Conceptualizing and measuring subnational democracy across Indian states

Abstract

India is often credited for its success as the world's largest democracy, but variation in subnational democracy across its states has not been systematically incorporated into scholarship on subnational regimes. This paper develops a conceptualization of subnational democracy based on four constitutive dimensionsturnover, contestation, autonomy and clean electionsand introduces a comprehensive dataset to measure each of the dimensions between 1985 and 2013. The inclusion of Indiaan older parliamentary democracy with a centralized federal systembroadens the universe of cases for the study of subnational regimes, and reveals variation across constitutive dimensions that has not yet been theorized. The paper shows that threats to subnational democracy come from multiple directions, including the central government and non-state armed actors, that subnational variation persists even decades after a transition at the national-level, and that subnational democracy declines in some states in spite of the national democratic track record.

Régimen electoral de género y representación política de las mujeres a nivel subnacional en México

“…El objetivo de esta investigación es identificar las razones que inciden en el nivel de representación descriptiva de las mujeres en las legislaturas de las entidades federativas mexicanas en el período 1987-2019. Para ello se emplea el método comparado subnacional (Snyder 2001;Harbers et al 2019), junto a técnicas cuantitativas, para identificar las propiedades, comparar las semejanzas y diferencias y establecer las variaciones en las unidades subnacionales (legislaturas). El estudio se nutre del neoinstitucionalismo feminista a partir del cual se identifican las desigualdades de género que afectan la competencia política y supone enfocar el análisis en el modo en que las normas construyen, reproducen, afectan y mantienen dinámicas de poder generizadas (MacKay et al 2010).…”

Thirty years of Regional and Federal Studies

“…These include measurements of territorial self-governance (Trinn and Schulte 2020) and state structures (Dardanelli 2018). But they also include broader questions of subnational democracy (Giraudy 2015;Harbers, Bartman, and van Wingerden 2019;Harbers and Ingram 2014), of regional quality of government (Charron and Lapuente 2013), or of local/municipal authority (Ladner, Keuffer, and Baldersheim 2016). Researchers are also developing subnational datasets and indicators within specific policy domains such as climate competence (Bromley-Trujillo and Holman 2020), EU affairs (Tatham 2011), welfare (Giraudy and Pribble 2019) or immigration (Zuber 2020).…”

In the Hindutva Heartland: Bharatiya Janata Party’s Superficial Democratization in Gujarat

“…In his time, the Lokayukta (public ombudsman) post was vacant for 7-8 years, and Right to Information (RTI) activists faced institutional challenges and were often assaulted by 'strongmen' to the point of murder (as in the case of Amit Jethwa, for instance). Indeed, Gujarat witnessed a 'democratic backsliding' during Modi's chief ministership, though the state fared worse than most Indian states, including neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, before his time on parameters of electoral democracy (Harbers et al, 2019).…”