Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I: The Political Economy of Democratic Decline

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Part of Mini-Conference

• Learning from Global Democratic Challenges and Innovations Mini-Conference I

Session Description

Democracy in South Asia is in a period of decline. In India the focus of most scholarship has been on the ruling government’s hostility to religious minorities, but the government has also reduced political competition through the introduction of electoral bonds and suppressing dissent. In Bangladesh and Sri Lanka ruling parties have used state agencies and courts to restrict political competition, a pattern possibly halted by the latter’s economic crisis. Pakistan is in a moment of turmoil with charges of corruption against civilian politicians threatening to undermine its fragile electoral democracy. In this panel we consider the role of economic interests in enabling/driving/slowing democratic decline in South Asia.
The Chair, notes that both India and Pakistan have experienced recent, right-wing populist politics that, in India, led to the consolidation of elected authoritarianism and in Pakistan, to the rupture of the populist project and more uncertain outcomes. How might we understand populist convergence and subsequent regime divergence in political economy terms? He argues that the answer is to be found in the differences in interests between big business and small and medium enterprises. This suggests that party-business elite linkages represent a significant factor in the outcomes of populist mobilizations.
One participant will discuss how the 2013 Companies Act pressed corporations and NGOs into collaborations in the development sector. The introduction of grant cycles, impact assessments, award competitions, and accounting requirements by corporate boards to civil society organizations led to rapid shifts in how CSOs operate. The incentives to grow their institutional capacity and formalize their operating processes along with disincentives to be critical of corporate led economic growth are constraining India's discourse about economic development and social inclusion. What is described as the corporatization of civil society is undermining India’s ability to imagine, and create alternatives to corporate dominance.
Another participant will focus on a single sector, mining, where negative externalities for local communities and the environment are immense and the benefits tend to be concentrated in the hands of a few corporate actors. She argues that over the last two decades the avenues for democratic participation first expanded significantly from 2004-2014 but subsequently have eroded in the post-2014 period. Under the BJP governments in power since 2014, we have seen a return of mining governance to a more opaque and restricted domain, and an increase in the power of mining companies to self-regulate. The political economic form this takes is less pro-business than it is partisan business, with the benefits accruing to a handful of government-aligned corporate houses.
A third panelist enquires into how the international political economic context shapes democracy in Pakistan. He suggests that political power in Pakistan is exercised not merely by domestic ruling classes, but in alliance with sometimes conflicting and sometimes cooperating international actors: foreign states, corporations, and finance. Broadly, he argues that Pakistan is a semi-colonial and dependent country, whereby international investors and financial institutions play the roles of spoilers in democratic consolidation by supporting a ruling class coalition that transcends narrow military vs. civilian divides.
A fourth panelist will discuss how the active separation of the political and economic spheres in Bangladesh has allowed for vast economic gains, lauded globally, alongside democratic backsliding in the last decade or so. She will discuss how the ruling party effectively consolidated power in this period through a multi-pronged effort. Domestically, it involved gaining control over public institutions, the curtailing of free speech, mass arrests and forced disappearances, and the fashioning of an Islamist threat that parallels Islamophobia in India despite it being a Muslim-majority country, all the while touting a variety of development projects. Internationally, it meant garnering support from the regional hegemon, India.
The last participant asks, what are the sources of democratic change? She argues that we need a theory of effective democratic practices to understand the sources of and nature of democratic change in India. She argues there are three sources: Majoritarian nationalism, corporate power, and state power underpinned by new developmentalism. By exploring the multiple sources of one common concept—effective practices of democracies—this author furthers and develops the theory of change and democratic backsliding in one of the most celebrated democracies of the world, contributing towards a framework and new empirical insights.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Cosponsor

• Division 62: South Asian Politics

Chair

• Adnan Naseemullah King's College London

Presenters

• Nandini Deo Lehigh University

• Aseema Sinha Claremont Mckenna College

• Sunila S. Kale University of Washington

• Noaman G Ali University of Bath

• Navine Murshid Colgate University