5 - Political institutions: federalism, informal networks, and the management of dissent

Summary

If we assume a hypothetical level of political strain at which apex reformers will reverse the direction of policy change – which, even in the absence of the means of measurement, we must – it is reasonable also to assume that a political system's capacity to reduce this strain will contribute to the sustainability of reform. This chapter attempts to demonstrate the contribution of India's political institutions to this process. It does so by examining the ways in which institutions act as a sort of scaffolding, distributing the ‘force’ of political resistance across a wider network of pressure points than is found in more centralised political systems with less fully elaborated institutions.

The argument, to use a different metaphor, is that the abandonment of reform by the apex elites who have initiated it is less likely when there exist additional circuits through which currents of political discontent can be channelled. Institutions thus serve, in a crude sense, as voltage transformers, or substations dispersing energies throughout a national power grid. The central theme in this chapter is that of burden-sharing – how it combines with the incentives outlined in the last chapter, and how this dynamic enhances the need for, and effective exercise of, advanced political skills, which is the topic of the next.

This chapter is divided into three sections. The first is a brief introduction to the way in which institutions will be treated in the discussion of the empirical material.