Contributor : Profile

Steven I. Wilkinson (Ph.D., MIT) is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University. His book, Votes and Violence: electoral competition and ethnic riots in India (Cambridge, 2004) looks at why some states in India do so much better than others in preventing Hindu-Muslim violence. Other books include (edited with Herbert Kitschelt), Patrons, Clients or Politics: Patterns of Political Accountability and Competition (Cambridge, 2007), which looked at corruption in politics, and Wilkinson, ed., Religious Politics and Communal Violence (New Delhi: OUP, 2008).

His current work is on three areas. First, a co-authored series of papers and book with Saumitra Jha (Stanford GSB) on war and political and social change. Second, a book on Army, Nation and Democracy in India and Pakistan (forthcoming in 2012 from Harvard University Press/Permanent Black) which explores the issue of how each state has dealt with the legacy of an unrepresentative colonial army since independence, and why the army has been politically much less of a threat to democracy in India than in Pakistan. Third, Wilkinson is carrying out a large comparative study on colonial legacies for democracy, governance and conflict.