How do we understand the nature and diversity of populist politics, in developed and developing countries? Righteous Demagogues provides a novel approach grounded in democratic theory, inequality, and party competition. It argues that populists are successful when they evoke the moral contract--that states are obligated to redress certain types of inequality--and promise its restoration, in ways that resonate across the normal lines of social division and partisanship. These changes in political competition can spur confrontations with the opposition and state institutions, leading to populist rejection or authoritarian governance.
How do we understand the nature and diversity of populist politics, in developed and developing countries? Righteous Demagogues provides a novel approach grounded in democratic theory, inequality, and party competition. It argues that populists are successful when they evoke the moral contract--that states are obligated to redress certain types of inequality--and promise its restoration, in ways that resonate across the normal lines of social division and partisanship. These changes in political competition can spur confrontations with the opposition and state institutions, leading to populist rejection or authoritarian governance.
Patchwork States argues that the subnational politics of conflict and competition in South Asian countries have roots in the history of uneven state formation under colonial rule. Colonial India contained a complex landscape of different governance arrangements and state-society relations. After independence, postcolonial governments revised colonial governance institutions, but only with partial success. The book argues that contemporary India and Pakistan can be usefully understood as patchwork states, with enduring differences in state capacity and state-society relations within their national territories. The complex nature of territorial governance in these countries shapes patterns of political violence, including riots and rebellions, as well as variations in electoral competition and development across the political geography of the Indian subcontinent. By bridging past and present, this book can transform our understanding of both the legacies of colonial rule and the historical roots of violent politics, in South Asia and beyond.
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