Laura Dudley Jenkins

Bio: Laura Dudley Jenkins is an academic researcher from University of Cincinnati. The author has contributed to research in topics: Caste & Affirmative action. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 10 publications receiving 355 citations.

The Success of India's Democracy

Abstract: List of contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Atul Kohli Part I. Historical Origins: 2. Indian democracy: the historical inheritance Sumit Sarkar Part II. Political Institutions and Democratic Consolidation: 3. India's federal design and multicultural national construction Jyotirindra Dasgupta 4. Center-state relations James Manor 5. Making local government work Subrata K. Mitra 6. Redoing the constitutional design: from an interventionist to a regulatory state Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph 7. The dialectics of Hindu nationalism Amrita Basu: Part III. Social Demands and Democratic Deepening 8. The struggle for equality: caste in Indian politics Myron Weiner 9. Sharing the spoils: group equity, development and democracy Pranab Bardhan 10. Social movement politics in India: institutions, interest, and identities Mary Katzenstein, Smitu Kothari, and Uday Mehta Bibliography Index.

Identity and Identification in India: Defining the Disadvantaged

Abstract: Can a state empower its citizens by classifying them? Or do reservation policies reinforce the very categories they are meant to eradicate? Indian reservation policies on government jobs, legislative seats and university admissions for disadvantaged groups, like affirmative action policies elsewhere, are based on the premise that recognizing group distinctions in society is necessary to subvert these distinctions. Yet the official identification of eligible groups has unintended side-effects on identity politics. Bridging theories which emphasize the fluidity of identities and those which highlight the utility of group-based mobilizations and policies, this book exposes didactic enforcement of categorizations, while recognizing the social and political gains facilitated by group-based strategies.

Legal Limits on Religious Conversion in India

Abstract: In recent years, more and more states in India have enacted laws to restrict religious conversion, particularly targeting conversions via "force" or "allurement." Current laws stem back to various colonial laws (including anticonversion, apostasy, and public-safety acts) in British India and several princely states. Implementing such laws seems to require judging the state of mind of the converts by assessing their motives and volition or, in other words, determining whether converts were "lured" or legitimate. In contemporary India, government assessments of the legitimacy of conversions tend to rely on two assumptions: first, that people who convert in groups may not have freely chosen conversion, and second, that certain groups are particularly vulnerable to being lured into changing their religion. These assumptions, which pervade the anticonversion laws as well as related court decisions and government committee reports, reinforce social constructions of women and lower castes as inherently na?ve and susceptible to manipulation. Like "protective" laws in many other contexts, such laws restrict freedom in highly personal, individual choices and thus must be carefully scrutinized. Comparing contemporary anticonversion laws and related commission reports in the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Chattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat, reveals embedded assumptions about the vulnerability of group converts, especially women, lower castes, and tribals. The newest acts in Rajasthan (2006) and Himachal Pradesh (2007) will be briefly discussed, but an older, unimplemented law (in Arunachal Pradesh since 1978) and potential new laws under discussion (in Jharkhand and Uttarakhand) are outside the scope of this article. The language of many of these laws skirts the question of judging individual volition on a case-by-case basis by condoning the assumption that certain groups are more easily tricked into conversion. For example, those found to be converting lower castes (Scheduled Castes),1 tribals (Scheduled

Competing Inequalities: The Struggle Over Reserved Legislative Seats for Women in India

Abstract: Introduction of the Women's Reservation Bill was stalled in Lok Sabha on Monday amid unprecedented scenes of snatching of papers from the Speaker and the law minister and the virtual coming to blows of members […]. As the shell shocked minister stood rooted to the spot, the member tore the papers with relish and flung them in the air provoking members from the treasury benches to storm the well. By this time, the well of the Lok Sabha looked like a veritable battle field with members from both sides preparing for a scuffle as the Speaker adjourned the House for the day.

Another people of India project: Colonial and national anthropology

Abstract: In a bookstore in delhi, a salesman, apprised of my interest in lower-caste politics, handed me a tome about the officially listed Dalit, or untouchable, groups, The Scheduled Castes (Singh 1995). The first thing to strike me was the cover, a glossy photograph of a presumably Scheduled Caste woman with her back against a tall stone wall, surrounded by her four grubby kids. She is beaming. The second thing to strike me was the title of this new series, of which this was the second volume. The series, by the central government's Anthropological Survey of India, was called the People of India, a name that had been used for several rather notorious colonial ethnographic projects. Intrigued, I began to examine this most recent avatar of the People of India.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

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The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Why have the Middle East and North Africa remained so singularly resistant to democratization? While the number of electoral democracies has nearly doubled since 1972, the number in this region has registered an absolute decline.1 Today, only two out of twenty-one countries qualify as electoral democracies, down from three observed in 1972.2 Stagnation is also evident in the guarantee of political rights and civil liberties. While the number of countries designated free by Freedom House has doubled in the Americas and in the Asia-Pacific region, increased tenfold in Africa, and risen exponentially in Central and East Europe over the past thirty years, there has been no overall improvement in the Middle East and North Africa.3 Aggregate scores in 2002 differ little from 1972. Fifteen countries are designated not free, five partly free, and only one free (see Table 1). While a few countries, notably Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, and Yemen, have registered noteworthy progress toward political liberalization in the past decade, overall the vast majority of countries has failed to catch the wave of democratization that has swept nearly every other part of the world.

The Endurance of National Constitutions

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. How long should constitutions endure? 3. Conceptualizing constitutions 4. A positive theory of constitutional endurance 5. Empirical implications of the theory: identifying risks to constitutional life 6. An epidemiological analysis of constitutional mortality 7. Contrasts in constitutional endurance 8. Contexts of chronic failure 9. Conclusion.

State-Directed Development

Abstract: Why have some developing country states been more successful at facilitating industrialization than others? An answer to this question is developed by focusing both on patterns of state construction and intervention aimed at promoting industrialization. Four countries are analyzed in detail - South Korea, Brazil, India, and Nigeria - over the twentieth century. The states in these countries varied from cohesive-capitalist (mainly in Korea), through fragmented-multiclass (mainly in India), to neo-patrimonial (mainly in Nigeria). It is argued that cohesive-capitalist states have been most effective at promoting industrialization and neo-patrimonial states the least. The performance of fragmented-multiclass states falls somewhere in the middle. After explaining in detail as to why this should be so, the study traces the origins of these different state types historically, emphasizing the role of different types of colonialisms in the process of state construction in the developing world.

Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India

Abstract: Part I. The State and the Poor: 1. Seeing the state 2. Technologies of rule and the war on poverty Part II. The Everyday State and Society: 3. Meeting the state 4. Participation 5. Governance 6. Political society Part III. The Poor and the State: 7. Protesting the state 8. Postcolonialism, development studies and spaces of empowerment 9. Postscript: development ethics and the ethics of critique.