Talk by
Dr. Maya Tudor
University Lecturer in Government and Public Policy
Blavatnik School of Government
University of Oxford
On
The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan
Discussant: C. Raja Mohan
Date: Monday, 16 December 2013
Time: 3:00 – 4:30 pm
Venue: Conference Room, Centre for Policy Research, DharamMarg, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 110021
Followed by a recruitment talk for Oxford University’s new Masters in Public Policy programmeat the Blavatnik School of Government at5.30pm.
Abstract:
Why did the regime trajectories of India and Pakistan so quickly and dramatically diverge upon their twin independences in 1947? Theoretically speaking, both India and Pakistan seemed equally unlikely to create stable and democratic regimes. Upon independence, both countries had emerged from an extended period of British colonial rule with low levels of economic development and broadly similar state institutions. Both states were governed as infant democracies under the same legal instrument until their sovereign constituent assemblies promulgated new constitutions. Both countries were beset by refugee crises, food insecurity, as well as security challenges. And both countries were governed by single dominant parties that were supported by multi-class coalitions and which had some experience governing at provincial levels prior to independence.
Yet, almost immediately after August 1947, the regime trajectories of India and Pakistan had diverged. India promulgated a constitution enshrining elections based on universal adult franchise in 1950, held national elections in the context of full civil and political liberties in 1952, and installed an elected chief executive. Pakistan’s constitution-making process was almost immediately stalemated, with its sovereign constituent assembly being dismissed by an autocratic chief executive in 1953 and 1954, and with eight national administrations cycling through power with increasing rapidity until the military coup of 1958 formally ended its tentative democratic experiment. These different regime trajectories involved variation in both regime type as well as regime stability.
Drawing on elite interviews, an extensive analysis of primary sources such as colonial government records, party documentation, constituent assembly debates, and early government documents, the book demonstrates how the most common explanations for democratization, such as low levels of economic development or high levels of inequality, cannot convincingly account for these divergent outcomes. Instead, two inter-related but causally independent variables provide the most compelling account of the divergent outcomes: the class compositions of their independence movements and the strength as well as content of their dominant political party at independence.
Speaker’s Biography:
Maya Tudor is a University Lecturer in Government and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. Her research investigates the origins of stable, democratic and effective states across the developing world, with a particular emphasis upon South Asia. She was educated at Stanford University, L’Universite de Paris, and Princeton University. She has held Fellowships at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Oxford University’s Centre for the Study of Inequality and Democracy.
Her recently published book, The Promise of Power, was based upon her 2010 dissertation, which won the American Political Science Association’s Gabriel Almond Prize for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics. The book investigates the origins of India and Pakistan’s puzzling regime divergence in the aftermath of colonial independence. She is also the author of a number of articles, most recently Explaining Democracy’s Originsin Comparative Politics.
Maya Tudor has also worked as a Special Assistant to Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz at the World Bank, at UNICEF, in the United States Senate, and at the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, recently ranked the world’s top NGO.
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