Modernizing peasants and 'master farmers': all-India crop competitions and the politics of progressive agriculture in early independent India

In the years following independence, looking toward agricultural self-sufficiency, India's national leadership sought to identify cultivators endowed with the daring, grit, and experimental character needed to actualize the promise of plenty. Drawing on Western modernization theory and the idioms of colonial and nationalist economics, India's bureaucrats and politicians contrasted the nation's “progressive farmers” with the passivity and superstition alleged to be characteristic of the majority of peasants, establishing crop competitions and the title of Krishi Pandit—“master farmer”—to reward and trumpet these qualities. Yet the progressive farmers winning these titles were not the agrarian poor, but rather an ascendant, self-cultivating peasantry armed with the capital and connections needed to raise their yields. In a subsequent era of egalitarian reform, exemplified in the Community Development Program, these same progressive farmers continued to bag awards but bucked planners' expectations that they would serve as natural leaders in villages. As these producers mobilized politically, and India's bureaucrats and politicians moved toward the Green Revolution consensus that agricultural productivity would require an inequitable concentration of inputs, progressive farmers emerged as “bullock capitalists,” a demand group that would transform national politics but do little for the aims of equity and rural development.Accepted manuscrip

Corruption and the military in politics: theory and evidence from around the world

Recent theoretical developments and case study evidence suggests a relationship between the military in politics and corruption. This study contributes to this literature by analyzing theoretically and empirically the role of the military in politics and corruption for the first time. By drawing on a cross sectional and panel data set covering a large number of countries, over the period 1984-2007, and using a variety of econometric methods substantial empirical support is found for a positive relationship between the military in politics and corruption. In sum, our results reveal that a one standard deviation increase in the military in politics leads to a 0.22 unit increase in corruption index. This relationship is shown to be robust to a variety of specification changes, different econometric techniques, different sample sizes, alternative corruption indices and the exclusion of outliers. This study suggests that the explanatory power of the military in politics is at least as important as the conventionally accepted causes of corruption, such as economic development.corruption; military in politics; cross sectional; panel data

Civil-Military Relations Beyond Dichotomy: With Special Reference to Turkey

Cataloged from PDF version of article.For a better grasp of the role of militaries in political systems one should get beyond dichotomous approaches. This study identifies three distinct but interpenetrating realms in a polity: social, political and military. Based on the nature of the military’s relations with social and political spheres and actors, it delineates four types of militaries: professional, nation’s army, predatory praetorian and popular praetorian. This article also shows that the Turkish military constitutes one of the rare epitomes of popular praetorian military and discusses the current state and prospects of civil-military relations in Turkey

Karl Polanyi in Budapest: On his political and intellectual formation

Copyright © Archives Européennes de Sociologie 2009.A major thinker and inspiring teacher, Karl Polanyi's contributions have long been influential in a variety of disciplines, notably economic sociology and economic history. Two of his innovations, substantivist economic anthropology and the “double movement thesis,” are recognized as seminal. All of the works for which he is known, however, were written late in life, when in exile, and very little is known of his Hungarian writings, virtually none of which had, until now, been translated. Despite his fame, the biographical literature on Polanyi remains modest: some studies provide invaluable insights, yet all are brief. This article attempts to make some headway in remedying these lacunae. It sketches the contours of that extraordinary historical-geographical conjuncture in which he was formed, and explores his intellectual and political engagements in the Galilei Circle and the Radical Bourgeois Party. It seeks in particular to elucidate the complex roles played by questions of nation, ethnicity and class in the life of the young Karl Polanyi

War and the Power of Warmakers in Western Europe and Elsewhere, 1600-1980

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51057/1/287.pd

The Role of the Natural Resource Curse in Preventing Development in Politically Unstable Countries: Case Studies of Angola and Bolivia

For about three decades now, development economics researchers have consistently claimed that third world resource-rich countries were not developing as well and/or as fast as they were expected to, given that their natural resources endowment was considered a great opportunity for development. The phenomenon of underperformances concerning primary commodity exporters relative to non resource-rich countries has been often referred to as to the “Natural Resource Curse”. The authors use an historical and political approach to the manifestations of the curse in the specific cases of Angola and Bolivia, both resource abundant countries, but suffering among the lowest development standards in their respective continents. In chapter one, the authors make a quick review of the literature explaining both causes and manifestations of the Resource Curse. The authors go beyond the classical Dutch Disease explanations and show how natural resources lead to behaviours of looting, rent-seeking and civil confrontations. In chapter two, the authors present the framework where they adjust the “African Anti-growth Policy Syndromes” described by Paul Collier to the specific case of the Natural Resource curse. In addition, they add some considerations of the negative effect of natural resource extraction by analysing externalities on environment, education and inequalities. Chapters three and four analyse the case studies of Angola and Bolivia respectively, emphasizing the role of historical context explaining policy behaviour and the critical impact of unexpected windfalls and sudden price collapses. The authors find that natural resources could sustain long lasting conflicts, but that conditions of fractionalization of society determine the possibility of conflict. A country divided in two rigid political factions is more prone to internal conflict, like in Angola, whether in countries where frontiers between blocks are blurried or the country is multi-polar, like in Bolivia, the risks of long-lasting civil war seem less important. Apart from conflict, the authors show that lack of institutions and inequality make of natural resources a source of political instability that has far more impact on economic performances than other factors.Natural Resource curse, Rent-seeking, Civil War, Angola, Bolivia

Alexander II and Gorbachev: The Doomed Reformers of Russia

During Mikhail Gorbachev’s tenure as head of the Soviet Union, Russian and foreign journalists sometimes compared him to Tsar Alexander II for his sweeping, but destabilizing reforms. The purpose and significance of this thesis is to test this concept, moving from journalistic opinion to scholarly investigation. Both Gorbachev and Alexander II attempted to reform their country in order to modernize. The reforms of both leaders had many extreme unintended consequences, ultimately ending in the assassination of Alexander II and the ousting of Gorbachev, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union

The Bangladesh military: the armed forces of the ruling classes, 1996

Of the three states that emerged from the remnants of the British Indian empire, India alone has avoided the experience of military rule. Both Bangladesh and Pakistan, which are making fitful attempts to restore democratic institutions, have witnessed long periods of military rule-often brutal to circumvent the aspirations of the majority of their population who live in abject poverty. Consequently, what is sought in this research is to understand the phenomenon of military rule in Bangladesh. The primary focus of this research, therefore, is the emergence of the Bangladesh military as a political entity in August of 1975. It is not the intention here to describe the various coups and counter coups that followed the August carnage, but rather an attempt has been made to analyze the socio-political nature of the regimes that have emerged and continues to dominate the political life of the society. This study traces the social origins of Bangladesh military; its political advent; various 1 social-engineering' it has pursued to stay in power and other 'means' to stifle dissent. When these aspects of 'praetorianism' are clearly focused the reader conjures up an image of blatant human rights violations and economic degradation perpetuated by one of Third World's most notorious armed forces - the Bangladesh military. The thesis attempts to analyze the problems of Bangladesh's political development from a marxist perspective using the tool of class analysis to determine the nature of social formation since the military coup. Therefore, the paper rejects conventional frameworks which are either conservative or liberal for understanding Bangladesh's political development under military regimes and espoused a radical frame of reference, i.e., class analysis to perceive the 'situation' which has manifested in the growth of a military � bureaucratic oligarchy whose fortunes are intimately tied up with access to external resources in the name of 'modernizing' Bangladesh