This study examines the hazards of democracy promotion in multi-ethnic societies. I begin by developing a simple formal model, which isolates the main features of the strategic context of democracy promotion that can trigger ethnic conflict. The key intuition of the model is that democracy promotion creates a commitment problem between ethnic majorities and minority groups that are demographically over-represented in the coercive forces of the authoritarian regime that has been removed to install democracy.

Abstract: The colonial archives are filled with documents detailing incidents of arson, beatings, shootings, robberies and harassment that occurred along the contours of the numerous borders that separated French India from India following the departure of the British in 1947. The framing of these years as a period of terror wrought by “goondas” covered an underlying anxiety about the future of the nation-state and national citizenship at the moment of decolonization.

Abstract: Histories and aesthetics of space intersected in South Asian decolonization. The contest for space has continued to be reflected in South Asian cinema from the 1950s to the present. Spatial politics and the aestheticization of spaces both reflect current politics and urban policies and also glance back at colonial and postcolonial histories of national fragmentation and nation-formation.