
The Promise of Power
The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others have slid into instability and authoritarianism? To address this classic question at the center of policy and academic debates, The Promise of Power investigates a striking puzzle: why, upon the 1947 Partition of British India, was India able to establish a stable democracy while Pakistan created an unstable autocracy? Drawing on interviews, colonial correspondence, and early government records to document the genesis of two of the twentieth century's most celebrated independence movements, Maya Tudor refutes the prevailing notion that a country's democratization prospects can be directly attributed to its levels of economic development or inequality. Instead, she demonstrates that the differential strengths of India's and Pakistan's independence movements directly account for their divergent democratization trajectories. She also establishes that these movements were initially constructed to pursue historically conditioned class interests. By illuminating the source of this enduring contrast, The Promise of Power offers a broad theory of democracy's origins that will interest scholars and students of comparative politics, democratization, state-building, and South Asian political history.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- The Promise of Power
- Title
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Table, figures and maps
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- 1 How India institutionalized democracy and Pakistan promoted autocracy
- 2 The social origins of pro- and anti-democratic movements (1885โ1919)
- 3 Imagining and institutionalizing new nations (1919โ1947)
- 4 Organizing alliances (1919โ1947)
- 5 Freedom at midnight and divergent democracies (1947โ1958)
- 6 The institutionalization of alliances in India, Pakistan, and beyond
- References