I don't know very much about India, but from what I know about Latin America, politics in the US is becoming more like that in Latin America. There, priests or (more and more) Protestant ministers tell people who to vote for. Patrons do so, too. Also, it seemed to me that the main political parties in Latin America used to be much more dogmatic (and more violent) than in the US. The US political parties are moving quickly in that direction, though so far violence is usually replaced by dirty tricks.
Anthony D'Costa wrote: > This is somewhat like landlords in the Indian countryside telling their > workers or caste members to cast their votes for particular > parties/candidates. Of course the dynamics or the calculus are/is far more > complicated than Mitt telling employers to tell their employees since there > is a certain reciprocity involved in the Indian case. Patron client relations > on the one hand and capturing local states on the other often dictate how > rural India votes. Although increasingly rural folks again on caste and > ethnic lines are influencing politics on their own rather than going through > their landed and local elected members. So maybe the US is heading toward the > hierarchical autocratic style while Indians are tending toward greater > self-determination:)< -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, at the very least you should know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
