The Pedagogical Account of Parliamentarism at India's Founding

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6231111
AutoresUdit Bhatia (0000-0001-6540-8021, University of York, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen68
Número4
Páginas1286-1298
Fecha de publicación2024-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/ajps.12768
OpenAlexW4319073260
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas30

This article explores a distinctive approach to parliamentarism advanced by key figures from India's founding period in response to their anxieties about concerns about the masses’ backwardness alongside a commitment to democratic self‐rule. Both orientations, one democratic and the other, suspicious of the peoples’ political capacities, existed alongside each other in tension, generating a dilemma: how could the seemingly backward masses facilitate the overthrow of their backwardness in a democratic process? The thinkers studied in this article responded, I argue, with a pedagogical conception of parliamentarism, which viewed parliament and legislators as bearing the function of preparing the masses for democratic citizenship. Their approach represented a critical departure from the ideal of a deliberative legislative assembly at the apex of the lawmaking process, while avoiding strategies of exclusion historically associated with parliamentarism

Backwardness · Citizenship · Democracy · Dilemma · Economics · Epistemology · Ideal (ethics · Legislature · Neoclassical economics · Parliament · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Politics and Society in Latin America · South Asian Studies and Conflicts