Crafty oligarchs, savvy voters: democracy under inequality in rural Pakistan

By:

Mohmand, Shandana Khan

Series: South Asia in the social sciencesPublication details: Cambridge University Press 2019 CambridgeDescription: xvii, 298 p. Includes bibliographical references and indexISBN:

9781108473637

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

320.95491 M6C7

Summary: How does democracy empower marginalized voters under conditions of inequality? The author probes into this question grounding her research in the context of Pakistan, an emerging democracy whose voters have actively been involved in defining its political history but about whom we know very little. They turn up in sizable numbers to vote during elections, even under military rule, prompting all kinds of contradictory stereotypes about how Pakistani rural voters behave as electoral cannon fodder. But no one has looked very closely at why they vote as they do, or why they vote at all when their political agency is severely limited by high socio-economic inequality. By using original data collected across different villages and households in rural Pakistan, this book finds that electoral politics enables even the most marginalized voters to strategically further their interests vis-à-vis elite groups, but that persistent inequality limits their ability to organize or compete. The book's analysis is based on original data, the likes of which has not been used to study Pakistan's voting majority before Offers a micro-level perspective with new and deeper insights into potential directions for political reform Provides a new typology of voters, which nuances the usual dichotomy drawn between clientelism and programmatic politics https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/south-asian-government-politics-and-policy/crafty-oligarchs-savvy-voters-democracy-under-inequality-rural-pakistan?format=HB

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Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Book	Ahmedabad General Stacks	Non-fiction	320.95491 M6C7 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		200336

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Table of contents:

Glossary of local terms
List of tables and figures
1. Introduction: rural voters under inequality in Pakistan
2. Colonial constructs and Post-colonial politics:
1849–2013
3. Sahiwal: from domination to inter mediation
4. Local competition and bargaining power: conceptualizing political engagement in rural Punjab
5. Bargaining with landlords: comparing political engagement in unequal contexts
6. Structural inequality and variations in political engagement
7. When do shifts in political engagement occur?
8. Conclusion: the future of Pakistan's democratic transition
Annex 1: chronology of political events in Pakistan
Annex 2: index of political engagement (IPE) scores for 38 villages
Annex 3: research instruments
Annex 4: detailed descriptions of household variables used in multivariate regression analysis
Bibliography
Index.

How does democracy empower marginalized voters under conditions of inequality? The author probes into this question grounding her research in the context of Pakistan, an emerging democracy whose voters have actively been involved in defining its political history but about whom we know very little. They turn up in sizable numbers to vote during elections, even under military rule, prompting all kinds of contradictory stereotypes about how Pakistani rural voters behave as electoral cannon fodder. But no one has looked very closely at why they vote as they do, or why they vote at all when their political agency is severely limited by high socio-economic inequality. By using original data collected across different villages and households in rural Pakistan, this book finds that electoral politics enables even the most marginalized voters to strategically further their interests vis-à-vis elite groups, but that persistent inequality limits their ability to organize or compete.

The book's analysis is based on original data, the likes of which has not been used to study Pakistan's voting majority before
Offers a micro-level perspective with new and deeper insights into potential directions for political reform
Provides a new typology of voters, which nuances the usual dichotomy drawn between clientelism and programmatic politics

https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/south-asian-government-politics-and-policy/crafty-oligarchs-savvy-voters-democracy-under-inequality-rural-pakistan?format=HB

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