if little known – but when a likeness of this sort appears to connect Dante to the Persian Hafez, poet of the fourteenth century, it is quite staggering: the resemblance lies not only in general concepts, but in rhetorical images and the wording too. This paper provides evidence of these and other literary contacts between “Europe” and “Asia”. The sense of alienation we purport to feel when encountering Asian cultures appears, in fact, to be a rather recent affair.

The subject of industrial policy has recently experienced a renewed interest in both political and economics spheres. Despite pressures for liberalisation from organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, state aids are still widely used throughout the world, showing that some form of industrial policy is still implemented. Hence in this paper we ask whether there is a dominant form of industrial policy adopted today and if yes, what is this form. We examine this question by reviewing eight countries' experience in industrial policy implementation since World War II. This leads us to outline three phases of industrial policy: the interventionist phase from 1945 to the end of the 1970s, the liberal phase in the 1980s and 1990s and what we call the "pragmatic" phase in the years 2000. In the latter phase, industrial policy aims at both ensuring a competitive environment for firms through strong competition policy and independent regulation and orientating the industrial specialisation of the country, promoting the development of new, high tech sectors. Intervention specific to sectors is therefore considered a valid instrument again. We show that the characteristics of today's economy (open and knowledge-based economy) justify the necessity of industrial policies of this form, and we also discuss its foundations in the theoretical literature.