Majoritarian Politics Research Articles

How Does it Feel to be a Problem? Inclusion and Exclusion and Quebec’s Bill 21

This paper seeks to analyze Bill 21 through the frameworks of minority rights and reasonable accommodation. It problematizes the “problem” of the veil, arguing that legislative deveiling, notably Bill 21, is a symptom of a larger crisis, namely the triumph of majoritarian politics over the constitutional protection of minority rights. Worse, while such laws are the result of popular discomfort with difference, their enactment further entrenches the binaries and assumptions that fuel such populist discomfort. As such, Bill 21 provides a useful case study of the role of law in responding to popular anxieties and in shaping perceptions of difference and equality in the first place.

Notwithstanding Minority Rights

This comment takes up the question of what considerations ought to shape our understanding of section 33. We do not engage directly with the attributes or failings of the current and limited judicial treatment of section 33. Instead, our focus is on the political ramifications of using section 33 in the current political climate. More specifically, we use Quebec’s Bill 21 as a reference point to highlight some deep issues about how section 33 has been integrated into and shapes constitutional discourse. Our analysis pays critical attention to the unique position of Muslim women in Quebec and is framed from the perspective of intersectional feminist equality thinking. From this grounding, we argue that the current legal treatment of section 33 establishes, contrary to the promises of proponents of the override, no equilibrium between parliamentary and judicial powers. Rather, section 33 unavoidably guarantees that majoritarian politics prevail, irrespective of the minority rights issues at play. Prioritizing majoritarian opinion and interests in this manner, we suggest, threatens great damage to the constitutional democracy we think we all should want. The result is a democratic comity in which critical aspects of substantive equality and participatory rights for the most vulnerable and marginal are negated.

‘To instil the feeling of patriotism’*: Bharat Mata temples in the construction of the religion of nationalism in India

ABSTRACT The religious veneration of Bharat Mata began with the three temples honouring her in the Hindu pilgrimage sites of Varanasi, Haridwar, and Ujjain. They symbolise the nation by anthropomorphising the territory and establish the relationship between nation-divine and its citizen-devotee through ‘darshan’ wherein the latter is imbued with feelings of patriotism. By studying the narratives emerging from these spaces, referred to as temple publics, it has been argued that they are reflective of majoritarian politics, where the aim is to construct a new religion called nationalism, with Bharat Mata at its helm and a set of rituals and unique traditions.

Impact of Majoritarian Politics on Crimes Against Caste-Based Minorities

Impact of Majoritarian Politics on Crimes Against Caste-Based Minorities

The divergence of South Korea's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) from the EU ETS: An institutional complementarity view

AbstractEmissions trading schemes (ETS) have spread across the globe to tackle climate change. However, limited attention has been given to how ETS characteristics and designs differ and why. We use the concept of institutional complementarity to explore how the EU ETS and South Korea's ETS (K‐ETS) adapt to complement established political economy. The EU ETS is characterized as a market with stakeholder ownership, while the K‐ETS is more regulatory in nature with government leadership. The EU ETS complements a decentralized political system with liberalized energy market, and the K‐ETS became compatible with the centralized majoritarian politics and a regulated electricity market. The ETSs have evolved incrementally, and they are not likely to link in the foreseeable future due to divergence. We suggest a strong focus on “how to adapt” an ETS to its own institution rather than adopting the established blueprint model in countries with a strong regulatory style of governance.Related ArticlesCaliskan, Cantay. 2020. “The Influence of Elite Networks on Green Policy Making.” Politics & Policy 48(6): 1104–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12382.Tanaka, Yugo, Andrew Chapman, Tetsuo Tezuka, and Shigeki Sakurai. 2020. “Multiple Streams and Power Sector Policy Change: Evidence from the Feed‐In Tariff Policy Process in Japan.” Politics & Policy 48(3): 464–89. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12357.von Malmborg, Fredrik. 2023. “Combining the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Argumentative Discourse Analysis: The Case of the ‘Energy Efficiency First’ Principle in EU Energy and Climate Policy.” Politics & Policy 51(2): 222–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12525.

From decolonisation to authoritarianism: the co-option of the decolonial agenda in higher education by right-wing nationalist elites in Russia and India

This article discusses how the critique of the monopoly of Western liberal thought through the decolonisation movement that was intended to increase the number of voices heard has been co-opted by nationalist politics in India and Russia. The debates in higher education in these countries reflect current key questions on the nature of the Indian and Russian nations—both under respective nationalist governments—where both are advocating a cutting off from Western modernity. Using Mignolo’s concept of “de-linking” that was intended to raise up non-Western ways of thinking, the article shows that India and Russia have adapted and simplified decolonial discourse to reject “Western-influenced” critiques of development, inequality, and authoritarianism. Under political pressure from these authoritarian regimes, universities have helped to embed repressive majoritarian politics through anti-Western rhetoric disguised as de-linking, enabling democratic backsliding by discrediting opposition. This is done to protect a new identity based upon state conceptions of traditional values, paradoxically erasing minority voices that do not fit neatly into the unified national narrative. When universities are branded as Western agents for being critical of local traditions and schools of thought, the space for critical thinking and democratic debate is ultimately removed, leaving those who oppose Putin and Modi with no safe way to engage with political discourse, and this actually undermines the intentions of decolonial philosophy.

Using language to help people, or using people to help language? A capabilities framework of language policy

AbstractLanguage policy is a hugely diverse field, united only by the intent to influence language use in some way. Much early research in the field asserted that language policy had an emancipatory drive, to empower downtrodden minorities against the cruelty or indifference of majoritarian politics. But over the years, critical accounts have increasingly questioned who precisely benefits from promoting minoritized languages. Indeed, can the language itself, valorized as an emblem of heritage, sometimes become invested with its own separate value? Can that value even outweigh concerns over improving people's prospects and capabilities? In what follows, I compare that balance between people's capabilities and the language itself, across a range of cases. I show especially how a growing focus on “new speakers” affects that balance.

Contested net-zero target setting in a transitioning country: The case of South Korea

Many countries have set net-zero targets to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goals. However, we do not know why and how transitioning countries have set net-zero targets, given the narratives of economic growth persistent in them. We address this gap by examining the 2050 carbon neutrality target setting in South Korea and assessing its potential to foster transitioning to a carbon neutral society. We draw from Historical Institutionalism to examine the political process of the carbon neutrality agenda setting and from 20 semi-structured interviews and policy documents as material. We find that net-zero target setting was possible due to strong presidential drive with a turnover in majoritarian politics. However, the agenda setting was controversial with limited public engagement. Although the net-zero target seems radical, the institutions change incrementally due to path-dependency in a developmental state. We demonstrate that South Korea is not likely to transition to a low-carbon society in the foreseeable future as the Paris Agreement demands. The pathway is subject to political swings due to its incumbent political economy and low social acceptance. We suggest caution with net-zero declarations in countries that embrace development as they can amount to mere local political action rather than leading to genuine institutionalization.

The Remains of the Day: Re-tracing Archival Art through Dayanita Singh and Ali Kazim

The history of modern South Asian art has been fast-moving, but art that is about modern South Asian history is still in its infancy. While the art of the post-Independence era continues to wrest with the legacies of colonisation, fractured nationhood, majoritarian politics, and weakening secular legacies, there is a strain of this art preoccupied with the historical gaze. In relation to works of art by Dayanita Singh and Ali Kazim, the aesthetics of representing archives and archiving can be examined in order to explore the politics of nationalism and historical change, as well as the global neoliberal economies of institutional archiving practices. The tendency to look back constantly over the region's past raises questions about whom these artistic interventions address and the archival logics at work within this distinctive field of contemporary art.

Contemplating Peace between India and Pakistan

India-Pakistan relations are at an inflection point with India’s dramatic revocation of Kashmir’s autonomy and its desired objective to transform the nature of the Kashmir conflict from a “bilateral” (involving Pakistan) to a “unilateral” status (excluding Pakistan). Pakistan, on the other hand, has embarked on a diplomatic offensive making the case against India’s majoritarian politics in Kashmir as detrimental not only to the Kashmiris but also to the strategic stability between the two rivals. This article reasons that India’s and Pakistan’s dominant zero-sum strategies—premised on winning while ensuring the other’s loss—are least likely to come to fruition. Given the present nature of ties, the way forward is for the two states to engage in a minimalist framework where mutual interests, as opposed to dominant positions, are put forth as a basis for engagement. Second, engagement more than agreement should be the short- to medium-term goal. Finally, any talk during this time on freezing the Kashmir conflict is least likely to bring any long-term dividends for peace and stability between the two regional adversaries.

Language, religion, and identity: Hindi and Urdu in colonial and post-colonial India

ABSTRACT This paper traces the history of a widening distance and constructed difference between Hindi and Urdu, and their communal identification in colonial and post-colonial India. It examines how majoritarian politics has shaped the language related issues in independent India. Finally, based on limited fieldwork in the Indian city of Mumbai, this paper tries to find out what language does common people speak.

Is the Public Backlash against Globalization a Backlash against Legalization and Judicialization?

AbstractMany of the most visible examples of the backlash against multilateralism, globalization, and democracy do not target free trade, investment, or elections directly, but the judicial institutions that were created to protect the rights of traders, investors, and citizens. Is the backlash against globalization and democracy really a backlash against the growing ideological convergence on rule of law principles as appropriate standards for both international and domestic governance? This essay suggests that this might be so by highlighting that the rule of law does not just constrain the powerful, but also majoritarian politics. A new domestic ideological cleavage permeates many liberal democracies that is in part about liberal conceptions of justice. An illustrative empirical analysis shows that illiberal views about justice are negatively and significantly correlated with trust in European institutions.

Revisiting the Pasmanda Political Discourse: Feasibility, Failure and the Way Forward

This article attempts to revisit the Pasmanda political discourse (PPD) which is grounded on the premise that there exist a number of backward and dalit Muslims who remain under-represented and whose demands remain unheard in contemporary India. In recognising this reality, this article tries to understand the PPD from three perspectives. First, the feasibility and importance of the PPD in the context of the resounding victory of the National Democratic Alliance which has indicated that the present dispensation managed to dismantle caste-based politics in the last 2019 general elections. Second, it tries to explain the reasons for the failure of Pasmanda politics which could not make a headway in the Muslim community in general and Pasmanda Muslims in particular and also in other socio-religious groups and political parties, despite it being a century-old political discourse. Third, it seeks to articulate the way forward to strengthen and rejuvenate the idea of Pasmanda in India today which is witnessing a domination of majoritarian politics.

Toward a Global Intellectual History of “Minority”

Abstract The term minority is today applied to describe beleaguered, persecuted, and exiled people whose subordination is preserved or merely “tolerated” by majoritarian politics inherent to modern states. As this introduction indicates, however, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries minority politics became a rubric for sociopolitical emancipation, providing a framework for intellectuals in colonized Asia and Africa to question European powers' treatment of marginalized communities. Bar Sadeh and Houwink ten Cate contend that “minority” has unique value as an instrument for historical analysis that is restricted neither solely to minority-majority relations nor to debates about (political) representation. Instead, the authors propose a global intellectual history of “minority” as a concept and experience, which is explored in the essays compiled in this special section, “Minority Questions.” By examining the diverse genealogies of the concept of minority, the essays that follow provide a valuable contribution to efforts to redress historical wrongs, even as they offer a range of explanations for the enduring legacy and power of this multifaceted concept.

Majoritarian politics and hate crimes against religious minorities: Evidence from India, 2009–2018

• In 2014, the Hindu nationalist BJP won the national parliamentary elections in India. • The BJP’s exclusivist, nationalist ideology has constructed Muslims as the ‘other’. • BJP’s electoral victory in 2014 increased hate crimes against religious minorities. • Accounting for unobserved confounders does not change the results qualitatively. Did the unprecedented victory of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 national elections in India increase hate crimes against religious minorities? I investigate this question using a difference-in-difference methodology and a novel state-level panel data set for the period 2009–18. To provide context, I offer a brief historical account of Hindu nationalism and a descriptive account of anti-minority hate crimes in India between 2009 and 2018. Turning to the econometric analysis, I estimate a binary treatment regression model (states where BJP won the largest plurality of votes in the 2014 national elections form the treatment group). My results show that BJP’s electoral victory in 2014 caused an increase in the incidence of hate crimes against religious minorities, especially Muslims. I test for robustness of my results by using two falsification tests and a count data model specification. I account for possible omitted variable bias and compute bias-adjusted treatment effects. I conclude that unobserved confounders are unlikely to nullify the results.

Hindu majoritarianism, forms of capital, and urban politics

This article explores the remaking of ideas of the “ordinary citizen” in India in the context of Hindu majoritarian politics and changing relationships between the state and private capital. Focusing on one of India’s largest privately developed townships, DLF City, which adjoins Delhi, the article explores the ways in which activities by middle- and upper middle-class residents of DLF City produce new narratives of “ordinariness.” Within them, socioeconomically privileged groups come to be represented as “the common people,” contesting the postcolonial state’s historical focus on the welfare of marginal populations. The article suggests that contemporary narratives of ordinariness in India require an understanding beyond its deployment in critical social science literature where it is posited as a politics of speaking truth to power. The appropriation of ordinariness by the privileged in the Indian context is part of a new politics of class, caste, and majoritarianism.

Narendra Modi’s social media election campaign and India’s delegative democracy

ABSTRACT This paper qualitatively analyzes tweets sent by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and responses to the tweets in the month leading up to his May 2019 electoral win. Several dominant rhetorical themes emerged from the analysis of the data, including Modi as omnipresent and Modi as an advocate for democracy who encourages voters to vote. The dominant theme that emerged from his supporter’s responses was Modi as a leader who supports Hindu nationalism or Hindutva. Both Modi and his supporters presented him as a strong leader who could stand up to Islamic terrorism and one who would invest in national security and India’s army. The author concludes that India’s democracy, under Modi’s leadership, is akin to what Argentinian political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell has termed delegative democracy. Delegative democracy is marked by extreme individualism of the leader, majoritarian politics, and minimal emphasis on democratic institutional building. In both Modi’s and his supporter’s Twitter rhetoric, there was no commitment to inclusive representation within or strengthening of democratic institutions, and while allowing for effective contestation in the form of elections, there was no evidence of respecting India’s traditional constitutional norms, such as secularism and respect for minority rights.

A majoritarian basis for judicial countermajoritarianism

Judicial protection of disfavored minorities against oppressive legislation in majoritarian separation-of-power systems raises a puzzle: Why don’t legislative majorities enacting discriminatory legislation curb judicial power when judges use their power to protect minorities and stymie the legislation? We answer this question by showing that judicial protection of disfavored minorities can emerge as an unintended by-product of majoritarian politics. We develop a model that includes the two aspects of judicial review Alexander Hamilton discusses in The Federalist No. 78: Judicial protection of disfavored minorities against hostile popular majorities, and judicial protection of majority interests against legislative depredation. It is the institutional linkage between these functions that induces popular majorities, within limits, to side with judges against legislatures even when those judges protect minorities that popular majorities want to oppress.

Ethnic Conflict in the Indian Subcontinent: Assessing the Impact of Multiple Cleavages

As majoritarian electoral politics and religious conservatism are rising in the major multi-ethnic South Asian countries, such as India and Pakistan, the events of mob lynching, ethnic clashes and targeting non-plural and minority communities are becoming more frequent. This article analyses which cleavages of marginalisation make some ethnic groups prone to violent social movements vis-a-vis others. Theoretically, through social constructivism and horizontal inequality, the study argues that socioeconomic condition, religion and language are the three broad cleavages that influence political behaviour of ethnic groups. Explicating the theory about underlying versus facilitating conditions of ethnic–civil conflicts, this article examines the prerequisites of ethnic conflicts. Thereafter, it evaluates which single cleavages and combinations of the aforementioned cleavages increase the probability of conflict occurrence in the Indian subcontinent. The argument is empirically evaluated on a sample of 60 ethnic groups of the Indian subcontinents over the period of 1947–2013. We find that groups affected by reinforcing cleavages of religious and economic marginalisation, and religious, economic and lingual marginalisation have engaged in active violence over the period of our study. Additionally, the reinforcing cleavages of language and economy, and language and religion are associated with sporadic violence. Apart from the combined effects, we find that the ethnic groups facing economic disadvantage alone can also engage in violence.

Certifications of citizenship: the history, politics and materiality of identity documents in South Asian states and diasporas

Experiences in the post-partition Indian subcontinent refute the conventional expectation that the ‘possession of citizenship enables the acquisition of documents certifying it’ [Jayal 2013. Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 71]. Instead, identity papers of various types play a vital part in certifying and authenticating claims to citizenship. This is particularly important in a context where the history of state formation, continuous migration flows and the rise of right-wing majoritarian politics has created an uncertain situation for individuals deemed to be on the ‘margins’ of the state. The papers that constitute this special issue bring together a range of disciplinary perspectives in order to investigate the history, politics and materiality of identity documents, and to dismantle citizenship as an absolute and fixed notion, seeking instead to theorise the very mutable ‘hierarchies’ and ‘degrees’ of citizenship. Collectively they offer a valuable lens onto how migrants, refugees and socio-economically marginal individuals negotiate their relationship with the state, both within South Asia and in South Asian diaspora communities. This introduction examines the wider context of the complex intersections between state-issued identity documents and the nature of citizenship and draws out cross-cutting themes across the papers in this collection.