New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in Developing Societies: The Bharatiya Janata Party

by Schwecke; Sebastian

• ISBN13: 9780415595964
• ISBN10: 0415595967
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book analyses the rise and moderation of political movements in developing societies which mobilise popular support with references to conceptions of cultural identity. Applying an inter-cultural and comparative theoretical approach across Asia and Africa, the author subsumes not only the Hindu nationalist movement but also many Islamist political movements in a single category ' New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements (NCIPM). Demonstrating significant similarities in the pattern of evolution between these and European Christian Democracy, the book provides an instrument for the analysis of these movements outside the parameters of the fundamentalism debate.Using the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India as a case study, the author presents the underlying reasons for the rise of the BJP and the factors contributing to the stability of the organisation's trajectory of political moderation. The party it is seen as a typical representative of one of two discernible stable trajectories for path-dependent political moderation and, accordingly, as a typical representative of a sub-category of NCIPM which for example also comprises the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) in Turkey. Key variables for understanding the evolution of NCIPM are economic in character, while discursive, institutional and strategic variables are treated as modifying, but secondary factors. Apart from the concept of NCIPM, the book is strongly associated with an undertaking to analyse the transition of developing societies from rent-based political economies to capitalism and the (partial) failure of this transition process. It argues that there is a need to incorporate economic and class analysis in the study of political processes in developing societies against the continuing emphasis on cultural factors associated with the "cultural turn" of social sciences.