Rethinking the Developmental State Model: Divided Leviathan and Subnational Comparisons in India

Sinha, Aseema

doi:10.2307/4150190

Cited by 34 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…As the final section of this paper will elaborate, moving beyond the government‐investor relationship in characterising regulatory developments potentially draws in literature from political sociology that explores the developmental state as an institutional trajectory distinctive of the non‐OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development) world (Evans 1995; Trubek 2008). The developmental state literature emphasises different configurations of state and civil society and different patterns of engagement between them compared to regulatory state literature, but linkages between the two are gradually emerging (Sinha 2003; Jordana 2011), especially in the context of exploring the redistributive functions of state policy (Riesco 2007).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the rise of the regulatory state of the South*

Dubash

Morgan

2012

Regulation & Governance

116

119

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This paper, and the special issue it introduces, explores whether, and how, the rise of the regulatory state of the South, and its implications for processes of governance, are distinct from cases in the North. With the exception of a small but growing body of work on Latin America, most work on the regulatory state deals with the US or Europe, or takes a relatively undifferentiated "legal transplant" approach to the developing world. We use the term "the South" to invoke shared histories of many countries, rather than as a geographic delimiter, even while acknowledging continued and growing diversity among these countries, particularly in their engagement with globalization.We suggest that three aspects of this common context are important in characterizing the rise of the regulatory state of the South. The first contextual element is the presence of powerful external pressures, especially from international financial institutions, to adopt the institutional innovation of regulatory agencies in infrastructure sectors. The result is often an incomplete engagement with and insufficient embedding of regulatory agencies within local political and institutional context. A second is the greater intensity of redistributive politics in settings where infrastructure services are of extremely poor quality and often non-existent. The resultant politics of distribution draws in other actors, such as the courts and civil society; regulation is too important to be left to the regulators. The third theme is that of limited state capacity, which we suggest has both "thin" and "thick" dimensions. Thin state capacity issues include prosaic concerns of budget, personnel and training; thick issues address the growing pressures on the state to manage multiple forms of engagement with diverse stakeholders in order to balance competing concerns of growth, efficiency and redistribution.These three themes provide a framework for this special issue, and for the case studies that follow. We focus on regulatory agencies in infrastructure sectors (water, electricity and telecoms) as a particular expression of the regulatory state, though we acknowledge that the two are by no means synonymous. The case studies are drawn from India, Colombia, Brazil, and the Philippines, and engage with one or more of these contextual elements. The intent is to draw out common themes that characterize a "regulatory state of the South," while remaining sensitive to the variations in level of economic development and political institutional contexts within "the South."

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the rise of the regulatory state of the South*

Dubash

Morgan

2012

Regulation & Governance

116

119

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“…At the same time, water scarcity in Saurashtra and especially in Kutch has been a major argument in favour of the Sardar Sarovar Project as a whole and the drinking water pipeline in particular (Mehta, 2005;Aandahl, 2010); we will see below how the Narmada pipeline project helps to assimilate minority regions into a political and economic agenda largely dominated by Hindu central/south Gujarati interests. Sinha (2003) notes that although state intervention in the economy at India's national level is generally regarded as a failure, Gujarat has long exhibited classic characteristics of a developmental statedefined by state direction of a capitalist economy, typically through investment, coordination with the private sector, and targeted incentives. Johnson (1999: 38) identifies four features of the developmental state:…”

Section: Independence and The Creation Of Gujaratmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nation-building, industrialisation, and spectacle: Political functions of Gujarat’s Narmada pipeline project

Luxion¹

2017

Preprint

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Since 2000 the Indian state of Gujarat has been working to construct a state-wide water grid to connect 75% of its approximately 60 million urban and rural residents to drinking water sourced from the controversial Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River. This project represents a massive undertaking – it is billed as the largest drinking water project in the world – and is part of a broader predilection toward large, concrete-heavy supply-side solutions to water insecurity across present-day India. This paper tracks the claims and narratives used to promote the project, the political context in which it has emerged, the purposes it serves and, following Ferguson (1990), the functioning of the discursive-bureaucratic 'machine' of which it is a product.The dam’s reinvention as the solution to Gujarat’s drinking water shortfall – increasingly for cities and Special Industrial Regions – reflects a concern with attracting and retaining foreign investment through the creation of so-called 'world-class' infrastructure. At the same time, this reinvention has contributed to a project of nation-building, while remaining cloaked in a discourse of technological neutrality. The heavy infrastructure renders visible Gujarat’s commitment to 'development' even when that promise has yet to be realised for many, while the promise of Narmada water gives Gujarat’s leaders political capital with favoured investors and political supporters. In conclusion, I suggest that the success of infrastructure mega-projects as a political tool is not intrinsically tied to their ability to achieve their technical and social objectives. Instead, the 'spectacle' of ambitious infrastructural development projects may well yield political gains that outweigh, for a time, the real-world costs of their inequity and unsustainability.

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“…On India, see Rudolph and Rudolph (2001a, 2001b) on a post-1991 central government, which serves as regulator and fiscal disciplinarian. Sinha (2003, 2004), in contrast, finds central rules, provincial strategic choices, and subnational institutional variation explain the nature of reregulation.…”

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confidence: 99%

China and India in the Age of Globalization

Hsueh

2011

Comparative Political Studies

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In recent years, China and India have extensively liberalized their economies. They have departed from the East Asian developmental states, which have restricted foreign direct investment (FDI) to protect domestic industry, and the liberal FDI strategy of Latin America during a similar stage of development as they have eschewed dependent development. Instead, they have taken a "liberalization two-step," which follows liberalization with reregulation that varies across industrial sectors. Country and sectoral case studies demonstrate the perceived strategic value of a sector, sectoral characteristics, and the organization of state institutions shape the ways in which reregulation varies. Insulated from political pressures, the Chinese state shifts from universal controls on the aggregate level to selective controls at the sectoral level and adopts a bifurcated strategy in its reregulation. In India, the government liberalizes FDI according to state goals but reregulates as a function of sectoral interests arising from the legacy of its postindependence economic strategy.

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Rethinking the Developmental State Model: Divided Leviathan and Subnational Comparisons in India

Cited by 34 publications

References 3 publications

Understanding the rise of the regulatory state of the South*

Understanding the rise of the regulatory state of the South*

Nation-building, industrialisation, and spectacle: Political functions of Gujarat’s Narmada pipeline project

China and India in the Age of Globalization

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