Successes and Failures of Democratic Consolidation South Asia A Comparative Study of India and Pakistan

Dolan Cochran

Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Hicks, Barbara

Keywords

South Asia, Democracy, Institutions

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

This study investigates processes of democratic transition in India and Pakistan in an attempt to explain why India achieved democratic consolidation while democracy in Pakistan became unstable and prone to authoritarian interventions. The political and social systems of South Asia are analyzed utilizing a historical institutionalist approach that incorporates process-tracing methods and event history analysis. Particular attention is paid to the period of British Colonial rule and its impact on social, political, and economic systems, as well as notions of identity in the subcontinent. A focus on political development over time reveals significant disparities between Hindus and Muslims during British rule, which would have great impacts on the Indian and Pakistani transition processes. Using Linz and Stepan�s �five arenas of democracy� as an organizational schema, a diverse array of democratizaion theories are applied to empirical evidence from each state at the time of independence. Analysis reveals that the favorable political, social, and economic conditions, and institutions of governance in India in 1947 made democratic consolidation more likely in India than in Pakistan. Chapters two and three analyze the development of democratic institutions in India and Pakistan from 1947 to the present. India, benefiting from favorable conditions as well as elites who underwent a process of political learning during the colonial era, was able to craft stable and effective representative institutions. The legal system, governance structure, and electoral system established in India allowed for the institutionalization of democratic norms and procedures in Indian social and political life. Constructions of Indian national identity, as well as a range of formal and informal power-sharing arrangements, were also successful in uniting India�s diverse population without suppressing sub-national forms of identity. In Pakistan, inexperienced political elites engaged in a range of undemocratic tactics and behavior that became deeply entrenched in the political system. Group conflict and ethnic factionalism quickly emerged due to Pakistan�s unrepresentative governance structure, and they were exacerbated by attempts to impose a unified national identity on the country�s populations. The rapid development and heightened political and cultural importance of the Pakistani military and the inefficiency of democratic systems in the state allowed the armed forces to repeatedly assert their control over the political process. In comparing the development of democratic institutions in India and Pakistan, it is clear that unequal legacies of colonial rule as well as the decisions of individual elites affected the design of the governance structures, rate at which democratic procedures became established, institutional effectiveness, and ability to manage social diversity in each state. These differences led to rapid democratic consolidation in India, and a repeatedly stalled or reversed transition process in Pakistan.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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