The Promise of Power (Paperback)

Maya Tudor

ISBN 10: 1316635244 / ISBN 13: 9781316635247

Published by Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017

About this Item

Paperback. 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. Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others are perpetually prone to instability and authoritarianism? In The Promise of Power, Maya Tudor proposes a new understanding of the regime divergence between India and Pakistan following their twin independences in 1947. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781316635247

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Promise of Power (Paperback)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1316635244
• ISBN 13: 9781316635247
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others are perpetually prone to instability and authoritarianism? Despite broadly similar historical and political legacies, India's and Pakistan's regimes diverged radically after independence. In The Promise of Power, Maya Tudor seeks to explain why this occurred through a comparative historical analysis. Drawing on interviews, colonial records and early government documents, Tudor challenges the prevailing explanations of democratization, which attribute political outcomes directly to low levels of economic development and high levels of inequality. Instead, she suggests that the emergence of a stable democracy in India and an unstable autocracy in Pakistan is best explained by the historically-specific interests of the dominant social group which led each independence movement as well as by the varying strength of the political parties which were created to pursue those interests.

About the Author

Maya Tudor is a Fellow in Politics at St John's College, Oxford. Her dissertation, upon which this book is based, won the American Political Science Association's Gabriel Almond Award for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics.