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Civil Society and democratization in India: Institutions, ideologies and interests
Abstract
Developing a distinctive theoretical framework on civil society, this book examines how Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) contribute towards democratization in India and what conditions facilitate or inhibit their contribution. It assesses three different kinds of politics within civil society - liberal pluralist, neo-Marxist, and communitarian - which have had different implications in relation to democratization.
... While such crackdown affects organisations that engage in legitimate work, the 'capricious and oversensitive' nature of the state hampers the growth of civil society led social movements (Kapur et al., 2017: 9). Kudva (2005) and Sahoo (2013) have shown that the terrain of civil society-state relationship has been historically dependent upon the state-society relationship. ...
... The state led path of modernization was thus based on science, industrialization and consumption of fossil fuels (Gadgil and Guha, 1995). At this point, civil society actors were largely 'silent partners' in the state-led social transformation (Sahoo, 2013). ...
... By the late 1970s, the disillusionment with the development state paved the way for civil society actors to occupy the centre stage of public service delivery (Sahoo, 2013;Gadgil and Guha, 1995). At this point actors who believed in a community led institutional design, began to emerge at large. ...
... India has a rich history of social and political movements and has witnessed consistent growth in the voluntary sector in the last four decades (Sahoo, 2013), spurred by state support, a rising middle class, and global influences such as international aid (Kochanek and Hardgrave, 2007). It is likely that these organizations, whether indigenous or externally funded, generate precious social capital. ...
Empirical studies of social capital rarely take into account the socioeconomic context of the region in which it operates, indeed as most of this research has been located in high income countries. It is imperative to investigate how development may influence the impact of social capital, especially in developing countries. This paper examines the relationship between social capital and child nutrition using the India Human Development Survey, 2005-2006. Using a multilevel framework and a sample of 6770 rural children under the age of five, it finds that household based bridging social capital, expressed as connections with development based organizations, is positively associated with child nutrition. Bonding social capital, expressed as ties with caste and religious based organizations, has the opposite impact. At the village level, contextual measures of social capital are associated with nutritional status of children, but their influence is conditional on local development.
The declining informal collaboration corresponds to less civic engagement, political equity, solidarity, trust, and tolerance as well as associational life. In 2020, a case study of two NPOs revealed that one was adopting a strong entrepreneurial orientation, while the other integrated the traditional community orientation with more professionalization, confirming to partial marketization tendencies. The NGO-ization of society, visible in the increasing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the national and transnational level, tend to somewhat contradict Putnam’s thesis. On the other hand, the number of NGOs is not per se revealing of the quality of citizen participation in those organizations. The terms NGOS and nonprofit can be applied to the same organizational forms – some authors tend to consider the former as a type of nonprofit. Interestingly enough, in the diversity of approaches, and even definitions of this object, there is a common use of the excluding element to classify it: nongovernmental and nonprofit.
This handbook brings together multidisciplinary and internationally diverse contributors to provide an overview of theory, research, and practice in the nonprofit and nongovernmental organization (NGO) communication field. It is structured in four main parts: the first introduces metatheoretical and multidisciplinary approaches to the nonprofit sector; the second offers distinctive structural approaches to communication and their models of reputation, marketing, and communication management; the third focuses on nonprofit organizations' strategic communications, strategies, and discourses; and the fourth assembles campaigns and case studies of different areas of practice, causes, and geographies. The handbook is essential reading for scholars, educators, and advanced students in nonprofit and NGO communication within public relations and strategic communication, organizational communication, sociology, management, economics, marketing, and political science, as well as a useful reference for leaders and communication professionals in the nonprofit sector.
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricted civic space context of disaster risk reduction in India. Findings are that the shaping of CSOs’ roles through collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space is only partly defined by the across-the-board restrictive policies that have been the focus of much existing research on restricted civic space and its implications for CSOs. Interplay at the level of individual state agencies and CSOs, based on mutual perceptions, diverse organization-level considerations and actions, and evolving relations, shape who collaborates with whom and to what effect. This article thus stresses interplay and agency, moving away from simple understandings of co-optation, and calling for a more differentiated approach to the study of state–civil society collaboration under conditions of restricted civic space, with close attention to navigation.
Against the international backdrop of rising religious tensions, this article explores contemporary civil society views on religious freedom in Bangladesh. It uses critical frame analysis of the corpus of civil society organizations’ (CSOs) submissions to the United Nations’ third cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR), 2013–18. It provides a timely assessment of Bangladesh’s fulfilment of international obligations on religious freedom, and shows how the politicization of religion and the resultant conflict between ‘secularism’ and ‘extremism’ have been fuelling inter-communal tensions and religious intolerance. In particular, CSOs’ UPR submissions present powerful accounts of the principal human rights pathology affecting the country today, religious-based violence. This is accompanied by a narrative of police malpractice, judicial failings, discrimination, oppression and incitement. A further key finding is ‘situated knowledge’ or first-hand accounts of legal restrictions and government repression of civil society organizations. Consonant with the classical work of liberal theorists, we argue that unprecedented importance now attaches to safeguarding civil society criticality in order to defend religious freedom and uphold human rights in the Republic.
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk reduction in India and developed a typology of complementarities in this domain. The article considers the implications for understanding complementarity in broader CSO collaborations. We find that constructing collaborations through the lens of complementarity may facilitate capitalising on diversity among CSOs and help build collaborations that consider the domestic orientation of many Southern CSOs and reshape the roles of Northern CSOs as complementary rather than leading.
This literature review is the result of collaboration between Wageningen University & Research, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and Lehigh University.
It was conducted in the context of the research programme Supporting the political role of CSOs for inclusive development. Assumptions underlying Dialogue and Dissent. This research programme aims to strengthen the evidence-base of the core assumptions of the Theory of Change underlying the civil society policy framework ‘Dialogue and Dissent’ of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Civil society, once boasting its democratic contribution, is now undermining the secular-democratic culture of India. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter examines the role of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), a Hindu nationalist organization, among the Bhil tribes of Rajasthan. The chapter argues that the RVKP has implemented several developmental projects as a medium to gain people’s trust. By claiming to represent tribal interests, the RVKP has established itself as a “counterforce” against local Muslims and Christians and projected them as the “threatening others”. In this regard, it has received economic and politico-legal support from the state of Rajasthan, which is governed by the Hindu nationalists. The chapter concludes that the exclusivist politics of the RVKP and the Hindu nationalist state in Rajasthan have not only created a insecurity amongst the religious minorities; they have also radically polarized the public life and threatened the secular-democratic ethos of Indian society.
How has neo-liberalism transformed the economic structure and policies of India? And what are the politico-economic implications of such policies for marginalised populations? Following Karl Polanyi’s theory of “double movement”, this paper argues that while market liberalism has helped India overcome the slow so-called “Hindu rate of growth”, it has adversely affected the economic interests of the poor. It further argues that the expansion of the market (first movement) has led to various social dislocations in the lives of the poor. Such dislocations have generated several countermovements (second movement), which have found expressions not just in electoral politics but also in various grassroots movements. While it may be true that such countermovements have not always been successful in overturning the tide of neo-liberalism, they have certainly influenced the policy priorities of the state in favour of the poor and the marginalised in India.
This paper examines the ways in which two Internet-based civil society groups, Hasiru Usiru and Praja, negotiate online and offline spaces of collective action in Bangalore, India’s “IT City.” Based on ethnographic research, the study extends collective action theory through an examination of communicative interactions and experiences of urban civil society actors in a developing country. The paper highlight factors that impede and support collective actions, including attitudes toward the Internet as a tool for democratic engagement, ideological motivations, and perceptions of identity and membership, among others. Such a line of inquiry is significant in highlighting the possibilities of ICTs for collective action, while simultaneously avoiding the tendency to inflate and overestimate their capacity to produce social change.
Based on fieldwork in Udaipur district in Rajasthan, this article examines how Bhil tribal leaders of the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (VKP), a branch of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organisation, profess an ethic of des seva, or work and care for the nation, while describing their work with the VKP. Focusing on the VKP and RSS campaigns to Ayodhya in 1990 and 1992 and to the Shabari Kumbh in 2006, I examine the shifts in the political and ethical repertoires that shape tribal VKP fieldworkers’ modalities of action and forms of self-making during travel at these different moments in time. During these campaigns, non-tribal leaders sought to discipline tribal leaders, referring to historically constructed ideas and practices about the civilisational inferiority of tribals, in order to show that they can never properly engage in des seva. The article draws on incidents from these two campaigns in order to show how tribal leaders fashion themselves in relation to how others believe they should behave, and reveals some of the ways in which tribals inhabit, resist and revise the ideas and practices of Hindu nationalism.
ABSTRACTA number of case studies of NGO projects have suggested that NGOs may have an important role to play in addressing environmental problems in developing countries. Drawing on research conducted in Zimbabwe, this analysis seeks to broaden and contextualize the discussion of NGO involvement in sustainable development initiatives. It reviews the theoretical basis for the current emphasis on NGOs, assesses the environmental problems in Zimbabwe within their historical and social contexts, and summarizes the findings of recent research on the characteristics of the NGO sector in the country. The purpose is not to evaluate specific NGO environment projects, but rather to assess the mechanisms through which the NGO sector as a whole might make a significant contribution to sustainable development, and the problems in doing so. It is argued that one major obstacle faced by NGOs is the demand made upon them to find simple, neat and comprehensive solutions to complex development problems. The tendency on the part of donors and NGO supporters to expect success stories is called here the ‘magic bullet syndrome’, and it is argued that this emphasis on simplicity and on success is unrealistic and counterproductive.
By exploring associational life in early modern Italy, which the arguments of neo-Tocquevillians such as Robert Putnam explore,
this article critically reconsiders the effects of associations upon democracy. By revealing how rich associational life resulted
in the establishment of Fascism, I argue that associations do not necessarily contribute to the stabilization of democracy.In
order to account better for meanings of associations, I emphasize transformation of identities of associations in a political
and ideological context.
After introducing Bihar - its caste system, class structure, agrarian history and tribal communities - the author describes seven different local struggles. These span a Christian organisation, various branches of the Communist movement, and tribal groups. Throughout, the book focuses on the extreme violence which is an everyday fact of life in Bihar, and which is used by the state against the poor. A complex web of economic interests emerges, which divide Indian villagers and increase their lack of solidarity as peasants, adding to the difficulties they encounter in building effective popular organisations, and encouraging their manipulation by the authorities. -M.Amos
Sur le constat d'une internationalisation croissante et d'une perte de legitimite et d'autorite des etats-nations, il est tentant de chercher a depasser les limites de la nation au profit d'instances transnationales. Sans dementir la realite de cette tendance, l'A. estime toutefois qu'on ne peut resoudre les echecs des etats-nations qu'en s'y attelant dans le cadre meme de la nation. En s'appuyant sur l'exemple de l'emergence des elites postcoloniales en Inde, l'A. montre la necessite de depasser les decalages existant entre societe civile et societe politique (lieu de mediations), decalages que l'on peut retrouver egalement entre modernite et democratie.
Analysing the debate around state-civil society relationship in modern western and Indian political discourse, the paper points out the hiatus between the 18th and 19th century political thinking and later 20th century political thought. The second half of the 20th century is characterised by a loss of faith in the institutions of the state and looks towards civil society to preserve essential human and democratic rights. As against this, the paper advocates a return to an earlier rights-based conception of civility by enforcing universal laws through the instrument of the state. Since the state alone can create conditions necessary to protect the institutions of civil society from internal disruptions, the paper argues against detachment of civil society from the state. Instead, the institutions of civil society are very much part of democratic constitutional state, which alone will ensure social equality and non-discrimination along with individual liberty. SPECIAL ARTICLES IN contemporary social and political theory civil society is almost always associated with democracy. Yet, there continue to exist vast differences of opinion about what is civil society and the precise manner in which it is linked to democracy. For some theorists civil society represents autonomous associations that exist independently of the state; associations which curtail the power of the state while simultaneously allowing individuals and groups in society to manage their affairs directly. By this reckoning civil society is another name for voluntary associations of all types, from football associations and theatre groups to trade unions, churches and caste panchayats. Irrespective of the goals that these associations pursue and without consideration to the way they impact upon the freedom and rights of all citizens, all forms of collectivities are seen as agencies of civil society and weighted positively. What is perhaps equally problematic is that in this framework proliferation of associations and non-government agencies become the hallmark of democracy. Instead of ensuring that the state provides equal rights to all citizens, its retreat from the public arena is presented as being a condition necessary for strengthening and reinventing democracy. In contrast to this fairly popular conception of civil society there exists another viewpoint: one where the condition of civility is the presence of rule of law. A variety of institutions – from hospitals to schools – that exist outside the state and possess a rational legal structure of organisation constitute the realm of civil society. Here the presence of an open system of stratification along with a stance of neutrality become the primary attributes of civil society. Just why should an open system of stratification be the dis-tinguishing feature of civil society and not the state? And why should civil society be placed outside the state? These are questions that remain imponderables within this framework. After all democracy challenges existing hierarchies based on status, land and birth, and seeks to institute a more open system based on equal rights of citizenship. Consequently, within a democracy all social and political insti-tutions are expected to abide by this norm of openness. Assuming that civil society heralds the presence of an open and secular system, there is little reason to separate civil society from the state. Why should civil society be placed outside the domain of the state which enunciates the law? Faced with dilemmas of this kind, one needs in fact to ask whether civil society is, or must be seen as, an identifiable zone that lies outside the state? Is it an arena that is equidistant from religious and political institutions? Is it a synonym for voluntary and non-state associations? Is self-management the chief attribute of institutions of civil society? Is civil society the arena of struggle and participation? Above all, why is civil society considered to be an integral and indispensable aspect of democracy? These are questions that need to be addressed if we are to make sense of the concept of civil society and to understand its privileged status within democratic theory.
From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007 Summary: The Indian economy is booming --but the boom will last only as long as the vagaries of Indian democratic politics allow it to. Democracy and market reform are uneasily aligned in India today, and the additional reforms necessary to raise the lot of India's poor masses --who have enormous voting clout --may not garner a popular mandate at the ballot box. Although a long-term asset, democracy could prove to be a short-term headache for India's reformers. Ashutosh Varshney is Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and the author of "Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India" and "Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India." CHARTING A NEW PATH India is attempting a transformation few nations in modern history have successfully managed: liberalizing the economy within an established democratic order. It is hard to escape the impression that market interests and democratic principles are uneasily aligned in India today. The two are not inherently contradictory, but there are tensions between them that India's leaders will have to manage carefully. Students of political economy know that market-based policies meant to increase the efficiency of the aggregate economy frequently generate short-term dislocations and resentment. In a democratic polity, this resentment often translates at the ballot box into a halt or a reversal of pro-market reforms. In the West, such tensions have remained moderate for at least three reasons: universal suffrage came to most Western democracies only after the Industrial Revolution, which meant that the poor got the right to vote only after those societies had become relatively rich; a welfare state has attended to the needs of low-income segments of the population; and the educated and the wealthy have tended to vote more than the poor.
The Jan Lokpal Bill epitomises the ultimate faith of the ordinary citizens, born out of utter despair, in an omnipotent authority - the Lokpal. But mere legislation cannot bring about reforms, without accompanying mass struggles to get them implemented by the executive agencies and grass roots movements to change social habits. The forces of corruption which are deeply embedded in our society will not give up easily, and are powerful enough to frustrate and resist the provisions of any Lokpal Bill. At the end, the fight against corruption has to be situated in the wider strategy of changing both the economic model of development and the social culture, which carry the seeds of corruption.
This article offers a structuralist approach to understanding social trajectories following the demise of authoritarian regimes. It does so by analyzing the case of Indonesia in the context of debates about democratization more broadly, whether in Southeast Asia or elsewhere. The paper presents the argument that although Indonesia today is clearly a democracy, it is important to comprehend the kind of democracy that has been entrenched, and why this has been possible. Prevalent actor-based approaches, such as that found within "transitology," as well as "goodgovernance" perspectives, tend to emphasize institutional change based on either elite pacts or technocratic crafting. More important, however, is to understand the power relations that underlie institutions and thereby determine the way they actually operate—often in ways that are different from design or intention. This requires analyses of the nature of specific constellations of social power and interest, and the sorts of coalitions that actually preside over institutions of governance—a hallmark of structuralist approaches.
The intuitively plausible relationship between protest behavior and political instability is empirically supported by a large number of studies. Statistical evidence in support of this conjecture is provided by the correlation between indicators of protest behavior such as the presence of extremist parties and groups or the salience of an antisystem dimension and the rapid rise and fall of governments. The theories of writers such as Huntington, Gurr, and Davies suggest that when social and political mobility overtake the rate of economic growth, die result is radical challenge to the system by extremist parties and protest movements, leading to political instability and the loss of legitimacy. The main argument of this article is that the relationship between protest behavior and legitimacy may be more complicated than that, particularly when state responsiveness under the impact of popular protest and redistributive economic policies is seen as an intervening factor. By drawing on a survey of localelites in India, the article shows that certain forms of protest behavior, used in conjunction with conventional forms of participation such as contacting bureaucrats and political leaders at higher levels, might actually contribute to greater legitimacy of the state by providing an alternative channel of participation, extending the political agenda, and contributing to the recruitment of new and previously powerless social forces.
This is the text, with a few verbal modifications, of a lecture delivered by T. N. Madan at the President's Panel in Honor of the Fulbright Fortieth Anniversary Program, on the occasion of the 1987 meeting of the Association of Asian Studies in Boston. T. N. Madan has invigorated the social sciences in India for many years by his research, writing, and teaching. As an author he has written on such themes as Hindu culture, culture and development, ethnic pluralism, family and kinship, and the professions. As editor of Contributions to Indian Sociology , he has attracted to its pages distinguished research and writing from an international pool of contributors. This achievement is related to his capacity to combine discriminating intellectual taste with a friendly capacity to insinuate the journal into the publishing program of outstanding social scientists. It is also related to the fact that his anthropological understanding is combined with a wide-ranging methodological sympathy for other social sciences as well as the humanities.
In this article the author examines what he terms an “institutional culture of authority” that has come to characterize postrevolution Chinese industrial enterprises. This institutional culture is shaped by a pattern of organized dependency that is inherent in the economic relationship of employees to enterprises, and also in systems of reward and control that link the opportunities of employees to their behavior and attitudes. This institutional culture is manifested in widespread ritualism in political meetings, low exercise of voice by subordinates, the creation of patron-client networks linking the Party to selected employees, and the everyday cultivation of personal connections for individual gain.
This address considers four questions arising at a time when democracy enjoys unprecedented global popularity but also faces severe problems. The first question is why democracy as a “political method” should be chosen; second, the character of democratization; third, the paradox of universal principles of democracy and rights that depend on membership of particular states and nations; and, fourth, the operation of the political method, inequality, and security of the person. The address concludes with some reflections on the current attack on universalism and the need for new thinking about democratization.
Beyond an exploration of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as a party, the present analysis will examine the impact of the BJP's growth on the Indian party system and Indian politics. Posing still more questions: does the success of the BJP in recent elections signify a fundamental change of the Indian party system? how does the ascendance of the BJP square with other trends in the system, and to what extent are apparently distinct phenomena related? I shall argue that the sources of the BJP's rise are found at the system level: in the dynamics of the party system and the electorate. Its rise, however, also affects that system. The emergence of the BJP as a major political party signals the end of INC dominance, the growth of a fragmented multiparty system, and a reorienting of issue-dimensions in politics. This article's analysis of the BJP and the Indian party system is divided into three sections. The first section studies the Indian party system and national politics prior to the rise of the BJP in order to establish a baseline from which subsequent developments can be analyzed; the second focuses on party system dynamics and identifies factors that have facilitated BJP ascendance; the third assesses the impact of the BJP on electoral politics at the national level and examines the BJP-led coalition government's recent assertion of India's nuclear capability.
This article explores the politicization of `conversion' discourses in contemporary India, focusing on the rising popularity of anti-conversion legislation at the individual state level. While `Freedom of Religion' bills contend to represent the power of the Hindu nationalist cause, these pieces of legislation reflect both the political mobility of Hindutva as a symbolic discourse and the practical limits of its enforcement value within Indian law. This resurgence, however, highlights the enduring nature of questions regarding the quality of `conversion' as a `right' of individuals and communities, as well as reigniting the ongoing battle over the line between `conversion' and `propagation'. Ultimately, I argue that, while the politics of conversion continue to represent a decisive point of reference in debates over the quality and substance of religious freedom as a discernible right of Indian democracy and citizenship, the widespread negative consequences of this legislation's enforcement remain to be seen. Moreover, the role of gender in these debates cannot be ignored; indeed, the politics of gender play a decisive role in the manner in which the anti-conversion debates have unfolded. Consequently, the gulf between the unsecular nature of the legislation in theory and its questionable impact in practice indicates that the project of Indian secularism is negotiating religious intolerance rather than succumbing fully to the politics of Hindutva.
This article, drawing on the results of both survey research and of ethnography in Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, concerns the relationships between the middle class and the informal working class in Indian cities in the sphere of civil society. These relationships are shown to be very significant in the definition of the “middle class” and a critical dimension of the reproduction of class relationships. They also demonstrate that civil society should not be abstracted from the field of class relations, in the way that characterizes some contemporary arguments about the potentials of civil organization. Civil society is shown to be distinctly stratified. On the whole it is a sphere of middle class activism, and such activism is one of the defining features of the middle class. Members of the informal working class, on the other hand, are largely excluded from active participation in civil society organizations, so that increasing opportunities for political participation through civil organization may be associated with increased political inequality. The exceptions to this general rule are sometimes interlinked movements for women’s rights, for the rights of informal workers, and for rights to housing—in which women from the informal working class are notably active. The issues of housing and of rights to livelihood, however, frequently bring the middle class and the informal working class into contention. Politics is often the only resource available to informal workers and their valuation of electoral democracy is to be understood in this context
This article analyses the achievements and failures of India during its over 50 years of independence. It argues that while Indian democracy, pluralism and spirit of accommodation are a great success story, the decline of the state, the absence of stable political parties, and pervasive moral and political corruption are sources of great concern.
The post-Cold War project of globalization is changing the established notion of liberal democracy and local governance. The political autonomy of the liberal state is being increasingly compromised in favor of market forces and local governance more and more exposed to direct penetration by global and corporate power structures. This change has far-reaching implications for the future of democracy, particularly in the Third World. Aware of this challenge, new social movements in India, active at the grass roots of politics, are resisting global penetration of local communities, using new political spaces opened up by the retreat of the state from socioeconomic arenas. Through an inventive politics of struggle over issues concerning local communities and their empowerment, they articulate a vision of democracy as a creative political process, operative primarily at the local level. Their politics are addressed to establishing direct access and control of people over their immediate environment—economic, social, and cultural. To ensure that, they seek to transcend old dichotomies between state and society, global and local, political and social—and open up new possibilities for democracy in India.
This article draws on the case of India to address the question of democratization by exploring the dynamic interplay of the formal, effective, and substantive dimensions of democracy. Fifty-three years of almost uninterrupted democratic rule in India have done little to reduce the political, social, and economic marginalization of India's popular classes. Within India the state of Kerala stands out as an exception. Democratic institutions have effectively managed social conflict and have also helped secure substantive gains for subordinate classes. Kerala's departure from the national trajectory is located in historical patterns of social mobilization that coalesced around lower-class interests and produced forms of state-society engagement conducive to democratic deepening. Contrary to much of the transition literature, this case suggests that high levels of mobilization and redistributive demands have democracy-enhancing effects.
The frequent resort to protest activity by relatively powerless groups in recent American politics suggests that protest represents an important aspect of minority group and low income group politics. At the same time that Negro civil rights strategists have recognized the problem of using protest as a meaningful political instrument, groups associated with the “war on poverty” have increasingly received publicity for protest activity. Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, for example, continues to receive invitations to help organize low income communities because of its ability to mobilize poor people around the tactic of protest. The riots which dominated urban affairs in the summer of 1967 appear not to have diminished the dependence of some groups on protest as a mode of political activity.
This article provides a theoretical perspective on protest activity as a political resource. The discussion is concentrated on the limitations inherent in protest which occur because of the need of protest leaders to appeal to four constituencies at the same time. As the concept of protest is developed here, it will be argued that protest leaders must nurture and sustain an organization comprised of people with whom they may or may not share common values. They must articulate goals and choose strategies so as to maximize their public exposure through communications media. They must maximize the impact of third parties in the political conflict. Finally, they must try to maximize chances of success among those capable of granting goals.
How do elite parties win over poor voters while maintaining their core constituencies? How can religious parties expand their electoral base? This article argues that social service provision constitutes an important electoral strategy for elite-backed religious parties to succeed in developing democracies. The study demonstrates how the upper caste, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won unexpected support from lower-caste voters in India, due to services provided by its grassroots affiliates. Using a combination of original survey data and extensive interviews, the author tests whether services win votes and identifies the mechanisms by which they do so. Beneficiaries of services were found to be far more likely to support the party, even when accounting for piety, income, and ideological orientation. The author argues that service provision as an electoral strategy cannot be conceptualized as being predicated purely on material exchange. It should instead be understood as a socially embedded tactic especially well suited to helping elite parties with organizational resources, but without pro-poor policy agendas, win over underprivileged electorates.
For more than four decades, local-level workers of the Marxist Left and Hindu Right in the southern Indian state of Kerala have been involved in a grievous political conflict. Drawing on my ethnography among members of the two groups, I describe how responsibility for this violence has been elided and effaced especially among members of the Hindu nationalist group, Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). Crucial to this elision has been the workers’ close-knit community of friends and supporters that they forge by extending everyday assistance, care, and mobilizing support in small neighborhoods, towns, and villages of the region. Modes of sociality and concepts of relatedness so generated not only mitigate individualizing experiences of suffering but also subsume individual responsibility for acts of violence within the whole. This article is about such dissolution of culpabilities, and the affects, emotive concepts and conditions of collective life that make it possible.
In general, the literature on democratic transitions has focused on political processes and choices of actors in explaining regime change, thereby failing to investigate whether structural factors affect the recent rise in transitions to democracy. An analysis of the influence of these structural factors is however important, and it has not yet been done in a systematic way in order to explain recent transitions to democracy since 1989. It will be shown that some structural factors indeed play a role in generating transitions to democracy. These results contradict the idea that structural factors can be ignored when explaining recent transitions to democracy. An additional finding in this article is that some structural factors, such as economic development, growth and a country's role in the world-system had an unexpected impact on democratic transitions since the end of the Cold War. These findings set bounds to the strength of the modernization and world-system theories to explain transitions to democracy, but on the other hand, democratic diffusion played a significant role after 1989. In the (structural) context in which a state had a peripheral role, a low level of economic growth and a high proportion of democratic neighbors, the probability of a state's transition to democracy was high. This structural context seemed to be fertile soil for recent transitions to democracy.
The case study, as a method of inquiry, is particularly suited to the field of political psychology. Yet there is little training in political science, and even less in psychology, on how to do case study research. Furthermore, misconceptions about case studies contribute to the methodological barrier that exists within and between the two parent disciplines. This paper reviews the various definitions and uses of case studies and integrates a number of recent insights and advances into a practical guide for conducting case study research. To this end, the paper discusses various stereotypes of the case study and offers specific steps aimed at addressing these criticisms.
In this article we reassert the role of governance as well as of civil society in the analysis of citizenship . We argue that to analyse global civil society and global citizenship it is necessary to focus on global governance. Just as states may facilitate or obstruct the emergence and development of national civil society, so too global governance institution s may facilitate or obstruct an emerging global civil society. Our key contention is that civil society at the global level thrives through its interaction with strong facilitatin g institution s of global governance. We start with a discussion of civil society and citizenship within the nation-state, and from there develop a model of global civil society and citizenship . Through analysing the impacts of various modes of global governance, we identify strategically appropriat e forms of political and social engagement that best advance the prospects for global citizenship .
This essay advances understanding of how projects of self-mastery within neighborhood physical training programs associated with the Hindu Nationalist Movement produce subjects that are simultaneously ethically oriented and creatively violent. Such an analysis is contrasted with the conventional view that Hindu Nationalist volunteers are mere objects who blindly conform to a nationalist ideology or religious norms. Drawing on the author's participant observation of physical conditioning within the movement, the essay illustrates how combat training depends on an analytical sensibility by which techniques of drill are simultaneously learned and innovated by volunteers in a disciplinary zone of self-experimentation. Within such a zone, volunteers modify drill routines, enriching and refining them on an everyday basis. Thus, the evolution of physical techniques transforms training into an unfolding enterprise that is continually oriented toward attaining physical and moral self-mastery through the probing of bodily exercises. The essay underscores the social significance of such forms of physical self-exploration, in which movement volunteers understand the iterative probing of physical practice as driven by a resolve that deepens the volunteer's moral fortitude. The essay illuminates how a set of physical and moral processes are intertwined, processes through which militant subjects are culturally formed and routines of violence are sustained as a social and ethical practice. Physical training is connected to anti-Muslim pogroms in postcolonial Gujarat demonstrating how the evolving nature of physical training shapes, prolongs, and enables the improvisation of tactics of ethnic cleansing.
The last two decades have witnessed a veritable mushrooming of NGOs in India. What, however, is inadequately appreciated is that the conversion of voluntarism into primarily a favoured instrumentality for developmental intervention has changed what was once an organic part of civil society into merely a sector — an appendage of the developmental apparatus of the state. Further, this process of instrumental appropriation has resulted in these agencies of self-activity losing both their autonomy and political-transformative edge. What is required, therefore, is to reorientate voluntarism from a framework of subserving the needs of delivery to one promoting self-governance in the widest sense.
Conversion to Christianity is one of the most politically charged issues in contemporary India and has recently been very much in the news.1 For example, in 2006, on the fiftieth anniversary of B. R. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism2 hundreds of dalits gathered to convert, some to Buddhism and others to Christianity, rejecting Hinduism, a religion they claim oppresses and demeans them. In attacks on Christians in Orissa at the end of 2007 (and associated reprisals), dozens of churches, homes, and businesses were destroyed, hundreds of people were injured, and thousands were displaced.
Do institutions possess explanatory and prescriptive powers imputed to them by institutionalism? If they do, why do outcomes in developing countries (DGC) defy those powers? I argue that, although institutions play a role, they are neither the explanation for outcomes nor the prescription for development problems. The primacy of institutions is defied in DGC because ‘new institutionalism’ shares the premises of modernization theory-inspired ‘old institutionalism’. Both fail to subordinate institutions to society-rooted politics, the pre-eminent explanatory variable. I support this argument by: (1) demonstrating the pre-eminence of politics vis-à-vis institutions; and (2) relating various policy failures in DGC to the failure of the unbroken thread between old and new institutionalisms to recognize this pre-eminence. Because politics explains both institutional and socio-political outcomes, I propose that the crucial difference between politics in Western democracies and developing countries – and not institutions – be the focus of inquiry to account for outcomes and to prescribe solutions for DGC.