Common Pressures, Divergent Trajectories? Industrialization in India and Pakistan

Abstract

Does regime type explain differences in economic development? Pakistan and India constitute an ideal comparative set given longstanding differences between the two with regard to democratic practice. Yet, the pattern of economic growth is complicated: Pakistan’s development outpaces India’s in the first two decades after Independence, with divergence in economic success only becoming evident after the 1990s. Further, the two countries have mirrored one another with regard to the formal institutions and policies of economic governance. How can we understand such patterns? In this paper, I argue that differential trajectories are a consequence of variations in the specific articulations of excluded groups against the distributional consequences of development in the late 1960s and 1970s, and differences in perception of stability after the 1990s.

Keywords: India; Pakistan; economic development; democracy; authoritarianism