Costs of Democracy

Costs of Democracy
Author: Devesh Kapur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2018-06-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 019909313X

One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.

New Welfare Policy and Democratic Politics in India

New Welfare Policy and Democratic Politics in India
Author: Prakash Sarangi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2024-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1040031765

New Welfare Policy and Democratic Politics in India offers an analysis of India’s welfare policy during the last couple of decades. It looks at how welfare policy making is viewed as a function of party competition and voter mobilization, showing a gradual transformation of political clients into entitled citizens through which democratic politics in India has redefined its contemporary welfare discourse. The book argues that political parties formulate policies in order to respond to the voices of citizens and shows that a new welfare architecture emerged in India, characterized as responsive welfare. India has witnessed a sharp rise in such voices, which have been disadvantaged by a globalizing market. The size and vulnerability of this group has made them politically significant and electorally salient. These welfare aspirants have found a new political space through political parties to negotiate and assert their claims on the state, creating a milestone in India’s democratic politics trajectory, in the form of entitlement-based welfare policy. The book compares and evaluates the implications of these new welfare policies in the contexts of two governments: the Congress-led government during 2009-2014 and the BJP-led government during 20014-2019. The empirical data reveal remarkable similarities in their electoral pledges, policy outputs, policy outcomes and accountability towards citizens. These findings indicate significant convergence in their welfare policies, sans ideology or ethnic support base. It also reveals that the ideological differences among the two major parties do not prevent remarkable continuities in the formulation and implementation of welfare policies during their incumbencies, thus allowing for a bipartisan acceptance of a citizen-centric welfare policy. Offering a new analysis to understand this citizen-party-policy linkage in the formulation of welfare policy in India, the book presents a macro analysis of India’s interface between democratic politics and welfare policy. It will be of interest to researchers in the fields of the politics of welfare, democratisation in changing societies, comparative politics and Indian and South Asian Studies and Asian Politics.

When Crime Pays

When Crime Pays
Author: Milan Vaishnav
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300216203

The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.

Making Politics Work for Development

Making Politics Work for Development
Author: World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2016-07-14
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1464807744

Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

Politics in India

Politics in India
Author: Subrata Mitra
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2017-11-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317701135

The second edition of this textbook brings together general political theory and the comparative method to interpret socio-political phenomena and issues that have occupied the Indian state and society since 1947. It considers the progress that India has made in some of the most challenging aspects of post-colonial politics such as governance, democracy, economic growth, welfare, and citizenship. Looking at the changed global role of India, its standing in the G-20 and BRICS, as well as the implications of the 2014 Indian general elections for state and society, this updated edition also includes sections on the changing socio-political status of women in India, corruption and terrorism. The author raises several key questions relevant to Indian politics, including: • Why has India succeeded in making a relatively peaceful transition from colonial rule to a resilient, multi-party democracy in contrast to its South Asian neighbours? • How has the interaction of modern politics and traditional society contributed to the resilience of post-colonial democracy? • How did India’s economy moribund—for several decades following Independence—make a breakthrough into rapid growth and can India sustain it? • And finally, why have collective identity and nationhood emerged as the core issues for India in the twenty-first century and with what implications for Indian democracy? The textbook goes beyond India by asking about the implications of the Indian case for the general and comparative theory of the post-colonial state. The factors which might have caused failures in democracy and governance are analysed and incorporated as variables into a model of democratic governance. In addition to pedagogical features such as text boxes, a set of further readings is provided to guide readers who wish to go beyond the remit of this text. The book will be essential reading for undergraduate students and researchers in South Asian and Asian studies, political science, development studies, sociology, comparative politics and political theory.

Democracy against Development

Democracy against Development
Author: Jeffrey Witsoe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022606350X

Hidden behind the much-touted success story of India’s emergence as an economic superpower is another, far more complex narrative of the nation’s recent history, one in which economic development is frequently countered by profoundly unsettling, and often violent, political movements. In Democracy against Development, Jeffrey Witsoe investigates this counter-narrative, uncovering an antagonistic relationship between recent democratic mobilization and development-oriented governance in India. Witsoe looks at the history of colonialism in India and its role in both shaping modern caste identities and linking locally powerful caste groups to state institutions, which has effectively created a postcolonial patronage state. He then looks at the rise of lower-caste politics in one of India’s poorest and most populous states, Bihar, showing how this increase in democratic participation has radically threatened the patronage state by systematically weakening its institutions and disrupting its development projects. By depicting democracy and development as they truly are in India—in tension—Witsoe reveals crucial new empirical and theoretical insights about the long-term trajectory of democratization in the larger postcolonial world.

New Welfare Policy and Democratic Politics in India

New Welfare Policy and Democratic Politics in India
Author: Prakash Sarangi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781003469292

"New Welfare Policy and Democratic Politics in India offers an analysis of India's welfare policy during the last couple of decades. It looks at how welfare policy making is viewed as a function of party competition and voter mobilization, showing a gradual transformation of political clients into entitled citizens through which democratic politics in India has redefined its contemporary welfare discourse. The book argues that political parties formulate policies in order to respond to the voices of citizens and shows that a new welfare architecture emerged in India, characterized as responsive welfare. India has witnessed a sharp rise in such voices, which have been disadvantaged by a globalizing market. The size and vulnerability of this group has made them politically significant and electorally salient. These welfare aspirants have found a new political space through political parties to negotiate and assert their claims on the state, creating a milestone in India's democratic politics trajectory, in the form of entitlement-based welfare policy. The book compares and evaluates the implications of these new welfare policies in the contexts of two governments: the Congress-led government during 2009-2014 and the BJP-led government during 20014-2019. The empirical data reveal remarkable similarities in their electoral pledges, policy outputs, policy outcomes and accountability towards citizens. These findings indicate significant convergence in their welfare policies, sans ideology or ethnic support base. It also reveals that the ideological differences among the two major parties do not prevent remarkable continuities in the formulation and implementation of welfare policies during their incumbencies, thus allowing for a bipartisan acceptance of a citizen-centric welfare policy. Offering a new analysis to understand this citizen-party-policy linkage in the formulation of welfare policy in India, the book presents a macro analysis of India's interface between democratic politics and welfare policy. It will be of interest to researchers in the fields of the politics of welfare, democratisation in changing societies, comparative politics and Indian and South Asian Studies and Asian Politics"--

How Solidarity Works for Welfare

How Solidarity Works for Welfare
Author: Prerna Singh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2016-01-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1316299457

Why are some places in the world characterized by better social service provision and welfare outcomes than others? In a world in which millions of people, particularly in developing countries, continue to lead lives plagued by illiteracy and ill-health, understanding the conditions that promote social welfare is of critical importance to political scientists and policy makers alike. Drawing on a multi-method study, from the late-nineteenth century to the present, of the stark variations in educational and health outcomes within a large, federal, multiethnic developing country - India - this book develops an argument for the power of collective identity as an impetus for state prioritization of social welfare. Such an argument not only marks an important break from the dominant negative perceptions of identity politics but also presents a novel theoretical framework to understand welfare provision.

The Success of India's Democracy

The Success of India's Democracy
Author: Atul Kohli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2001-09-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521805308

Leading scholars consider how democracy has taken root in India despite poverty, illiteracy and ethnic diversity.

Social networks, mobility, and political participation: The potential for women’s self-help groups to improve access and use of public entitlement schemes in India

Social networks, mobility, and political participation: The potential for women’s self-help groups to improve access and use of public entitlement schemes in India
Author: Kumar, Neha
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2018-08-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Women’s self-help groups (SHGs) have increasingly been used as a vehicle for social, political, and economic empowerment as well as a platform for service delivery. Although a growing body of literature shows evidence of positive impacts of SHGs on various measures of empowerment, our understanding of ways in which SHGs improve awareness and use of public services is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, this paper first examines how SHG membership is associated with political participation, awareness, and use of government entitlement schemes. It further examines the effect of SHG membership on various measures of social networks and mobility. Using data collected in 2015 across five Indian states and matching methods to correct for endogeneity of SHG membership, we find that SHG members are more politically engaged. We also find that SHG members are not only more likely to know of certain public entitlements than non-members, they are significantly more likely to avail of a greater number of public entitlement schemes. Additionally, SHG members have wider social networks and greater mobility as compared to non-members. Our results suggest that SHGs have the potential to increase their members’ ability to hold public entities accountable and demand what is rightfully theirs. An important insight, however, is that the SHGs themselves cannot be expected to increase knowledge of public entitlement schemes in absence of a deliberate effort to do so by an external agency.