ABSTRACT
It is rare for two countries as similar as India and Pakistan to have such clearly contrasting political regime histories. These are large, multi-religious and multi-lingual countries that share a geographic and historical space that gave them in 1947, when they became independent from British rule, a virtually indistinguishable level of extreme poverty and extreme inequality. All of those factors militate against democracy, according to most theories, but democratic systems were the next step from the gradually liberalizing institutions of the state that the British had grudgingly accepted, in response to nationalistmovement demands. In Pakistan, democracy did indeed fail very quickly after independence. It has only been restored as a façade for military-bureaucratic rule for brief periods since then, including the present. After almost thirty years of democracy, India had a brush with authoritarian rule, in the 1975-7 Emergency; but, after a momentous election in 1977, democracy has become stronger over the last thirty years.
