Milan Vaishnav Research Articles

Interview: Dr. Milan Vaishnav on the Threats to India’s Democracy

Interview: Dr. Milan Vaishnav on the Threats to India’s Democracy

Book review: Devesh Kapur & Milan Vaishnav, Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India

Devesh Kapur & Milan Vaishnav, Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, 311 pp., ₹750.

Crime, Politics, and the Future of India's Democracy

Abstract The review essays by Sunila S. Kale, Sandipto Dasgupta, and Michael J. Watts on Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics and Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption: State Formation and Political Culture in Nigeria raise a number of theoretically interesting questions about corruption, criminality, and their historical embeddedness. In particular, they force a rethinking of the commonly accepted notion that in many contexts the state, far from being seen as the remedy to citizens' core grievances, is the very source of the grievance to begin with. Paradoxically, elected representatives who helm the state apparatus are often the only actors with the authority and delegated powers to reform the state, something that they have few incentives to do.

The Criminal and the Corrupt

Abstract The commentaries in this Kitabkhana on Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays and Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption provide ample food for thought about the social-scientific study of crime and corruption. All agree on the importance of focusing on actual practice and not forcing non-Western societies into Eurocentric heuristics. They also pose urgent questions about what might constitute grounded theories of governance and productive avenues for pushing for reform and change.

The Power of Corruption

Abstract The central paradox of corruption in the political life of the global South is how such a widely despised phenomenon persists so untroubled by allthe negative attention. The two books under discussion—Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption and Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays—demonstrate that to make sense of that paradox, one needs to go beyond the dominant legal/technocratic understanding of corruption as either private acts of illegality or failures of the civic democratic process. Thinking further with the insights offered by those books, the article sugg ests that the phenomenon of corruption can only be made sense of when placed within the matrix of political and social power relations in the global South democracies. Corruptions appear not as distortions in an idealized democratic marketplace, but in the context of maneuvers of counter-democratic power to maintain existing hierarchies of dominations against tides of democratic mobilization, not merely as a subversion of the public good, but in reaction to attempts to make goods public.

Book review: Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav, eds. Rethinking Public Institutions in India

Devesh Kapur, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav, editors. Rethinking Public Institutions in India. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. 2017. 527 pages. ₹995.

Crime, Corruption, and Political Order in Nigeria and India

Abstract The subjects of crime and corruption remain perennially important for social scientists concerned with the nature of power, authority, and order. Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption: State Formation and Political Culture in Nigeria and Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics present two very different approaches to the study of crime and corruption, both rich, complex, and lucidly conveyed. As a scholar of South Asia, Kale's approach in the essay is to use insights from Pierce to reflect on the methodological and theoretical choices in Vaishnav's account of India's criminal politicians. In discussing each author's contributions, rather than providing a comprehensive account, Kale focuses on the parts of their arguments that are useful for comparative discussion.

Book review: Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, eds. Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India

Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, eds. Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. 2018. 324 pages. ₹750. ISBN: 9780199487271.

Devesh Kapur and Milan Vaishnav, eds. Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India

Most Indian voters will tell you that there are three things a politician needs to succeed: Media, muscle, and money. Costs of Democracy focusses on the latter and, by doing so, addresses a lacuna in our understanding of electoral dynamics in the world’s largest democracy. In contrast to the two other indispensable “M”s that a politician needs to emerge victorious, money and its role in shaping Indian political life remains understudied. Thus, the importance of the media—both conventional and...

Crime, Poverty, the Vernacular Press, and Political Participation in Democratic India - Politics and State-Society Relations in India. By James Manor. London: Hurst & Company, 2017. xviii, 366 pp. ISBN: 9781849047180 (cloth). - Political Communication and Mobilisation: The Hindi Media in India. By Taberez Ahmed Neyazi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xv, 234 pp. ISBN: 9781108416139 (cloth). - Politics of

Crime, Poverty, the Vernacular Press, and Political Participation in Democratic India - Politics and State-Society Relations in India. By James Manor. London: Hurst & Company, 2017. xviii, 366 pp. ISBN: 9781849047180 (cloth). - Political Communication and Mobilisation: The Hindi Media in India. By Taberez Ahmed Neyazi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xv, 234 pp. ISBN: 9781108416139 (cloth). - Politics of

When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. By Milan Vaishnav. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 440p. $40.00 cloth.

When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. By Milan Vaishnav. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. 440p. $40.00 cloth.

Book review: Milan Vaishnav, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics

Milan Vaishnav, When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. New Delhi: Harper Collins. 2016. 410 pages. ₹799.

The U.S. Aid 'Surge' to Pakistan: Repeating a Failed Experiment? Lessons for U.S. Policymakers from the World Bank’s Social-Sector Lending in the 1990s

During the 1990s, the World Bank and several donor partners provided a “surge” in external aid to support Pakistan’s social sectors. Despite the millions of donor dollars spent, the program failed. Poverty was higher in Pakistan in 2004 than it was a decade earlier when the antipoverty program began. This working paper re-releases a CGD analysis of the World Bank’s program, which was prepared in 2005 by CGD researchers Nancy Birdsall, Milan Vaishnav, and Adeel Malik. The analysis reports the many problems donors faced while working with Pakistan’s government to improve health and education outcomes. A new preface by Nancy Birdsall and Molly Kinder identifies the key lessons from this massive donor experiment that are relevant today, as the United States and other donors prepare to increase their assistance to Pakistan to historic levels.