Liberalization, globalization and the dynamics of democracy in India

In the closing decades of the twentieth century there has been an almost complete intellectual triumph of the twin principles of marketization (understood here as referring to the liberalization of domestic markets and freer international mobility of goods, services, financial capital and perhaps, more arguably, labour) and democratization . A paradigm shift of this extent and magnitude would not have occurred in the absence of some broad consensus among policymakers and (sections of) intellectuals around the globe on the desirability of such a change. There seems to be a two-fold causal nexus between marketization and democracy. The first is more direct, stemming from the fact of both systems sharing certain values and attitudes in common. But there is also a second more indirect chain from marketization to democracy, which is predicated via three sub-chains (i) from marketization to growth, (ii) from growth to overall material development welfare and (iii) from material development to social welfare and democracy. We examine each of these sub-links in detail with a view to obtaining a greater understanding of the hypothesized role of free markets in promoting democracies. In the later part of the paper we examine the socio-economic outcomes governing the quality of democracy in a specifically Indian context

Workplace Democracy Implies Economic Democracy

This article mounts a defense of economic democracy that piggybacks on argu-ments for workplace democracy. It is addressed to those republicans and egalitar-ians who are committed to workplace democracy. The article argues that those workplace democrats should, first, be opposed to private property, and, second, be committed to economic democracy, or—what amounts to the same thing—so-cialism. Workplace democracy is the idea that workers ought to possess control rights over the conditions of production in their places of work. Socialism is the idea that workers and citizens ought to possess control rights over the conditions of production in the economy as a whole. To be clear: I am not claiming that allrepublicans or democrats are socialists. All I am claiming is that republicans, democrats, and co-travelers who affirm workplace democracy thereby commit themselves to socialism. Those workplace democrats cannot disembark the dem-ocratic train at workplace democracy; they must ride it to the very end, and that end is socialism. Call this the piggyback argument.The piggyback argument proceeds as follows. I begin by identifying the fundamental pro tanto normative principles that ground the main contemporary arguments for workplace democracy: republican (Section 1) and political-egalitarian (Section 2).1 I then argue for two theses. First, that the full realization of these principles is undermined by the existence of private property in the means of production. This is the anti-property thesis. Second, that avowal of work-place democracy on the basis of these principles commits those who avow them to economic democracy. This is the socialism thesis (Sections 3 and 5). I then rebut two influential objections to the piggyback argument. The first draws on an argument due to David Ellerman and Carole Pateman (Section 4) and the second on a time-honored Keynesian stratagem in favor of private investment (Section 6). I conclude by considering some institutional implications, including the old model of worker control based on workers’ councils (Section 7).The Institutions of Politics; Design, Workings, and implications ( do not use, ended 1-1-2020