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The State, Governance, and Policymaking

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Discipline Core SPG2PP402 4

Semester and Year Offered: Monsoon Semester, 2024

Course Coordinator and Team:      Ekta Singh

Email of course coordinator:           ekta@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites:            None

Aim  The course seeks to provide theoretical foundations in politics necessary to make sense of public policy landscape in India. More precisely, the course deals with the state and governance framework as it operates in India. It is now widely recognized that public policies are formulated and implemented within the framework of ‘governance’ suggesting an interaction between the state, market and society. Having said that, the state as the primary political authority remains the central focal point in governance and public policy. The state however, is not just an ensemble of ‘structures’ but also encompasses the political and social context or the ‘political culture’ within which these structures are embedded. It is in this backdrop that the course sheds light on the state and governance in India

Course Outcomes:

At the end of the course students are expected to-

  • To have a thorough understanding of the contextual setting of public policymaking in India
  • To have a foundational grounding in concepts of the state and governance relevant to make sense of the public policy domain.
  • To be able to understand the complexity of public policy making in India.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

  1. Political Structure: Ideas and Frameworks: The module will introduce the concept of “the State” as an ensemble of ideas, norms and institutions that shapes public policies through the conceptual tool of “political structure”. More precisely, the module will highlight how the political and social structure defines and constraints the nature of ‘political authority’ which in turn shapes public policies.  
  2. Political Authority:  State, Market, and Development Paradigms: The module will explore and critically assess the political economy of development by tracing different frameworks of policymaking in India. It does so by focusing on the interplay between processes of economic transformation and the political strategies pursued by the Indian State in the name of national development. In particular, the module will focus on the transformations in the nature of the state in India from development planning to the contemporary regulatory phase underpinned by neoliberalism.
  3. Political Community: Citizenship, Identity, and Nation: The module will introduce aspects of the State and governance through the conceptual category of “political community”. To the extent that the political institutions not only address but also define ‘legitimate public concern’, appreciation of the same allows us to see how public policies may often perpetuate exclusion and discrimination based on a biased understanding of ‘common good’. The module will accordingly discuss issues of access, exclusion, the idea of ‘inclusive citizenship’, ‘individual versus group rights’ through appropriate case studies.
  4. Political Obligation: Democracy, Representation, Accountability: The module invokes the concept of “political obligation” to further unpack the black box of the state and the policymaking process. As a concept political obligation deals with the grounds on which a political authority seeks ‘legitimacy’ and compliance. At the same time it also encompasses grounds for resistance to authority and to that extent has implications for the practice of democracy. It also allows us to see different faces of the Indian State – coercive, welfarist, developmental and the contradictions that characterize the policy domain.
  5. Political Culture: Beyond Implementation Failures: The module is anchored around the conceptual category of “political culture” to understand its influence on the policy process and outcomes. It begins by posing the question about “Why most policies fail?” Going beyond implementation failures, the module draws attention to the entrenched norms and values that shape public policy making in the Indian context.
  6. Politics and Public Policy: Connecting the dots- Having demonstrated the close connect between politics and public policy in the previous modules, the concluding module will pull together the different themes discussed in preceding modules to further establish, reinforce, and discuss the intricate relationship between politics and public policy at a more conceptual level.  

Assessment Details with weights:

There will be two assessments of 50% each.

  1. Assessment 1 (50%): Write-up and Presentation unpacking a particular dimension of the concept of the state and governance by analysis of any contemporary public policy issue rooted in the overall context of interplay between political structure and political culture.
  • Write-Up (Position Paper/Policy Brief): 30%
  • Presentation: 20%
  1. Assessment 2 (50%): In-class Exam based on selected readings of the course.

Reading List:

  • Arora, Dolly (1993). “State, Society and Public Policy in India”, The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol.54, No.1. 
  • Somanathan, T.V. (2016). “The Administrative and the Regulatory State” in Choudhry, Sujit, Madhav Khosla, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (eds) The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution, Oxford University Press.
  • Dasgupta, Sandipto (2018). “Conflict, not consensus: towards a political economy of the making of the Indian Constitution” in Udit Bhatia ed. Indian Constituent Assembly: Deliberations on Democracy, Routledge.
  • Partha Chatterjee “Development Planning and the Indian State” in Partha Chatterjee (ed) State and Politics in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
  • Jayal, Niraja Gopal (2001). ‘Reinventing the State: the emergence of alternative models of governance in India in 1990s’ in Niraja Gopal Jayal and Sudha Pai ed. Democratic Governance in India: Challenges of Poverty, development, and Identity, Sage.
  • Rudolph L, Rudolph SH (2001). “Re-doing the Constitutional Design: From an Interventionist to a Regulatory State”. In: A. Kohli (ed) The Success of India's Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
  • Basu, Rumki (2019). ‘Public Policy in India: Transformatory Shifts or Incremental Changes’, Indian Journal of Public Administration, 65(1), Sage.
  • Mehta, Pratap Bhanu (2012). “State and Democracy in India”, Polish Sociological Review, No. 178.
  • Pierre, Jon and Guy Peters (2020). Governance, Politics, and the State, Red Globe Press [Select Chapters].
  • Mitra, Subrata (2017). Politics in India: Structure, Process and Policy, Routledge.
  • Sukhamoy Chakravarthy (1987). Development Planning: The Indian Experience, Oxford University Press.
  • Grindle, Merilee (2017). Politics and Policy Implementation in the Third World, Princeton University Press.
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