This article engages critically with Modood and Sealy’s typology of the governance of religious diversity. While welcoming their redefinition of secularism(s) as a means of governing religious diversity, we argue that it is also important to differentiate types of majoritarian nationalism. Focusing on the way that non-core groups are treated, we develop a fourfold typology of religious majoritarianism: hierarchical, assimilationist, dominant, and eliminationist. Focusing on the examples of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, we argue that majoritarian nationalism is not monolithic but contextually differentiated, shaped by institutional legacies, political strategies, and socio-religious hierarchies. Our analysis contributes to broader debates on nationalism and ethnic politics by mapping the dynamic interplay between state-led nationalism, religious identity, and the governance of diversity. We call for greater attention to the lived costs of majoritarianism and the contextual limits of multicultural remedies in the absence of broader structural and geopolitical changes.

This article engages critically with Modood and Sealy's typology of the governance of religious diversity. While welcoming their redefinition of secularism(s) as a means of governing religious diversity, we argue that it is also important to differentiate types of majoritarian nationalism. Focusing on the way that non-core groups are treated, we develop a fourfold typology of religious majoritarianism: hierarchical, assimilationist, dominant, and eliminationist. Focusing on the examples of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, we argue that majoritarian nationalism is not monolithic but contextually differentiated, shaped by institutional legacies, political strategies, and socio-religious hierarchies. Our analysis contributes to broader debates on nationalism and ethnic politics by mapping the dynamic interplay between state-led nationalism, religious identity, and the governance of diversity. We call for greater attention to the lived costs of majoritarianism and the contextual limits of multicultural remedies in the absence of broader structural and geopolitical changes.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is one of the most prominent projects under China's Belt and Road Initiative. While its geopolitical and financial implications have received much attention, CPEC's mediation through the structures of Pakistan's federal system has remained comparatively understudied. To fill this gap, this article analyses CPEC's evolution between 2013 and 2023, revealing both the continuing centralisation of the management of CPEC and the inequitable distribution of projects that have characterised its implementation. The analysis also addresses whether domestic political structures or external pressures explain this inequity. The article draws on a triangulation of official CPEC data collated since 2018, meeting minutes of key decision-making bodies, budgetary analysis and semi-structured interviews. In doing so, this article contributes to understanding global China's encounters with local dynamics.

In this article, we compare the Indian experience with that of some of the multinational and multi-level polities from the Global North, namely Belgium, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom. We first summarize the essence of multinationalism. Drawing from our comparative examples of the Global North we then show how dominant narratives of state nationalism condition the extent to which the state can accommodate plurinational difference through self-rule, shared rule and ethno-symbolic recognition within these states, and then compare and contrast this with the Indian experience. Despite the stickiness of elite narratives on the meaning of the state during state formation and democratization, we highlight the ability of electoral competition to push multi-level politics into a more accommodative or majoritarian direction. We illustrate this with reference to India including the 2024 General Election Outcome.

In this article, we apply Mair's concept of 'party system closure' to Asian party systems, with particular comparison with his native continent, Europe. Building on Mair's (2001) conceptualization and Casal B & eacute;rtoa and Enyedi's (2021) operationalization of party system institutionalization (PSI), which demonstrates the importance of looking at the supply-side of PSI and the superiority of closure over electoral volatility as a measure of PSI, this article is the first to examine the determinants of party system closure in Asia. Introducing and analyzing a new dataset covering 136 elections and 235 cases of government formation in 23 Asian democratic party systems, and using Casal B & eacute;rtoa and Enyedi's (2022) original dataset for Europe, we find that (1) the negative effect of direct presidential elections is significantly higher in Asia than in Europe, (2) in contrast to Asia, where historical legacies have a detrimental impact, they are not statistically significant in Europe, and (3) parliamentary fragmentation hinders systemic closure to a similar extent in both continents. Our analysis has important implications for the future stability of party systems in both Asia and Europe where the number of (new) parties has exponentially increased in recent years.

What is the impact of democracy/authoritarianism regime change on de/centralization in federations? Based on the annual coding of three politico-institutional aspects, 22 policy fields, and five fiscal categories, this article maps de/centralization in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan from the establishment of their respective federal orders to 2020. It shows that de/centralization varies greatly across its different dimensions as well as between systems, with centralization being the dominant long-term trend but with significant exceptions, notably Pakistan. Regime change plays a major role in de/centralization but not always in line with the usual expectation that authoritarian regimes centralize and democratic ones decentralize. Other factors that cut across the authoritarianism/democracy divide, notably ideological orientations, have substantial impacts on de/centralization. By investigating long-run patterns of de/centralization in federations that have experienced democracy/authoritarianism regime change, the article sheds light on how federalism operates beyond consolidated democracies.

The extent to which de/centralization is shaped by regime change in federations that have experienced periods of autocratic rule is yet to be fully explored. To this end, this article measures static and dynamic de/centralization in Pakistan - a federal country under autocratic rule for long periods - since the introduction of its first constitution in 1956. Drawing on an original dataset compiled by the authors, this article challenges the narrative that only military regimes have abetted centralization. It also identifies the main instruments of de/centralization and the primary agents behind change, including the military, political parties, and the senior judiciary. The first study of its kind on Pakistan, and part of the project Why de/centralization in federations?', this article contributes to the literature on decentralization in hybrid regimes by mapping the longitudinal evolution of Pakistan's federal system.

The status of India as the world's largest democracy is often lauded, but the re-election of the overtly Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 has increased concerns about the threat to India's multinational democracy and the rule of law. India is not the only democracy facing challenges related to majoritarian nationalism; there has been a worldwide rise in the language of majority 'rights' in democratic systems. The importance of analysing the extent to which the rights of majorities are being increasingly institutionalized within democratic systems has therefore increased. It is vitally important to identify whether tendencies toward ethnic democracy are increasing (and the conditions under which they do so). There may well be red flags that emerge in democratic systems, heralding the potential direction of travel. This article proposes a methodology to identify degrees of ethnic democracy using a combination of formal and informal measures and illustrates it by assessing India through an examination of anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is often portrayed as the flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative. While much attention has been devoted to its geopolitical repercussions, its impacts on Pakistan’s federal system and interprovincial relations have not yet been explored. Organized around interviews conducted in 2015, 2018, and 2019, this article demonstrates that the construction of the economic corridor is acting as a centripetal force in Pakistan’s federal structure, despite the potential for such a large external investment to redress the disparities between provinces.

In their own words analyses the motivations of one of the most infamous terrorist organisations in South Asia - Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) - responsible for the attack on the Taj Hotel in India in 200...

India is one of the most diverse countries of the world but operates with a majoritarian Westminster constitution and simple plurality electoral system, albeit also with a federal structure. It was eventually coded as consociational by Arend Lijphart (1996) but this coding was questioned by authors such as Wilkinson (2000) and Adeney (2002). This article assesses the nature of both de jure and de facto power-sharing in India over its 70 years of independence and tracks the evolution of de jure and de facto power-sharing in relation to four dimensions of diversity: religion, caste, territory and language. It questions whether the electoral success of Hindu nationalism and the increasing acceptance of ethnic majoritarianism has reduced the degree of power-sharing in India.

India's multinational federation has experienced multiple challenges in the last 25 years, relating to the rise of coalition politics and the process of economic liberalization, both of which have increased the power of some of the states of the federation at the expense of others. The internal borders of India continue to be restructured, with the latest state, Telangana, created in 2014. India is often seen as a successful multinational federation, but it is important to recognize the limitations of this success, as well as the areas where the rise of an aggressive Hindu nationalism poses a powerful threat to India's multinational federal democracy.

Ethnofederalism has been contested as a solution for diverse societies as seen recently in Nepal (where federalism has been accepted, but the design and number of units remains heavily contested) and Myanmar (where ethnic minority demands for increasing federalization have had to take a back seat to the demands for increasing democracy). It remains a heavily contested subject in Sri Lanka. Concerns are expressed that ethnofederalism will increase pressures for secession and/or lead to increased violence through increasing a sense of separateness of the people living within that territory, providing resources for political entrepreneurs tomobilize groups against the center and will lead to the persecution of minorities within the ethnofederal units. India is an example of a federation that appears to demonstrate that ethnofederalism decreases rather than increases conflict through its successful reorganization of states along linguistic lines. However, a group-level analysis reveals a more diverse picture. India has simultaneously been both a success and a failure at conflict management.

The revolution in information technology and the new global economic linkages have lifted parts of the Indian population to levels of living and lifestyles comparable to those of the affluent West. However vast sections of the population are still mired in poverty and insecurity, struggling with poor infrastructure. Despite the modern lifestyles and consumption that one notices in the middle and upper middle classes, large sections of the Indian population remain steeped in traditional ways. The economic and political institutions of India are often anchored in vernacular categories and local contexts, notwithstanding their modern veneer. To Western students of India’s economics and politics, specific features of Indian politics such as the hiatus between modernity and tradition and the sporadic outbreak of Maoist violence (long extinct in China, its country of origin) might appear exotic or archaic. Some of these themes …

Pakistan has had a chequered democratic history but elections in 2013 marked a second turnover in power, and the first transition in Pakistan's history from one freely elected government to another. How do we best categorize (and therefore understand) political developments in Pakistan? Is it now safe to categorize it as an electoral democracy or is it still a hybrid case of democracy? Using the Pakistani case as an example, this article argues that hybrid regimes deserve consideration as a separate case (rather than as a diminished subtype of democracy or authoritarianism), but must be categorized along a multidimensional continuum to understand the dynamics of power within the political system.

India's new Hindu nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, faces numerous challenges including how to revive a flagging economy while reconciling the demands of his base with the realities of managing a diverse society. Katharine Adeney reports from the world's largest parliamentary democracy.