The political determinants of central governments' economic policies in India: an empirical investigation

Close to the turn of the century and almost 45 years after Independence, India opened its doors to free-market liberalization. Although meant as the promise to a better economic tomorrow, three decades later, many feel betrayed by the economic changes ushered in by this new financial era. Here is a book that probes whether India’s economic reforms have aided the development of Indian Muslims who have historically been denied the fruits of economic development. Maidul Islam points out that in current political discourse, the ‘Muslim question’ in India is not articulated in terms of demands for equity. Instead, the political leadership camouflages real issues of backwardness, prejudice, and social exclusion with the rhetoric of identity and security. Historically informed, empirically grounded, and with robust analytical rigour, the book tries to explore connections between multiple forms of Muslim marginalization, the socio-economic realities facing the community, and the formation of modern Muslim identity in the country. At a time when post-liberalization economic policies have created economic inequality and joblessness for significant sections of the population including Muslims, the book proposes working towards a radical democratic deepening in India.

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The Politics of Global Health Inequalities

The Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190456818.013.15 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 58-84

Author(s):

Yusra Ribhi Shawar ◽

Jennifer Prah Ruger

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Critical Theory ◽

Global Health ◽

Health Inequalities ◽

Health Inequality ◽

The Political ◽

State Of Health ◽

Political Determinants ◽

The Social

Careful investigations of the political determinants of health that include the role of power in health inequalities—systematic differences in health achievements among different population groups—are increasing but remain inadequate. Historically, much of the research examining health inequalities has been influenced by biomedical perspectives and focused, as such, on ‘downstream’ factors. More recently, there has been greater recognition of more ‘distal’ and ‘upstream’ drivers of health inequalities, including the impacts of power as expressed by actors, as well as embedded in societal structures, institutions, and processes. The goal of this chapter is to examine how power has been conceptualised and analysed to date in relation to health inequalities. After reviewing the state of health inequality scholarship and the emerging interest in studying power in global health, the chapter presents varied conceptualisations of power and how they are used in the literature to understand health inequalities. The chapter highlights the particular disciplinary influences in studying power across the social sciences, including anthropology, political science, and sociology, as well as cross-cutting perspectives such as critical theory and health capability. It concludes by highlighting strengths and limitations of the existing research in this area and discussing power conceptualisations and frameworks that so far have been underused in health inequalities research. This includes potential areas for future inquiry and approaches that may expand the study of as well as action on addressing health inequality.

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The Political Economy of Famine: The Ukrainian Famine of 1933

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050720000625 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 81 (1) ◽

pp. 156-197

Author(s):

Natalya Naumenko

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

The Political ◽

Economic Policies ◽

Excess Deaths

The 1933 Ukrainian famine killed as many as 2.6 million people out of a population of 32 million. Historians offer three main explanations: weather, economic policies, genocide. This paper documents that (1) available data do not support weather as the main explanation: 1931 and 1932 weather predicts harvest roughly equal to the 1924–1929 average; weather explains up to 8.1 percent of excess deaths. (2) Policies (collectivization of agriculture and the lack of favored industries) significantly increased famine mortality; collectivization explains up to 52 percent of excess deaths. (3) There is some evidence that ethnic Ukrainians and Germans were discriminated against.

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The Political Determinants of Solidaristic Reform

Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State ◽

10.1017/9789048537648.012 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 295-316

Keyword(s):

The Political ◽

Political Determinants

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Google Politics: The Political Determinants of Internet Censorship in Democracies

Political Science Research and Methods ◽

10.1017/psrm.2017.1 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 245-263 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Stephen A. Meserve ◽

Daniel Pemstein

Keyword(s):

Intellectual Property ◽

Relative Influence ◽

Digital Content ◽

The Political ◽

Information Flows ◽

Electoral Institutions ◽

Political Determinants ◽

Country Characteristics ◽

User Data ◽

Internet Censorship

The expansion of digital interconnectivity has simultaneously increased individuals’ access to media and presented governments with new opportunities to regulate information flows. As a result, even highly democratic countries now issue frequent censorship and user data requests to digital content providers. We argue that government internet censorship occurs, in part, for political reasons, and seek to identify the conditions under which states censor. We leverage new, cross-nationally comparable, censorship request data, provided by Google, to examine how country characteristics co-vary with governments’ digital censorship activity. Within democracies, we show that governments engage in more digital censorship when internal dissent is present and when their economies produce substantial intellectual property. But these demand mechanisms are modulated by the relative influence that democratic institutions provide to narrow and diffuse interests; in particular, states with proportional electoral institutions censor less.

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