39 research outputs found
La démocratie locale dans les métropoles indiennes
Le bilan de la politique indienne de dĂ©centralisation, aprĂšs douze ans de mise en oeuvre, est trĂšs mitigĂ©. Le renouvellement dĂ©mocratique quâelle promettait se limite largement au renouvellement du personnel politique local, grĂące aux quotas Ă©lectoraux (pour les femmes, et pour les castes et les tribus rĂ©pertoriĂ©es). Pourtant, dans de nombreuses mĂ©tropoles, on observe une implication croissante des habitants dans la gestion des affaires locales, principalement Ă travers des associations de rĂ©sidents qui se rĂ©clament de la dĂ©mocratie participative et se prĂ©sentent comme les porte-parole de citadins citoyens. Cet article identifie quatre facteurs explicatifs de la lĂ©gitimitĂ© nouvelle de ces associations comme acteurs de la gouvernance urbaine, et conclut par une rĂ©flexion sur les rapports (de classe) entre les dimensions participative et reprĂ©sentative de la dĂ©mocratie locale en Inde.The Indian decentralization policy launched in the mid-nineties has borne mitigated results. The democratic renewal that it heralded seems largely limited to the renewal of local political personnel through electoral quotas (for women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). Yet in many Indian megacities today, one can observe an increasing involvement of residents in the management of local affairs, mainly through neighbourhood associations that invoke participative democracy and claim to be the spokespeople of urban citizenship. This paper identifies four factors that explain the new legitimacy of these associations as players in urban governance; and it concludes with consideration of the relationship, informed by class categories, between the participative and representative aspects of local democracy in India
Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and its Discontents: An Indian History
Citizenship is a notoriously ambiguous and contested concept. Its ambiguity stems from the fact that it refers at the same time to a normative and a positive reality; to the ideal and the actual; to the moral and the legal. In her latest book, Niraja Gopal Jayal endeavors to âdocument the Indian idea of the citizen across the twentieth century, primarily as a relation between the individual and the state, but also as a relation between citizensâ (p. 2). She disentangles the many meaningsâwith..
Studying Elections in India: Scientific and Political Debates
Election studies (which are here defined as scholarly work focusing on the major phases of the electoral process, i.e. the campaign, the vote, the announcement of results and subsequent government formation) constitute a distinct sub-genre of studies on democracy, which focuses, so to speak, on the âmechanicsâ more than on the âsubstanceâ of representative democracy. This sub-genre, being relatively more visible than other studies of representative democracy, has specific implications, in the academic but also in the political arena, which are the focus of this critical review of the literature on Indian elections since the 1980s. The paper argues that election studies are really in between science and politics, and that it is important, therefore, to contextualize them
Political Representation in the Discourse and Practices of the âParty of the Common Manâ in India
One of the many challenges presented by populism concerns its relationship with political representation. What happens when an anti-politics movement wins elections? This article offers an analysis of the exercise of power by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, Party of the Common Man), which has been ruling the city-state of Delhi since 2015, in order to bring elements of answer to this question. On the basis of discourse analysis as well as direct observation of meetings, the article first identifies a series of populist tropes in the official discourse of the AAP, including a de-emphasis on representation to the advantage of participation. It then describes the two main participatory schemes implemented by the AAP government since 2015, and shows that these generate, in different ways, a magnification of the mediation work that is central to political representation at the local level in the Indian context. Finally, the article argues that the party has been developing, through these participatory schemes, a form of âinclusive representationâ (Hayat, 2013), in which inclusion is linked to mobilization
âWhat is new is the comprehensive nature of the political assault on academic institutionsââAn Interview with Niraja Gopal Jayal
Niraja Gopal Jayal is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research, at the crossroads between political theory and the study of Indian politics, focuses on four main areas: democracy, representation, citizenship and governance (including local governance, and gender and governance). She is presently working on the crisis of the public university in India. Interview STLR: Niraja, you have previously written on ..
The Redistribution of Representation through Participation: Participatory Budgeting in Chengdu and Delhi
A strong contention of the ârepresentative turnâ is that representation is consubstantial with politics (Saward, 2010). One way to test the heuristic value of this vision is to look for representation in an institution that was historically built against representation, namely participatory budgeting (PB), a democratic innovation that has spread globally with exceptional rapidity. The literature on PB identifies two types of relationships between participation and representation: (i) participation âchallengesâ (Houtzager & Gurza Lavalle, 2009) existing forms and principles of representation (through âassumed representationâ by civil society activists; or through âcitizen agentsâ; Montambeault, 2016); or (ii) participation is âinstrumentalisedâ (Fischer, 2012) by classic forms and actors of representation. On the basis of a comparative analysis of PB experiences in Chengdu (China) and Delhi (India), we argue in this article that a third type of relationship can be observed: participationâas implemented through PBâcan also redistribute representation insofar as new, official representative roles are created. Moreover, looking at these new roles provides important clues about the principles of representation that are implemented and therefore about the transformative nature of PB
Introduction. Contextualizing and Interpreting the 15th Lok Sabha Elections
Most of the papers presented in this special issue of SAMAJ are the outcome of a workshop organised by the Centre de Sciences Humaines in New Delhi in July 2009. By then the results of the 2009 general elections had been largely commented upon already. The workshop was therefore not meant to discuss electoral results per se, but rather to have specialists discuss papers that considered elections as an analyzer of political dynamics that most authors usually studied in more ordinary times. As ..
Introduction. Urban Democracy: A South Asian Perspective
The âurban questionâ has attracted increasing attention since the 1990s in the South Asian context because the issues at stake take on a particular urgency in the subcontinent for several reasons. A first, obvious reason is the increasing (and even strategic) importance of cities from a demographic, political and economic perspective. South Asia is home to 5 of the 10 largest citiesâin fact, megacitiesâin the world. At the same time, with an urban population of 485 million, South Asia remains..
CEIAS â Centre dâĂ©tudes de lâInde et de lâAsie du Sud
Blandine Ripert, StĂ©phanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, AurĂ©lie Varrel, chargĂ©es de recherche au CNRS Dynamiques contemporaines en Asie du Sud DestinĂ© avant tout aux Ă©tudiants de master, ce sĂ©minaire a pour objectif dâapporter des Ă©lĂ©ments de comprĂ©hension de lâAsie du Sud contemporaine, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire. Nous avons examinĂ© un certain nombre de phĂ©nomĂšnes sociaux et politiques contemporains, Ă diffĂ©rentes Ă©chelles. Ce sĂ©minaire sâest appuyĂ© sur des exemples tirĂ©s des recherches en ..
CEIAS â Centre dâĂ©tudes de lâInde et de lâAsie du Sud
Blandine Ripert, StĂ©phanie Tawa Lama-Rewal, AurĂ©lie Varrel, chargĂ©es de recherche au CNRS Dynamiques contemporaines en Asie du Sud DestinĂ© avant tout aux Ă©tudiants de master, ce sĂ©minaire a pour objectif dâapporter des Ă©lĂ©ments de comprĂ©hension de lâAsie du Sud contemporaine, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire. Nous avons examinĂ© un certain nombre de phĂ©nomĂšnes sociaux et politiques contemporains, Ă diffĂ©rentes Ă©chelles. Ce sĂ©minaire sâest appuyĂ© sur des exemples tirĂ©s des recherches en ..