Recommending Books for Purchase (Bulletin 18 - May 2018): Political Science

Publisher : Oxford University Press

The period between the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Partition of India in 1947 was witness to a unique experience of "imagining" nations in Bengal. With neither the Bengali Muslims nor the Bengali Hindus envisioning homogenous ideas about nationhood, many contesting and alternativevisions emerged, both within and between the two communities. These "other" nationalisms were not "anti-national", but creeds of either a "federal Indian nation" with "regional autonomy", or a "regional nation" on its own strength. In Different Nationalisms, Semanti Ghosh goes beyond the Muslim-Hindu and nationalism-communalism binaries to reveal an unfamiliar terrain of hidden contestations over the concept of nation in colonial Bengal. For several of these competing ideologies, Partition, rather than being an expected oreven desired outcome, was an anti-climax in their long-drawn battle for a nation.

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Publisher : Oxford

India's democracy often receives extreme responses of exaggerated appreciation or enlarged criticism. It is necessary that public debates on democracy in India are based on a more informed analysis. This short introduction will help the reader to put the various debated issues in perspectiveand arrive at a critical appreciation of the endeavour called democracy. The book takes the reader through a tour of key issues of contestations and mobilization that have occupied the terrain of democratic politics in India. Calling India's democracy "work in progress", this short tract drawsattention to the central paradoxes of Indian democracy. While taking a long term view of democracy, the book is alive to the more contemporary challenges as well. Readers may agree or disagree, but they cannot ignore the central argument that while India's democracy wades through many paradoxes, it faces the challenge of distortion if majoritariantendencies become pervasive and if the core feature of diversity is weakened. This book is a timely warning about the possibilities and distortions that democracy in India contains.

Publisher : Oxford University Press

This study examines the political economy of how institutional designs for governance are created, and the role of local politics in shaping institutions. While some recent approaches to governance and decentralization are normative, economistic, and technocratic, The Local in Governanceunderlines the importance of the political. It studies the different architectures of decentralization, based on multiple ideas and values on the ground. The idea of the political in decentralization establishes that unlike uniform normative outcomes, diverse local institutions lead to differentoutcomes as they interface with micro politics of various hues. Drawing empirical evidence from the forestry and water sectors in India, the author concludes that it is in the creation of decentralized institutions, and in the political economy of their functioning, that outcome paths ofdecentralization - democratic, devolutionary, and accountable (the good) - or the new forms of recentralization and deconcentration (the not so good), are determined.

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Eleven economically backward hill states of India sharing international boundaries comprise the group of "Special Category States". These states are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand. Lackingseverely in economic resources and being geographically isolated from the rest of the country, they suffer from various drawbacks. Economic growth of many of them have also been stymied by prolonged phases of violent militancy. To address their problems, they have been awarded the "Special Category" status by the Centre, an extra-Constitutional arrangement that gives them access to liberal Central plan assistance. Objective assessment of the impact of such assistance has never been made in the public domain. Under theexisting arrangements of which the accountability structure is very weak, these states will permanently remain "special category states", irrespective of their fiscal, financial and socio-economic performance. Now that fresh demands are being raised by some states for this status, these issues areassuming increasing importance. In this book, Bhattacharjee explores the reality of the special category states, going down to the roots of their backwardness and examining these in the context of asymmetric federalism. He evaluates their socio-economic progress as well as public financial management ever since the status wasfirst awarded in 1969 by analysing stupendous amounts of data that he has meticulously collected and presented in this book.

Publisher : Princeton Univeristy Press

The project of twentieth-century sociology and political science--to create predictive scientific theory--resulted in few full-scale theories that can be taken off the shelf and successfully applied to empirical puzzles. Yet focused "theory frames" that formulate problems and point to relevant causal factors and conditions have produced vibrant, insightful, and analytically oriented empirical research. While theory frames alone cannot offer explanation or prediction, they guide empirical theory formation and give direction to inferences from empirical evidence. They are also responsible for much of the progress in the social sciences. In Usable Theory, distinguished sociologist Dietrich Rueschemeyer shows graduate students and researchers how to construct theory frames and use them to develop valid empirical hypotheses in the course of empirical social and political research. Combining new ideas as well as analytic tools derived from classic and recent theoretical traditions, the book enlarges the rationalist model of action by focusing on knowledge, norms, preferences, and emotions, and it discusses larger social formations that shape elementary forms of action. Throughout, Usable Theory seeks to mobilize the implicit theoretical social knowledge used in everyday life. Offers tools for theory building in social and political research Complements the rationalist model of action with discussions of knowledge, norms, preferences, and emotions Relates theoretical ideas to problems of methodology Situates elementary forms of action in relation to larger formations Combines new ideas with themes from classic and more recent theories