Arild Engelsen Ruud | University of Oslo (original) (raw)

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Papers by Arild Engelsen Ruud

Routledge eBooks, May 20, 2022

Poetics of Village Politics

Routledge Handbook of Autocratization in South Asia, 2021

Introduction: what is a 'strongman'? Sheikh Hasina Wazed has been prime minister of Bangladesh si... more Introduction: what is a 'strongman'? Sheikh Hasina Wazed has been prime minister of Bangladesh since January 2009. Over these years, Bangladesh has seen a marked deterioration in its democratic status, with human rights bodies and international organisations voicing concern and objections over stage-managed elections, increasing surveillance, enforced disappearances and a legal regiment that stifles criticism (Human Rights Watch 2021). Sheikh Hasina and her party, Awami League, have slowly, meticulously and successfully built what in reality is a one-party state. Sheikh Hasina herself has become without question the most powerful leader in contemporary Bangladesh, in reality unchallenged by any political rival inside or outside of the political party she is leading. This chapter will employ the concept of strongman to investigate the case of Sheikh Hasina's prime ministership and ask how this change from electoral democracy to an authoritarian regime came to pass. What are the main elements in the construction not just of an authoritarian regime, but one in which there is an unquestioned leader? The Introduction to this Handbook points out that there is a marked increase in forms of autocratic rule in South Asia, a development which is part of a wider trend. While authoritarian regimes exhibit some similar features, they are also different from one another. Efforts to analyze and understand this development and such regimes have over time given rise to a plethora of concepts, including authoritarian, autocratic, semi-democratic and sultanist. Derivatives such as 'sultanistic' have been tried out, as well as 'neo-sultanistic', 'authoritarian populist', 'illiberal populist', 'semi-authoritarian', 'electoral autocracy', 'constitutional autocracy' and others. The number of terms led an exasperated Collier and Levitsky (1997) to group all in the wide category of 'hybrid regime'. The point of introducing yet another term, strongman, is to shift focus from regime type to regime construction. The tendency inherent in the effort to define regime types is to ignore the creation and formation of a regime (Young 1999). Observers look at the end product rather than the process by which such a regime is formed, its actual coming-into-being. But regimes are not simply there; they are constructions, coalitions of forces built over some time. This is all the more evident in the case of the current phase of transition, from functioning electoral democracies to hybrid regimes. While studies on an earlier form of transition could focus on

Internasjonal Politikk, Jul 19, 2006

The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 2021

In this highly readable study of nation branding, Ravinder Kaur analyses the combination of free ... more In this highly readable study of nation branding, Ravinder Kaur analyses the combination of free market capitalism and ethnonationalism that helped catapult Modi into the driver's seat by pointing out the active promotion by state and publicity consultants-a promotion that effectively entangled high-pitch investment drives with collective dreamworlds. 'Nation branding' is a peculiar twenty-first century ailment that has infected countries and cities all around the globe. In itself merely an avatar of the Public Relations (PR) industry's inherent promotion of dazzle, it becomes something more sinister and ominous, as Kaur shows, when married to a political agenda. Her study underlines that, as in every successful marriage, there is a give and take. Corporate industries and multinationals go happily along with ethnonationalists of an exclusionist and often violent kind as long as investments are welcome, while the ethnonationalists have given up their swadeshi ideology of the home-made and home-grown for their piece of the globalised economy. And it worked: the dreamworld of capitalist design was an attractive future to sell to the emerging postcolonial middle class. The study is divided into a long introduction and six individual chapters divided into three main parts: Dreamworlds, New Time and Anxiety. The different campaigns undertaken by Indian governments included the famous 'India Shining' campaign as well as 'New India', 'Acche din' and other campaigns, all with their happy message of a new, energetic and tuned-in India. Kaur describes fieldwork in Davos and among PR consultants in Delhi. She analyses how this new happy India was marketed for an international audience in Davos and on billboards in Western countries, as well as for an inland audience in newspaper and television ads. Kaur shows how public relations companies-not politicians-were instrumental in forming the messages and the early versions of the dreamworld, and then she disaggregates and dissects those messages. The core technique of nation branding is to emphasise a basic sameness that ensures competitiveness in the globalised marketplace, while charming the customer and investor with cultural difference. India as a land of hospitality, of playfulness,

Internasjonal Politikk, 2007

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021

The radical Right in Europe and Islamist parties in Muslim countries have conventionally been por... more The radical Right in Europe and Islamist parties in Muslim countries have conventionally been portrayed as fundamentally different. The article uses material from Bangladesh to argue that the two share a wide set of characteristics and can be understood as fundamentally similar. Theoretically, we suggest a concept of the radical Right that encapsulates a set of deeper sentiments found to some extent in any culture or society. These deeper sentiments are normally obfuscated by attention-grabbing current events, but, isolated analytically, can be seen to give rise to parallel developments in different contexts. Our argument expands the theoretical value of the concept of the radical Right and helps understand recent political developments in Muslim-majority Bangladesh and, potentially, the wider authoritarian turn.

Outrage, 2019

This introduction revisits the historical background for the contemporary rise of religious offen... more This introduction revisits the historical background for the contemporary rise of religious offence controversies in South Asia and discusses some of the analytical perspectives that are useful for understanding this development. The entire book is Open Access at https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/123481

The emergence of broad rural support in West Bengal for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (C... more The emergence of broad rural support in West Bengal for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) is here studied through the history (1960 to present) of two villages in Burdwan district. The focus is on the relationship between the dynamics of village politics and political and ideological changes of the larger polity. Village politics constitutes an important realm of informal rules for political action and public participation where popular perceptions of wider political events and cultural changes are created. The communist mobilization of the late 1960s followed from an informal alliance formed between sections of the educated (and politicized) middle-class peasantry and certain groups (castes) of poor. The middle-class peasantry drew inspiration from Bengal's high-status and literary but radicalized tradition. However, the establishment and dynamics of the alliance, at the local level, can only be understood within the normative framework of the village. The poor appea...

Blasphemies Compared, 2020

Internasjonal Politikk, 2011

... By Per Marius Frost-Nielsen. Et blikk på Sjtokman-prosjektets blindsone: fransk‑russiske rela... more ... By Per Marius Frost-Nielsen. Et blikk på Sjtokman-prosjektets blindsone: fransk‑russiske relasjoner (Page 387-411) By Victor Jensen and Indra Øverland. ... By Jing Huang. På tide å nullstille forholdet mellom India og Kina (Page 511-516) By Siddartha Varadarajan. ...

Contributions to Indian Sociology, 2020

It is a common view that power in Bangladesh is exercised through patron–client forms of exchange... more It is a common view that power in Bangladesh is exercised through patron–client forms of exchange. These patron–client relationships are held together by moral proximity and intimacy and are diffused and multidimensional. Most recently, Basu et al. (2018, Politics and Governance in Bangladesh: Uncertain Landscapes, 1–16. London: Routledge) argue for the persuasive presence of patron–client relationships and its role as the informal, ‘real’ structure as opposed to the formal state structure. The portrait, however, leaves us with the image of a vast undifferentiated web where the only node is the one at the centre. This article seeks to temper this portrait by arguing that at a certain point the web is no longer undifferentiated. It has locally real, tangible nodes of substantial power—often referred to as mohol (quarter) in Bangla. These nodes of power are often albeit not invariably centred on the local MP. The existence of these nodes indicates a decentralised power structure, wher...