Revision summary
Lipset tied stable democracy to wealth and a middle class. Almond and Verba added civic culture; Huntington added institutional order. India voted before it was rich, which is the exceptional claim. Kothari and the Rudolphs gave an Indian-path vocabulary. Emergency and violence show the exception is historical, not magical.
Model answer
Introduction
Modernisation theory expected stable democracy after wealth, literacy, and a civic culture. India stayed poor, diverse, and electoral. The exceptional-democracy thesis treats that survival as a puzzle that Lipset’s correlation does not swallow.
Body
The modernisation thesis
- Seymour Martin Lipset linked economic development with democratic legitimacy and a moderating middle class.
- Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba’s civic culture treated participant orientations as the soil of stable democracy.
- Walt W. Rostow’s stages made politics a companion of industrial take-off.
- Samuel Huntington complicated the story: mobilisation without institutions brings decay. Even so, the West’s sequence remained the implicit template.
Why India looked exceptional
- Universal franchise in 1950 preceded mass prosperity. That reverses the Lipset timing.
- Extreme linguistic, religious, and caste diversity should, on many modernisation readings, break a single demos.
- A largely rural, low-income electorate kept choosing governments through the Election Commission, courts, and a federal constitution.
- Rajni Kothari’s Congress system, the Rudolphs’ modernity of tradition, and later Atul Kohli and Ashutosh Varshney treated Indian democracy as a distinct path, not a delayed Europe.
Arguments that dissolve the exception
- India was not the poorest imaginable case in every region; a nationalist elite and the ICS frame were unusual colonial bequests.
- Emergency 1975–77 showed how thin the exception could become.
- State-level authoritarianism, communal violence, and later illiberal talk suggest “exception” was never a guarantee.
- Comparative work on other poor democracies (and on breakdowns) weakens uniqueness.
Arguments that keep a qualified exception
- No other large, poor, federal, multi-religious State has kept competitive national elections for so long.
- Social heterogeneity was organised into parties and reservations rather than into a single racial census State.
- The puzzle remains for Lipset: development did not arrive first.
Debate as method
- Exception should mean a challenge to a theory’s scope, not a national compliment.
- Modernisation still explains pressures: growth, urban middle classes, and media change Indian politics. It does not explain 1952.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD M[Modernisation Lipset Almond] --> D[Democracy after development] I[India 1950 franchise] --> E[Exceptional democracy thesis] E --> Q[Qualifiers Emergency illiberal strain] D --> DEB[Debate] E --> DEB
Conclusion
Modernisation theory expected democracy after development and civic culture, in Lipset’s and Almond’s sense. India’s early franchise and survival as a poor, plural federation is the exceptional thesis. The Emergency and later strains qualify pride. The debate is whether India refutes Lipset’s timing or only delays his variables.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Explain the success of ASEAN as a regional organisation
Next question in the 2021 paper (Q4). View answer →
-
Did modernisation fail because India is democratic?
It failed as a strict sequence. Development still reshapes Indian parties and voters. The thesis is incomplete, not empty.
-
Is India still exceptional?
As a large poor electoral federalism it remains rare. Quality and liberal rights are a separate, contested score.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2021 · Q1(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the political economy approach to the comparative analysis of politics. -
2021 · Q2(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
"The post-colonial state was thought of an entity that stood outside and above society as an autonomous agency." Explain -
2021 · Q2(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the emergence of neo-realism and its basic tenets -
2021 · Q3(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
Explain the impact of electoral systems and cleavages in shaping party systems with reference to developing countries -
2021 · Q3(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
What is globalisation? Why is there an intense debate about globalisation and its consequences? -
2021 · Q4(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Explain the success of ASEAN as a regional organisation -
2021 · Q5(d) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Write about the growing significance of QUAD. -
2021 · Q6(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
Write a brief analysis of the ethnic conflicts and cross-border migrations along India-Myanmar and India-Bangladesh borders
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2021 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the political economy approach to the comparative analysis of politics.
Comparative Politics
Political economy joins the study of power with the study of wealth. Marx and Wallerstein locate States in production and in a hierarchical world-economy. Almond’s functions describe roles; they do not explain ownership and dependence. Alavi’s overdeveloped State is a comparative PE thesis about post-colonial bureaucracy. The method compares markets, classes, and external ties, not only constitutions.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2021 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
"Political parties and pressure groups are sine qua non of democracy." Comment.
Politics of Representation and Participation
Schumpeterian democracy is a party contest for the vote. Almond split aggregation to parties and articulation to groups. Dahl’s polyarchy needs organised opposition, which parties supply. Groups carry specialised claims between elections. Mere organisation is not democracy; pluralism and contest are.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2021 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
"Marxist approach to the study of international relations has lost its relevance in the post-cold war era." Comment.
Approaches to the Study of International Relations
The USSR’s fall discredited State socialism, not every Marxist question. Waltzian polarity does not explain core–periphery production. Wallerstein and Cox remain usable after 1991. WTO, finance, and a capitalist China keep class and hierarchy on the agenda. Relevance is critique of order, not a second Soviet Union.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.