Abstract
This Review Has Been Retracted
This Review Has Been Retracted
Katharine Adeney's book sets a new standard in the literature on comparative federalism and South Asian studies. The book excels on three fronts. Firstly, it deftly links the leading theoretical literature on ethnic conflict regulation to historical analysis. Secondly, it achieves a great deal of depth in comparing India and Pakistan, an endeavour that has attracted surprisingly little attention. Thirdly, the author provides robust empirical results that ought to satisfy those who approach the study of comparative politics with a quantitative bent as well as those who tend to be sceptical of such methodological approaches.
The book contains eight chapters and three helpful appendices and is roughly divided into three themes. Chapters 1, 3 and 5 provide the theoretical backbone to this study. Although federalism has not received universal acceptance in resolving ethnic conflict in multi-ethnic societies, Adeney's main theoretical contribution is to argue that optimally devised federal institutions (or provincial design, as the author specifies) can minimise the probability of ethnic strife from occurring, but also serve as a tool for managing ethnic conflict once it has erupted.
In chapters 2 and 4, the author offers a detailed historical context on the development of post-independence federal institutions in India and Pakistan. Given their common colonial legacy, it is curious that few studies in comparative politics have used India and Pakistan as case studies. Adeney's contribution on this front alone advances and develops the links between area-specific studies of post-colonial societies and the domains of comparative politics. Adeney shows that the wide divergence in federal design after India and Pakistan's independence from Britain stems from a range of pre-independence institutions relating to provincial autonomy. As Adeney shows, these factors also contributed to the divergence in the robustness of democratic institutions in these two countries.
For students of comparative federalism, Adeney presents quantitative methods in innovative ways. For instance, she uses Taagepera and Shugart's well-known effective number of parties index (N) to calculate the effective number of religious and linguistic groups in British India. This approach shows that there was wide pre-independence disparity between India and Pakistan pertaining to linguistic heterogeneity, but not in terms of religious heterogeneity. Later in the book she demonstrates, quite convincingly, how India most optimally designed federal institutions that accommodated a high level of linguistic heterogeneity.
The book's impressive empirical underpinnings will be invaluable in predicting the expected levels of federal stability in India and Pakistan. As Adeney boldly asserts, ‘it is the denial of recognition and accommodation that provides the condition for conflict to flourish’ (p. 120). However, she also shows how the number and size of political parties and the relative weight of the ethnic background of bureaucrats can contribute to federal instability. In sum, the book provides fertile ground for policy makers in the design of functional federal institutions in multi-ethnic societies and will undoubtedly inspire future research using a larger sample of federations.
Lawrence Saez
(School of Oriental and African Studies)
This study focuses on the politics of economic relations after 1997 within a geographic entity termed Greater China, comprising China (PRC), Hong Kong and Taiwan. While the term Greater China is conceptually imprecise, the impact of this region on the global economy and on world politics is beyond dispute. Foreign exchange reserves alone collectively equal over 2 trillion dollars. It is this power-in-being and power potential that makes the study of this region one of enormous importance. How these three areas interact is thus a question that demands the attention of scholars and policy makers alike.
Intense interaction within Greater China involving social, economic, political, business and tourist contacts are a mosaic that is unpacked by using Kenichi Ohmae's variables of integration, interdependence, identity and independence. ‘Integration’ is explored in the context of reactions to the Asian financial crisis and how, and in what way, this crisis brought about structural transformations in the region. While the policies of Hong Kong and Taiwan differed from those of China, the immediate effect of the financial crisis on China was to strengthen capital flow management. Hong Kong's economy recovered, in part, from various measures initiated in China which galvanised interactions with neighbouring cities. For Taiwan, trade with China expanded such that by the end of 2003 almost 4,000 Taiwanese companies had invested more than one billion dollars in various Chinese industries.
‘Interdependence’ involves regional and global connections. Both Taiwan and China are members of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), with the result that integration has become firmly established. Strong and active coordination in economic policies should facilitate China's involvement in world activities as well as strengthening cross-straits ties. The central issue involving ‘Identity’ is the degree to which the component parts of Greater China share a common identity. Hong Kong is in a transitional state but the issue is complicated in Taiwan by the island's process of democratisation. While the people of Taiwan do not dispute that they are Chinese, they disagree with their mainland compatriots as to how they should live. This leads inevitably to the question of ‘Independence', which has been a central and contentious issue in cross-straits relations.
This book provides a competent overview of a complex topic. The author's insights are convincing and logically presented. One shortcoming is the lack of professional copy-editing, which occasionally distracts from an otherwise persuasive argument.
Richard W. Wilson
(Rutgers University)
Power and Contestation, written by two well-known political theorists-cum-activists in India, presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive chronicle of India's political history since 1989. Combining post-nationalist, feminist and new left perspectives, the authors candidly illustrate how the power of capital and nation in post-1989 India has constantly been contested in public and political discourse.
Narrating the political transformations and changing state–society relations in India in the last two decades, the authors argue that India post-1989 has witnessed a significant departure from its foundational principles such as Nehruvian socialism, secular nationalism and the principles of non-alignment. Although global factors like the ‘end of the Cold War’ and neoliberal reforms have significantly influenced developments in India, the authors argue that it was primarily the ‘internal conflicts and logics’ that propelled these transformations in India (p. 2). With the decline of the Congress party and the regionalisation of Indian politics, the issue of caste has re-emerged in the political sphere. The ‘mandalization of politics'(p.16) and the increasing political mobilisation of the lower caste has not only challenged the hegemony of the upper castes but also significantly influenced the imperatives of electoral politics in India. Secularism, a key political principle which traditionally provided considerable psychological and political security to religious minorities, has been under vigorous attack with the rapid rise of Hindutva politics manifested in the demolition of Babri Mosque in 1992 and the ‘state-sponsored massacre of Muslims in Gujarat’ in 2002 (p. 51).
Globalisation and neoliberal economic reforms, as updated incarnations of the old idea of development and modernisation, have dispossessed people, disrupted communities and destroyed their cultures and livelihoods without offering them any viable or dignified alternatives. As a response, various non-party political formations and grass-roots movements or what the authors call ‘new left’ movements have emerged to contest the exclusive and exploitative logic of global capital and its local ally the nation/state. The conflicts in the north-east and Kashmir region have also challenged the ‘idea of India'. Although global capital has helped the Indian nation to secure a place in the world, the authors conclude that ‘in India, as elsewhere in the world, the contestations to the power of Capital and Nation are so many, so varied, and so relentless’ (p. 181).
Since the book is written from the ‘new left’ perspective, it captures only one aspect of India's transformation since 1989. Despite this, the strength of the book is its numerous recent examples and candid analytic style, which make it an admiral contribution to the Zed Books series on ‘Global History of the Present’ and a rich resource for anyone working on India.
Sarbeswar Sahoo
(National University of Singapore)
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