E s c o l a F A P E S P

Patrick Heller

Director of the development research program at the Watson Institute of International Studies and Public Affairs

Conferência

Parties, Civil society and Democratic Deepening: Comparing India, Brazil and South Africa

Despite being among the most successful democracies in the Global South, India, Brazil and South Africa have all recently experienced democratic crises. I argue that these democratic crises result from the formation of social coalitions that have been willing to subvert democratic institutions and practices in order to preserve or restore their social and economic privileges. In structural terms these reactions are tied to the unresolved problem of the incorporation of popular classes. This problem has in turn been mediated by the balance between political and civil society. In India and South Africa that balance has favored the dominance of mass-based nationalist parties that have thwarted democratic deepening. In Brazil, a more balanced relationship between civil society and political society has favored the incorporation of the popular classes.

Minibio:

Patrick Heller is the Lyn Crost Professor of Social Sciences and professor of Sociology and International Studies at Brown University. He is the director of the development research program at the Watson Institute of International Studies and Public Affairs. His main area of research is the comparative study of social inequality and democratic deepening. He is the author of “The Labor of Development: Workers in the Transformation of Capitalism in Kerala,” India (Cornell 1999) and co-author of “Social Democracy and the Global Periphery” (Cambridge 2006), “Bootstrapping Democracy: Transforming Local Governance and Civil Society in Brazil” (Stanford 2011) and most recently, “Deliberation and Development: Rethinking the Role of Voice and Collective Action in Unequal Societies”/ He has published articles on urbanization, comparative democracy, social movements, development policy, civil society and state transformation. His most recent project, Cities of Delhi, conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Policy Research, explores the dynamics of governance and social exclusion in India’s capital.