India
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Publications Tagged with "India"
1 publication found
2026
1 publicationThe Atrophy of Democratic Praxis: Mobocracy, Majoritarianism, and the Erosion of Popular Sovereignty in Contemporary India
This research paper executes 3 intersecting analytical frames to decode the structural degradation of democratic governance in India. Firstly, through the ascendancy of mobocracy as a mode of extra-juridical social regulation. Secondly, through the consolidation of majoritarian hegemony that eventually marginalizes minority political subjectivities. Thirdly, in the transformation of electoral democracy into a performative apparatus that progressively distances governance from popular participation. This commentary argues that Indian democracy confronts a crisis not merely of institutional efficacy but also of normative legitimacy. Drawing on Gramscian frameworks of hegemony, Tocquevillian critiques of tyranny of the majority, and Habermas’ theory of communicative rationality it further attempts to illustrate this crisis. The spectacle that the choreographed populism produces, the instrumentalization of electoral consent through clientelist patronage, and the delegitimization of dissent as anti-national heresy together constitute a regime of an orchestrated democracy wherein the procedural form of elections coexists uneasily with the substantive indenting of democratic content. The paper further contends that contemporary India illustrates what Guillermo O’Donnell theorized as ‘delegative democracy’, a condition in which electoral mandates are construed as unconditional licenses for executive privilege rather than bounded grants of custodian responsibility.
