Degrees of Democracy: Some comparative lessons from India

World Politics

Volumn 52, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 484-519

  Heller, Patrick ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CLASS; COMPARATIVE STUDY; DEMOCRATIZATION; ETHNOPOLITICS; POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT;

INDIA;

EID: 0033888907     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0043887100020086     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (96)

1. Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Consolidation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
2. Ibid., 6.
3. O'Donnell, "On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries," World Development 21, no. 8 (1993).
4. Huber, Rueschemeyer, and Stephens provide a discussion of why a "vicious cycle" of interaction between these three dimensions of democracy - which they label formal, participatory, and social - is symptomatic of new democracies. Evelyne Huber, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and John D. Stephens, "The Paradoxes of Contemporary Democracy: Formal, Participatory, and Social Dimensions," in Lisa Anderson, ed., Transitions to Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
5. Mehta, for example, notes that "there is a widespread sense that the state and its laws can be manipulated to serve particular interests, that official decisions are guided by no principle but expediency, and that even this uncertain restraint on the arbitrary use of power is wearing thin." Pratap Mehta, "India: Fragmentation amid Consensus," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (1997). See also Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, eds., Nationalism, Democracy and Development (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 59.
6. Mehta, for example, notes that "there is a widespread sense that the state and its laws can be manipulated to serve particular interests, that official decisions are guided by no principle but expediency, and that even this uncertain restraint on the arbitrary use of power is wearing thin." Pratap Mehta, "India: Fragmentation amid Consensus," Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (1997). See also Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, eds., Nationalism, Democracy and Development (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 59.
7. Although this is hardly surprising in a federal system marked by such a high degree of socioeconomic heterogeneity, most treatments of Indian democracy focus on the national picture. When democracy is examined at the subnational level, the emphasis has almost always been on variations in the political party system, not on democratic deepening. State-level studies moreover remain more concerned with scaling-up to develop theories of Indian democracy than with scaling-down to develop theories of Indian democracies.
8. Ibid.
9. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, ed. Tom Bottomore (London: Pluto Press, 1992).
10. For an important discussion of this point, see Jonathan Fox, "The Difficult Transition trom Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico," World Politics 46 (January 1994).
11. Kurt Weyland, Democracy without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), 5.
12. Cailos Vilas, "Democracy and the Whereabouts of Participation," in Doug Chalmers, Scott Martin, and Kerianne Piester, eds., The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 19.
13. Nicos Mouzelis, "Modernity, Late Development and Civil Society," in John A. Hall, ed., Civil Society: Theory, History and Comparison (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995).
14. Adam Przeworski et al., Sustainable Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 70. In an earlier work Przeworski framed the question of transitions in static political equilibria terms, concluding that successful transitions are built on elite pacts that are "inevitably conservative, economically and socially." Quoted in Adler and Webster (fn. 12), 84.
15. Ellen Comisso, "Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty? Reflections on Five Years of Competitive Politics in Eastern Europe," Communist and Post-Communist Studies 30, no. 1 (1997).
16. Adam Przeworski, "The Neoliberal Fallacy," Journal of Democracy 3, no. 3 (1992).
17. Linz and Stepan (fn. 1), 12-13.
18. There are a total of twenty-five states in India, fifteen of which have populations surpassing fifteen million (hereafter the "major" states). Indian states have their own legislatures and executives and under India's federal constitution enjoy a wide range of powers and responsibilities, including independent sources of revenue collection (primarily sales taxes) and a wide range of development functions.
19. One could simply point to border areas - the Northeast region, Kashmir, and Punjab - where separatist struggles have led to the suspension of basic democratic rights as the extreme cases ot undemocratic practice. These, however, are in effect areas where the legitimacy of the nation-state itself is contested. It is variation within the boundaries of the consolidated and legitimated Indian nation-state that are of concern here.
20. Pranab Bardhan, The Political Economy of Development in India (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984).
21. In 1982, 66.6 percent of rural households fell below the marginal ownership category of 2.5 acres. Together they accounted for 12.2 percent of total land ownership, less than the 14.3 percent share of the top 1 percent of households. C. T. Kurien, The Economy: An Interpretive Introduction (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992), 321.
22. For Brazil, see Weyland (fn. 19). For Africa, see Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
23. Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 115.
24. Pradeep Chhibber, Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).
25. See Drèze and Sen (fn. 9, 1995 and 1996); and Kohli (Fn. 7, 1987).
26. Ronald Herring, "Embedded Particularism: India's Failed Developmental State," in Meredith Woo-Cumings, ed., The Developmental State (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
27. Pranab Bardhan, "Sharing the Spoils: Group Equity, Development, and Democracy" (Manuscript, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 1997), 16.
28. See Bardhan (In. 28); Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Herring (fn. 34).
29. Paul R. Brass, The Politics of India since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 334.
30. Ashutosh Varshney, "Mass Politics or Elite Politics? India's Economic Reforms in Comparative Perspective" (Paper presented at the Conference on India's Economic Reforms, Center for International Affairs and Harvard Institute of International Development, Harvard University, Cambridge, December 13-14, 1996), 3.
31. Sumantra Bose, "'Hindu Nationalism' and the Crisis of the Indian Stare," in Bose and Jalal (fn. 5), 109.
32. Mehta (fn. 5), 64.
33. Weyland (fn. 19).
34. O'Donnell (fn. 3), 1365-67.
35. To cite one example: "According to the Chief Election Commissioner, 180 of Uttar Pradesh's [India's most populous state] Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) have criminal cases pending against them, at least 52 of which involve 'heinous crimes' such as rape and murder." jean Drèze and Haris Gazdar, "Uttar Pradesh: The Burden of Inertia," in Drèze and Sen (fn. 9, 1996), 108.
36. See Rajni Kothari, State against Democracy: In Search of Humane Governance (Delhi: Ajanta Books, 1988).
37. Brass (fn. 37), 60.
38. See Ramachandran (in. 9).
39. Robin Jeffrey, Politics, Women and Well-Being: How Kerala Became a "Model" (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press, 1992), 3.
40. These observations are based on my own fieldwork conducted in 1991-92 and in the summers of 1997 and 1999. Heller, The Labor of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); and idem, "Social Capital as Product of Class Mobilization and State Intervention: Industrial Workers in Kerala, India," World Development 24, no. 6 (1996). In a detailed study that focuses on the North Kerala city of Calicut, Varshney concludes that "[m]uch like Tocqueville's America, Calicut is a place of 'joiners.' Associations of all kinds - business, labor, professional, social, theater, film, sports, art, reading - abound." Ashutosh Varshney, Civic Life and Ethnic Conflict: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming), manuscript pp. 130-31.
41. These observations are based on my own fieldwork conducted in 1991-92 and in the summers of 1997 and 1999. Heller, The Labor of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); and idem, "Social Capital as Product of Class Mobilization and State Intervention: Industrial Workers in Kerala, India," World Development 24, no. 6 (1996). In a detailed study that focuses on the North Kerala city of Calicut, Varshney concludes that "[m]uch like Tocqueville's America, Calicut is a place of 'joiners.' Associations of all kinds - business, labor, professional, social, theater, film, sports, art, reading - abound." Ashutosh Varshney, Civic Life and Ethnic Conflict: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming), manuscript pp. 130-31.
42. These observations are based on my own fieldwork conducted in 1991-92 and in the summers of 1997 and 1999. Heller, The Labor of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala, India (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999); and idem, "Social Capital as Product of Class Mobilization and State Intervention: Industrial Workers in Kerala, India," World Development 24, no. 6 (1996). In a detailed study that focuses on the North Kerala city of Calicut, Varshney concludes that "[m]uch like Tocqueville's America, Calicut is a place of 'joiners.' Associations of all kinds - business, labor, professional, social, theater, film, sports, art, reading - abound." Ashutosh Varshney, Civic Life and Ethnic Conflict: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming), manuscript pp. 130-31.
43. The retention rate in primary schools - the percentage of children having entered primary school who complete the fifth grade - is 82 percent in Kerala as against 26 percent for India as a whole. Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 174.
44. Rudolph and Rudolph (In. 36).
45. Sudipta Kaviraj, "A Critique of the Passive Revolution," in Partha Chatterjee, ed., State and Politics in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 46.
46. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
47. See Heller (fn. 48, 1999), chaps. 5, 6, and 7.
48. Varshney (fn. 48) found that out of seventeen states, Kerala ranked the fourth lowest in the number of per capita deaths in urban communal riots (manuscript p. 112); this is based on a large-N data set on Hindu-Muslim violence - 1950-95 - jointly produced with Steve Wilkinson. Of the three states ranking below Kerala, the Punjab has been the site of sustained rural violence and neither Haryana nor Tamil Nadu has a sizable Muslim population.
49. In Kerala's 1995 local government elections, the BIP captured only 3 out of 1,200 panchayats, and only 1 out of 26 municipalities. Kerala remains the only major state in India in which the BJP has never secured a seat in the national parliament.
50. See Drèze and Sen (fn. 9, 1995).
51. See fn. 9. For an extended comparative assessment of the success of Kerala's land reforms, see Ronald Herring, Land to the Tiller: The Political Economy of Agrarian Reform in South Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
52. Putnam (fn. 31), 180.
53. Robin Jeffrey, The Decline of Nair Dominance: Society and Politics in Travancore, 1947-1908 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1976).
54. Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (fn. 12).
55. Ibid., 8.
56. Ibid., 50.
57. See Myron Weiner, The Indian Paradox: Essays in Indian Politics, ed. Ashutosh Varshney (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989). Alternatively, Jalal has argued that there is in fact little difference between Pakistan and India in that both have inherited state forms that she describes as "bureaucratic authoritarianism"; Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
58. See Myron Weiner, The Indian Paradox: Essays in Indian Politics, ed. Ashutosh Varshney (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989). Alternatively, Jalal has argued that there is in fact little difference between Pakistan and India in that both have inherited state forms that she describes as "bureaucratic authoritarianism"; Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
59. Moore (fn. 11), 354-77.
60. Gyan Pandey, "Peasant Revolt and Indian Nationalism: The Peasant Movement in Awadh, 1921-22," in Rananjit Guha and Gayatri Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).
61. For a seminal analysis, see Francine Frankel, India's Political Economy, 1947-1977 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
62. Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 69.
63. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978).
64. Dilip Menon, Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India: Malabar 1900-1948 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 146.
65. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chap. 7.
66. Cited in ibid., 22.
67. Speaking of the early days of the KCSP in Malabar, K. P. Gopalan noted that "we had socialist aims without knowing anything about socialism"; cited in Menon (fn. 71), 147.
68. Menon (fn. 71), chap. 5.
69. In a critique of Putnam's cultural and historical explanation of the sources of civicness in North Italy, Tarrow notes that in the past and the present "electorates were deliberately mobilized on the basis of networks of mass organizations and social and recreational associations; and in both, civic competence was deliberately developed after World War II as a symbol of the left-wing parties' governing capacity." Sydney Tarrow, "Making Social Science Work across Space and Time: A Critical Reflection of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work," American Political Science Review 90, no. 2 (1996), 394.
70. Ronald Herring, "From Fanaticism to Power: Ratchet Politics and Peasant Mobilization in South India, 1836-1956" (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Honolulu, April 11-14, 1996).
71. The demand-side dynamic for health and education in Kerala predates the democratic period and can be tied to the comparatively progressive educational and public health policies of the princely state of Travancore. See Gita Sen, "Social Needs and Public Accountability," in Marc Wuyts, Maureen Mackintosh, and Tom Hewitt, Development Policy and Public Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, the Open University Press, 1992). The transition from the Brahmanical paternalism of Travancore, which targeted communities (which in many ways has its contemporary counterpart in the populism of the Indian state), to the social citizenship of Kerala's modern welfare state is the direct outcome of class politics. Moreover, it is only with the advent of the redistributive state that the gap between Malabar and Travancore, which in the nineteenth century was pronounced on all social development indicators, was dramatically closed in the post-1957 period. See T. N. Krishnan and M. Kabir, "Social Intermediation and Health Transition: Lessons from Kenila," Working Paper no. 251 (Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 1992).
72. The demand-side dynamic for health and education in Kerala predates the democratic period and can be tied to the comparatively progressive educational and public health policies of the princely state of Travancore. See Gita Sen, "Social Needs and Public Accountability," in Marc Wuyts, Maureen Mackintosh, and Tom Hewitt, Development Policy and Public Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, the Open University Press, 1992). The transition from the Brahmanical paternalism of Travancore, which targeted communities (which in many ways has its contemporary counterpart in the populism of the Indian state), to the social citizenship of Kerala's modern welfare state is the direct outcome of class politics. Moreover, it is only with the advent of the redistributive state that the gap between Malabar and Travancore, which in the nineteenth century was pronounced on all social development indicators, was dramatically closed in the post-1957 period. See T. N. Krishnan and M. Kabir, "Social Intermediation and Health Transition: Lessons from Kenila," Working Paper no. 251 (Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, 1992).
73. In contrast, the CPM in West Bengal, having enjoyed the fruits and resources of state power for twenty-three years, has become far more bureaucratic and clientelistic. See John Echeverri-Gent, "Public Participation and Poverty Alleviation: The Experience of Reform Communists in India's West Bengal," World Development 29 (October 1992).
74. Linz and Stepan (fn. 1) write that "properly understood, democracy is more than a regime; it is an interacting system" (p. 13). A key dynamic in the system derives from the distinct but complementary roles that political and civil society play in shaping and representing values and interests. See Linz and Stepan (fn. 1), 8-9.
75. To quote Huntington: "Democratic regimes that last have seldom, if ever, been instituted by mass popular action." Samuel Huntington, "Will More Countries Become Democratic?" Political Science Quarterly 99, no. 2 (1984), 212, emphasis added.
76. Charles Tilly, "Processes and Mechanisms of Democratization," Sociological Theory 18 (March 2000), 8.
77. Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, "Secondary Associations and Democratic Governance," Politics and Society 20, no. 4 (1992).
78. See Fox (fn. 18).
79. See Joseph Tharamangalam, "The Perils of Development without Economic Growth: The Development Debacle of Kerala, India," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 30, no. 1 (1998). For responses to Tharamangalam, see Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 30, no. 3 (1998).
80. See Joseph Tharamangalam, "The Perils of Development without Economic Growth: The Development Debacle of Kerala, India," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 30, no. 1 (1998). For responses to Tharamangalam, see Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 30, no. 3 (1998).
81. Heller (fn. 48, 1999).
82. A recent World Bank study found that from 1957-58 to 1990-91 Kerala experienced the most rapid decline in poverty of any major state, including the Punjab and Haryana, India's capitalist growth success stories. Guarav Datt and Martin Ravallion, "Why Have Some Indian States Done Better Than Others at Reducing Poverty?" Policy Research Working Paper no. 1594 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1996).
83. Between 1986-87 and 1993-94 the factory sector grew at an annual average of 9.8 percent, well above the national average of 5.6 percent, and agriculture grew at 5.5 percent. A recent study on new investments in Kerala found a "tremendous increase" since 1991-92. Sunil Mani, "Economic Liberalisation and Kerala's Industrial Sector: An Assessment of Investment Opportunities," Economic and Political Weekly (August 24-31, 1996), 2326.
84. See Ronald Herring, "From Structural Conflict to Agrarian Stalemate: Agrarian Reforms in South India," Journal of Asian and African Studies 26, no. 3-4 (1991).
85. See T. M. Thomas Isaac and E. M. Shridharan, "Kerala's Development and Its Politics," Marxist Samvadan (Trivandrum) (October-December 1992); and Olle Tornquist, The Next Left? Democratisation and Attempts to Renew the Radical Political Development Project (Copenhagen: NIAS reports, no. 24, 1995).
86. See T. M. Thomas Isaac and E. M. Shridharan, "Kerala's Development and Its Politics," Marxist Samvadan (Trivandrum) (October-December 1992); and Olle Tornquist, The Next Left? Democratisation and Attempts to Renew the Radical Political Development Project (Copenhagen: NIAS reports, no. 24, 1995).
87. See Richard Franke and Barbara Chasin, "Power to the Malayalee People," Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 10 (1997).
88. These observations are based on research conducted in summer 1997 and 1999.
89. Weyland (fn. 19).
90. For an analysis of economic concessions made during the negotiated transition, see Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change (London: Zed Books, 1998). Mamdani (fn. 30) argues that "decentralized despotism" - the entrenched authority of chiefs - has stunted the development of civil society in postapartheid South Africa.
91. See Rebeca Abers, "From Ideas to Practice: The Partido dos Trabalhadores and Participatory Governance in Brazil," Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 4 (1996).
92. This follows Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944). Sec also Linz and Stepan (fn. 1), who write about a set of "socio-politically crafted and socio-politically accepted norms, institutions and regulations, which we call economic society, that mediate between state and market" (p. 11).
93. Minkoff provides an excellent critique of the overemphasis of the civil society literature on community-based origins of civic behavior and the resulting neglect of the role that more aggregated forms of association that transcend local community (social movements, advocacy groups) can play in nurturing civic identities. Debra Minkoff, "Producing Social Capital: National Social Movements and Civil Soceity," American Behavioral Scientist 40, no. 5 (1997).
94. Ibid., 612.
95. Claus Offe, "Homogeneity and Constitutional Democracy: Political Group Rights as an Answer to Identity Conflicts?" (Paper presented at the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, April 4-6, Columbia University, 1997), 6.
96. See Adler and Webster (fn. 12).