Political Parties In South Asia

This book describes the countries of South Asia, and examines the reason for their successes and failures. It addresses the interrelationships among the states in the region and their roles in the international system, and discusses the political development of the region.

Political parties are recognized as a highly important instrument for the functioning of democratic politics. They are essential for state formation and the intermediation between the state and society. This book is a pioneering attempt to discuss and analyze the complex variations of the party landscape in South Asia. It pays special attention to the evaluation of the role of political parties in the creation of multicultural, pluralist, and democratic societies. The contributions to this volume come from indigenous authors who bear the necessary contextual knowledge needed to analyze the political parties in South Asia. This work helps explain why analytical concepts can provide explanations in some areas of this subject but fail in others. It also argues that the political parties in South Asia should not be assessed only through criteria taken from western experience. The material in this volume is sure to inform academic debate.

Title first published in 2003. Chowdhury looks at the problems of democratization and development as it relates to building democratic institutions in the newly democratizing countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

Revised and substantially updated, The new international politics of South Asia argues that the politics of the individual states of South Asia cannot be understood without reference to the regional and international context. The author emphasises the need to consider rapid political, social and economic change in the context of debates over ethnic identity and changes within the international system following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Recent changes have opened up new opportunities for the region, but have also exposed specific weaknesses. The author discusses India’s evolving relationship with the international economic system, economic reforms in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as key issues such as the regional position on the NPT treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, environmental issues, and the post-Cold War world order.

The book introduces central themes that have preoccupied the field of South Asian politics over the last few decades and identifies new, emerging areas of research. Presenting both general political theory and context-specific case studies, the collection draws attention to the methodological challenges of working on an area-specific theme and the importance of generating generalizable insights linked to theory. Hence it will be of interest for political scientists working on South Asian politics as well as on other non-Western societies. The collection represents an unusually broad survey of scholarship emerging from a range of leading academic centres in the field.