Varieties of Democracy

Trajectories of the evolution of politics and society follows many different historical arcs, and thus, the idea of varieties of capitalism is almost conventional wisdom in the social sciences. This idea has been reinforced by the developmental state literature from East Asian cases such as Japan and South Korea and also, by the political economy literature from countries like Brazil and India. Suffice it to note from these examples that varieties of capitalism is a succinct way to analyse the differing trajectories of capitalist development, rooted in different kinds of articulation of engagements in politics and society with the core values of liberalism. Combining this postulation with the idea that democracy is closely related to the evolution of capitalism and is majorly structured by the history of colonialism, it is argued that democracy is not an undifferentiated phenomenon across time, geography and social context. There are varieties of democracy, both, across the temporal and geographical axes as well as within different parts of the same polity. The causal mechanisms, institutional expressions, relationship with democracy and liberalism and most certainly, institutional mechanisms deployed to entrench the idea, therefore, differ. Flowing from this is the question of the construction of the people – the demos, which in turn derives from myriad postcolonial factors – from the institutional architecture to the ideational hegemony; from governmentality to the literal construction of the modern state, and many more. The proposed paper will be a step towards thinking about the varieties of democracy, its relation to the varied constructions of the varied demos and its relation to liberal and/ or liberal forms that emerge in postcolonial contexts, drawn from the Indian experience.