South Asia in Transition

Democracy, Political Economy and Security

B. Chakma

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137356642
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Trade & Tariffs
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Combining theoretical and empirical insights, this book provides an in-depth analysis of South Asia's transition in the areas of democracy, political economy and security since the end of the Cold War. It provides a close scrutiny to the state of democracy and political economy in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Part I

Democracy in South Asia

Introduction

South Asia’s history of democracy presents a mixed picture. While India and Sri Lanka have a better record of democratic rule, the other states of the region – Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Maldives and Bhutan – have experienced significant military and/or authoritarian rule in their political evolution.

Compared to most of the countries in South Asia, Sri Lanka has a better record of democratic rule. It has maintained consistency in democratic transition from one government to the next since the colonial time to the present. Democracy in India has a similar history; its democracy can be messy, thanks to its diversity, poverty and underdevelopment, and authoritarian tendency is not absent in the Indian democratic set-up. But, India has largely managed, except for a brief period of emergency rule from 1975 to 1977, democratic transition of power since it gained independence in 1947. Indeed, India is a significant case of successful democracy in the non-western world. The democratic credentials of Sri Lanka and India are not flawless, yet their persistence in the preservation of democratic norms is a significant achievement simply because of the fact that many of their peer post-colonial states could not sustain such a consistency in democratic rule.

The other states of South Asia have varied experience in their political evolution. Pakistan has experienced repeated military takeover of power and the military has ruled the country for almost half of its existence as an independent state. It was only in May 2013 for the first time in Pakistan’s history that a democratic transition of power took place. Before that the tenure of each elected government was cut short by direct or indirect military intervention. Although democracy has gained some ground in Pakistan, the military still wields profound influence in the running of the state, in particular in the areas of security and key foreign policy issues. The civil–military relationship in that country is still significantly tilted in favour of the latter. So, Pakistan still has some way to go in terms of democratic consolidation, although the democratic trajectory in that country is positive.

Bangladesh has a similar history like that of Pakistan in terms of democratic experiment, although its record in this regard is slightly better. Democracy in Bangladesh has gained significant ground since the overthrow of the Ershad military regime in 1990 although it yet had to endure two years of indirect military rule from 2007 to 2008. The key challenge to Bangladesh’s democracy is that the politics is very confrontational, particularly between the two major political parties of the country – the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Bangladesh also still has some way to go in terms of democratic consolidation. But democracy in all likelihood will gain further consolidation in the years to come.

Nepal presents an interesting picture in terms of democratic rule. The Maoist insurgency ravaged the country for over a decade from 1995 onward. The negotiated end of the insurgency through the signing of a peace deal in November 2006 was a major development, which created a ground for Nepal to return to the path of democracy. Since then the Nepalese democratic experiment has been messy and the Nepalese have yet to find a consensus on a draft constitution. The latest Constitutional Assembly elections took place on 19 November 2013, in which the Nepalese Congress Party won. Notwithstanding all odds and continuous bickering of the Nepalese political parties, the most positive aspect of the Nepalese democratic process is that since the end of the Maoist insurgency, the country has maintained a democratic process and violence has not returned. Once the Nepalese elites find a solution to the impasse on the constitution, Nepal is expected to thrive gradually as a democratic state.

Bhutan is an interesting case of democratic experiment. The country was an absolute monarchy before the king of Bhutan began to voluntarily relinquish power eventually leading to the first parliamentary elections in March 2008. After the completion of the first elected parliament, Bhutan held its second general elections in July 2013 in which the opposition party won the most seats and formed the next government. Bhutan is steadily making progress in democratic consolidation and is building its democratic institutions.

After 30 years of authoritarian presidential rule, the Maldives held their first multi-party democratic elections in 2008 in which the incumbent president Mamoon Abdul Gayoom was defeated. The first five years of democratic rule was turbulent but Maldives held its second multi-party presidential election in September 2013, which was annulled by the country’s Supreme Court. After more than a month of legal wrangling eventually the presidential election took place in early December 2013, in which Abdullah Yameen was elected as the country’s next president. The Maldives has consolidated its democratic rule in recent years and its democratic trajectory is positive notwithstanding the confrontational nature of the country’s political process.

Afghanistan historically has been an unstable state and a fertile ground for big power rivalry. Military coup and revolution have been integral elements of the country’s history. It has frequently been subjected to the military occupation of outside powers. In the 1980s, the country was under the occupation of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, it experienced a civil war in which the Pakistan-backed Taliban, a hard-line Islamist group, eventually captured power in Kabul in 1996. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Taliban was toppled by the US and since 2001, the NATO forces have been fighting alongside the Hamid Karzai government against the Taliban insurgency. Notwithstanding the raging insurgency of the past decade, the country has maintained a semblance of democratic rule with an elected president and a parliament. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2014. The country is yet to chart a clear democratic path and the future of Afghan democracy is uncertain.

The above snapshot on the state of democracy in South Asia presents an optimistic outlook about the region’s democratic future. In the post-Cold War era, democracy has gained significant ground in the South Asian states. For the first time in the region’s history, all the states in the region now have democratically elected governments. This is a significant development in the region.

Given the above background the most significant issue now is how far the transition from military/authoritarian rule to democracy and greater consolidation of democratic rule have changed the strategies and behaviour of the regional states toward each other and, consequently, how far they have altered interstate relations in the region.

To assess the above issues, this Part looks at three states – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The key reason for the selection of these three states is that they are the key regional pattern setters. An in-depth analysis of the state of democracy in the three states and democracy’s impact on their external behaviour will shed significant light on whether South Asia is transforming.

1

Transition to Democracy, Political Capital and the Challenge of Regional Transformation in South Asia: Indian Democracy in Comparative Perspective

Subrata K. Mitra

Introduction

The search for regional integration in the age of globalization might come across as paradoxical. After all, in an age when border-crossing individuals and capital, border-defeating technology and terror, and border-defying international norms and powers are the salient facts of political life, does it make sense still to talk about the need for regional transformation, or indeed, even to take regions seriously? The emergence of the European Union, and in smaller ways, the ever closer integration of the states of South East Asia, Latin America and more recently, even Africa, are emphatic refutations of the assertion implied in this question. Counter-intuitive though it may sound, states are better placed to compete internationally when they are effectively ensconced in a secure regional hinterland, and can count on regional trade and aid – particularly against natural disasters – and support at the level of global politics. When one turns the general query to South Asia, the record of regional transformation – with the moribund if not still-born SAARC, eternally bickering India and Pakistan, and more recently, the confrontation between ‘South’ India and Sri Lanka on the issue of international sanctions in which Delhi remains less than neutral, the record comes across as dismal relative to other regions of the world, with no particularly encouraging signs of imminent change for the better. Why that is the case becomes clear when one looks analytically and comparatively at cases of regional transformation that are more successful than South Asia.

Regional transformation and integration entail major structural changes in the institutional architecture of nation states as well as the creation of new inter-regional regimes for the movement of goods, ideas and people, reduction of tariffs and bureaucratic barriers. Democratization gives a boost to the process. Most important of all, reducing the probability of interstate war, cross-border terrorism and removal of sanctuaries for drugs and arms, smugglers, terrorists and fugitives seeking refuge in neighbouring countries help in developing mutual trust and legitimize intra-regional institutions. However, the creation of these structures in the absence of appropriate actors – as one can very well see from the waning SAARC – is a non-starter. Moreover, the presence of actors in key positions can help promote regional transformation if and only if it enhances the interests of key actors. In this context, I argue in this chapter that democratization which turns rebels into stakeholders can offer them an incentive to reach out across the borders to others with complementary interests.

South Asian transformation is crucially contingent on India as much for her location – India is situated at the geographic centre of South Asia – as because of her embedded democracy, emerging economy and growing arsenal of lethal weapons, which make the country a crucial piece on the chessboard of South Asian politics. Has India ‘made an impact on state attitude, perception, interest and behaviour in South Asia, and in turn how such impact has set a pattern of cooperation or conflict in the region?’¹ To this vast question, in view of the constraint of space, this chapter can offer only a limited answer.² Since democracy is of crucial importance to actors’ strategies to the three cornerstones of this book, namely, civic and political community within and across the states of the region, internal and regional markets and economic ties and security, I ask here, what has made democratic transition possible and enduring in India, and what implications can one draw from the Indian case for democratization in South Asia, and regional transformation in the area as whole?

The success of India’s democracy, in sharp contrast to its arrested growth or outright failure in the neighbouring countries, deeply influences the comparative analysis of South Asian democracy. The Indian way, consisting of universal adult franchise and equal rights to the people of the country, ensconced within a political system based on federalism and secularism, emerges from this comparison as the appropriate path of transition from colonial to democratic rule. This leaves India’s neighbouring countries, particularly Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bhutan which attach a different salience to the relationship of religion and politics or to the indivisibility of unitary power of the nation, with an invidious choice between their identity as written into their constitutions, and a radical change in their institutional arrangement in order for them to have a reasonable chance to achieve Indian-style liberal democracy. The chapter seeks to overcome this India ‘bias’ by developing a more general model of democratization that would pay adequate attention to the specific contexts of the countries that surround India. Rather than focusing on the variables such as tolerant Indian culture and secularism, putatively indispensable to India’s success, the approach taken here develops a general variable called ‘political capital’ – an effective combination of structure and agency variables such as law and order management, strategic reform and constitutional incorporation of core social values – which constitutes an efficient path for the transition from authoritarian rule to popular democracy.

The Indian solution to the transition to democracy and its consolidation thus becomes a special case of a general model. Context and historical path dependency, rather than cultural specificity, I argue in this chapter, is a more likely reason for the differential performance of liberal democracy in South Asia. As a corollary, I suggest that, based on the general model of transition to democracy and its consolidation that I propose here, liberal democracy is likely to develop in different forms in the countries of South Asia. Seen from this angle, when it comes to democracy, one can retain one’s links to the deeper layers of one’s culture and memory and yet reach the modern world of liberal democracy. These hybrid political systems that draw on western liberal democratic forms and non-western cultures can pave the way for democracy in its most universal meaning, namely, enfranchisement, entitlement and empowerment of the citizens as a whole, leading to the creation of a sense of efficacy, legitimacy and trust.

The comparative analysis of democracy in South Asia should begin with a basic question of concept and method for a comparative analysis of democracy. One must ask squarely: what is comparative (i.e. cross-nationally measurable through objective indicators) and what is ‘authentic’ (contextual, constructive) with regard to democracy in South ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Regional Transformation and South Asia: A Framework of Analysis
• Part I Democracy in South Asia
• Part II Political Economy
• Part III Security
• Conclusion
• Index