The LSE lecture series in comparative politics
Organized by the Government Department
Steven Wilkinson, Yale University
Monday 20 February 2012, 6-8pm
Clement House, Room 602 (sixth floor), LSE
Chair: John Sidel, Government Department
We examine the effects of war on political and social change, demonstrating how the organizational and killing skills acquired by Indian soldiers in WW2 help explain the occurrence of ethnic cleansing in India in 1947-49. We show that in districts that supplied large numbers of frontline soldiers, the levels of cleansing were much greater --all other things equal--than in those districts that provided very few combat soldiers. The research engages with two sets of literature: the work on the effects of war, and work on the occurrence of violence, which we argue has paid too little attention to the capacity and skills involved in carrying out mass violence, as opposed to the motivation or other predisposing factors. We use a unique district-level dataset on violence and socio-economic factors in India from 1941-1951.
Download the Working Paper|.
Speaker biography: Steven Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian studies at Yale University, where he is also Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Born in Scotland, he did his undergraduate degree in history at the University of Edinburgh, and an MA in History at Duke before switching to political science. He got his Ph.D in Political Science at MIT, where he studied with the late Myron Weiner. He has worked on Hindu Muslim violence [Votes and Violence (Cambridge 2004)], and the politics of clientelism [Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients and Policies, Cambridge 2007]. He is currently working on two projects: one a co-authored book project with Saumitra Jha (Stanford GSB) on war and political and social change, the other a book on colonial legacies and their effect on democracy, governance and conflict.
- Further speakers planned this term include John Sidel (LSE), Sven Steinmo (EUI) and Kathleen Thelen (MIT) -