Watson Events

Book Adda featuring Pradeep Chhibber

Friday, February 6, 2015

2 p.m.

Joukowsky Forum

Watch webcast

Book Adda featuring Pradeep Chhibber's Religious Practice and Democracy in India

Commentators:

Anna Grzymala-Busse, University of Michigan

Jeremy Menchik, Boston University

Rachel Beatty Riedl, Northwestern University

Bhrigupati Singh, Brown University

Prerna Singh, Brown University

"This is a path-breaking book. There are few empirical studies of the relationship between transformation of religion and democracy. This book is a subtle and powerful examination of this relationship. It will unsettle many entrenched assumptions about both religious practice and democracy. The book will provoke a lot of discussion."

-- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President and Chief Executive, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia

Pradeep Chhibber is professor of political science at UC Berkeley, where he directs the Institute of International Studies. He is also the Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies. Chhibber studies party systems, party aggregation, and the politics of India. His research examines the relationship between social divisions and party competition and conditions that lead to the emergence of national or regional parties in a nation-state. Chhibber has previously written about the influence of caste and religion in twenty-first century politics in India. His work also addresses the influence of party politics and party systems on state policy and the delivery of public goods, and the gendered nature of representation in electoral politics in India.

He is the author of Religious Practice and Democracy in India (Cambridge University Press, 2014, with Sandeep Shastri), The Formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Britain, Canada, India, and the U.S. (Princeton University Press, 2004, with Ken Kollman), and Democracy without Associations: Transformation of Party Systems and Social Cleavages in India (University of Michigan Press, 1999). He received an MA and an MPhil from the University of Delhi and a PhD from UCLA.