Table of Contents for The Political Outsider
Acknowledgments
The chapter introduces the main subject and argument of the book: how and why lineages of contemporary populism can be traced to the distinctive legacies of "curative democracy" and "outsider politics". I discuss how the present moment of populist outrage politics and strongman ascendance in India is a legacy of an older project of curative democracy—the effort to "fix" and "cure" a diseased democracy—that has been influential for over four decades. The specific political lineage that I trace is that of outsider politics, the distinctive institutional and normative formation that took hold in the Long 1970s during and after the period of the notorious Emergency when democracy was suspended in India (1975-77). The chapter relates the argument to relevant scholarship on populism and concepts of antipolitics and extrapolitics. Research methods and chapter outlines are also discussed.
Introduction: Curative Democracy and The Political Outsider
The chapter introduces the main subject and argument of the book: how and why lineages of contemporary populism can be traced to the distinctive legacies of "curative democracy" and "outsider politics". I discuss how the present moment of populist outrage politics and strongman ascendance in India is a legacy of an older project of curative democracy—the effort to "fix" and "cure" a diseased democracy—that has been influential for over four decades. The specific political lineage that I trace is that of outsider politics, the distinctive institutional and normative formation that took hold in the Long 1970s during and after the period of the notorious Emergency when democracy was suspended in India (1975-77). The chapter relates the argument to relevant scholarship on populism and concepts of antipolitics and extrapolitics. Research methods and chapter outlines are also discussed.
Part I: Elements
Through an ethnographically grounded study of a new political party in India that won its debut election and formed the state government of Delhi in 2013-14 on a platform of anti-corruption and "clean politics," the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, the Ordinary Person or Common Man's Party) the chapter documents the contours of the contemporary curative democracy imagination. I also show that the AAP's political interventions have socially uneven effects. They resonate within particular socio-economic milieus, and empower certain kinds of individuals to act and represent the people. More than political equality and popular participation, AAP's imagination of a new and clean politics is concerned with the restoration of social authority, and functions as a hierarchical form of proprietorial or "ownership democracy."
1.New Politics
Through an ethnographically grounded study of a new political party in India that won its debut election and formed the state government of Delhi in 2013-14 on a platform of anti-corruption and "clean politics," the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, the Ordinary Person or Common Man's Party) the chapter documents the contours of the contemporary curative democracy imagination. I also show that the AAP's political interventions have socially uneven effects. They resonate within particular socio-economic milieus, and empower certain kinds of individuals to act and represent the people. More than political equality and popular participation, AAP's imagination of a new and clean politics is concerned with the restoration of social authority, and functions as a hierarchical form of proprietorial or "ownership democracy."
2.Transformational Media
The chapter explores the mediatized politics of curative democracy: how the call to cure the "diseased" political system has been shaped and amplified by twenty-first century media actors. It focuses on the newsmaking practices and "news values" that structured the worlds of Indian commercial news television in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Through a discussion of media "sting operations" and media activism campaigns, I establish how a new normative ideal of "transformational media" gained ground. Media actors went from neutral observers to active participants in politics, playing a role as self-described "crusaders" and representatives of the people who committed to the cause of democratic change. I also examine how the idea of democratic reform promoted by TV journalists is connected to a logic of social restoration, and invested in hierarchical imaginaries of social and political order.
Part II: Lineages
The chapter traces curative democracy and outsider politics—and hence, the roots of contemporary populism—to the late 1970s, when state and non-state actors engaged in the task of democratic restoration in the aftermath of the Indian emergency. The specific focus is on the state-appointed Shah Commission of Inquiry that was set up to look into emergency "excesses." I document how the Commission placed state sovereignty and popular sovereignty on separate tracks, the former associated with law and procedure and the latter with morality and justice. I discuss the consequences of this separation: how it legitimized the idea of the political outside as the source of democratic renewal. Contesting the widely held view of the Indian emergency as an aberrant event in Indian democracy, the chapter draws attention to its generative dimension, i.e. the production of new political orders that imprint Indian democracy many years later.
3.The Long Emergency
The chapter traces curative democracy and outsider politics—and hence, the roots of contemporary populism—to the late 1970s, when state and non-state actors engaged in the task of democratic restoration in the aftermath of the Indian emergency. The specific focus is on the state-appointed Shah Commission of Inquiry that was set up to look into emergency "excesses." I document how the Commission placed state sovereignty and popular sovereignty on separate tracks, the former associated with law and procedure and the latter with morality and justice. I discuss the consequences of this separation: how it legitimized the idea of the political outside as the source of democratic renewal. Contesting the widely held view of the Indian emergency as an aberrant event in Indian democracy, the chapter draws attention to its generative dimension, i.e. the production of new political orders that imprint Indian democracy many years later.
4.Outsider Agency
The chapter examines the exercise of outsider political agency in post-emergency India, and the tangible political actions and practices that the outsider norm enabled in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through a discussion of the new legal-juridical form of public interest litigation, I document how democratic representation was taken outside the electoral system by non-electoral intermediaries who positioned themselves as "true representatives" of the people. Focusing on two prominent institutional intermediaries, the judiciary and the media, this chapter traces how a surge of beyond-the-ballot representative claims mediated the project of democratic restoration after the emergency. I also consider the distinctive networked form that outsider political agency took, as "concern networks" brought together journalists, judges, lawyers, academics, and social activists in common endeavors of democratic repair.
Conclusion: Crooked Lines
The final chapter reflects on why outsider politics and curative democracy may be good to think with. I begin with a brief reflection on these two concepts. Replicating the zigzagged research process that produced the book, taking me from the present to the 1970s, I then ask about the lineages of the present. What can our temporal detour to the contexts where the redemptive energies of curative democracy and outsider politics were first activated, tell us about the state of contemporary democratic politics in India? By way of an answer, the chapter maps the "crooked lines" connecting contemporary strongmen to the political outsider and shows how the political repertoire of the incumbent Hindu majoritarian government of Narendra Modi repurposes outsider politics to legitimize its rule.