Book Review – The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan

Maya Tudor, The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, xvi+240 pages, 2013, Rs 795.

What are the reasons that some developing countries, on deliverance from colonial rule, are able to usher in democratic systems, while many others face instability and an authoritarian structure of governance? Some studies on aspects of this vital question have been conducted by Western scholars interested in developments in the developing world. One such study is the one under review by Maya Tudor, currently a Fellow in Politics at St. John’s College, Oxford University, who has spent some time in the Indian subcontinent and studied the political trends in the area in a comprehensive manner. Predictably, she has chosen to compare the political transition after Indian independence and the partition of the country in 1947, based on the developments prior to independence. She seems to have found some convincing answers to the oft-repeated question why India developed into a working democracy while Pakistan had to experience autocracy soon after independence was won, even though the political parameters for social and political development seem similar on the surface in both countries.