In this chapter, I explore the influence of the patchwork state in variation in electoral competition. The chapter begins with presenting the dominant framework in South Asian politics, that of clientelism, and argues that historical variations in the structure of patronage, due to patchwork forms of Authority within India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh shapes the nature and consequences of electoral competition. Variations in the capacity of public officials to determine the distribution of patronage might explain a puzzle in India and Pakistani politics, that of variation in the number of parties in serious contention at the constituency level. The chapter then presents data on the effective number of parties (ENP) by postcolonial governance categories in India and Pakistan, and explores Bangladesh’s exception to patchwork state dynamics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship among elections, violence, and the patchwork state.

This chapter explores some of the particular dynamics of differentiated colonial governance at the apex of colonial rule, and how governance changed in response to political and economic shocks of the twentieth century. It begins with the establishment of the Government of India following the rebellion of 1857, and the general characteristics of colonial rule in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It then provides snapshots of aspects of governance, based on a variety of data from the 1910s, differentiated by governance category. It provides data on land revenue and total revenue, judicial and nonjudicial stamp tax, income taxes and the number of government servants, police deployment and army recruitment and deployment. The chapter then surveys some of the key changes in politics and government of the last decades of the colonial era, including economic dislocations and the rise of the nationalist government. I use data from the 1940s, including revenue and policing, to demonstrate that these governance distinctions remain relevant despite significant pressures toward greater institutionalization, and that the influence of the Indian National Congress itself varied by territory.

This chapter lays out some of the key concepts and theories that support the book, as well as a key conceptual typology of colonial governance. It starts with an examination of the literature on civil conflict, highlighting its attributes but explaining its limitations in relation to the types and patterns of both insurgent and social violence in south Asia. It then lays out the framework of political order and institutions that has implicitly driven much of the research on political violence and related outcomes in comparative politics. I argue that some of the assumptions embedded in this framework do not allow for the examination of the historical roots of subnational institutions. I provide an alternative in the analytical tradition of state-building, and suggest how uneven state-building in developing countries can shape state-society relations. The chapter concludes with laying out the key conceptual typology of colonial governance, by interacting two dimensions of direct and indirect rule, which serves as the basis for legible categories of colonial difference.

This chapter explores the consequences of patchwork forms of state authority on subnational development outcomes, primarily in India but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. It presents two key mechanisms in state–society relations in the economy – commodification and investment – that have economic consequences for growth and human development. It then demonstrates the impact of the patchwork state on different measures of growth and human development, both between and within Indian states. It broadens this discussion out to consider South Asia in comparative perspective, explaining the starkly different trajectories of Pakistan and Bangladesh through the preponderance of different forms of governance. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the relationship among development, violence, and the patchwork state.

This chapter surveys the histories behind differentiation in colonial governance, rooted in the politics of colonial conquest from the middle of the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth century. It begins with an explanation of the East India Company as a mercantile enterprise with few commitments in the governance of India. Challenges to the Company’s trading prerogatives led to the conquest of eastern and northern India, yet the illegibility of indigenous society and fears of peasant rebellion fashioned governance arrangements which empowered proprietary elites, who served as key intermediares between the colonial state and society. In much of southern, central and western India, however, threats to the colonial enterprise from indigenous state-building projects, like Mysore and the Maratha confederacy, led to significant conflict and a variety of different arrangements: significant state intervention into rural society and relations with cultivators, as well as the affirmation of different types of princely states. The chapter concludes with the extremes of state presence and absence: in metropolizes and in political agencies on the frontier of state authority.

This chapter explores the ways that postcolonial governments of India and Pakistan attempted to homogenize governance arrangements within their territories; this project was not entirely successful, but did lead to substantial revision of colonial categories. It begins with a discussion of the foreclosed possibility of Home Rule arrangements in which distinctions in governance practice might have persisted in practice after independence in a united India; the politics of Partition instead led to the formation of two sovereign states, but with significant variation in the power and authority of the state in each. It explores the particular politics in India and Pakistan that limited each country’s ability to undertake fundamental reform of the state and the homogenization of governance procedures, including differing perspectives among political leaders on how best to deliver security and development, and the persistence of bureaucratic structures. It also outlines the roots of a more even political geography in Bangladesh, an exception to the patchwork states of India and Pakistan. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the colonial forms of governance translates into a postcolonial typology of governance arrangements, with distinctions in state capacity and state-society relations.

This final chapter explores the patchwork state in comparative perspective. It places the uneven state-building trajectories of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in the context of broader South Asia. It then contrasts South Asian patchwork states with dynamics in East and Southeast Asian cases, which had internal differentiation in colonial governance, but also Japanese conquest and postwar revolutionary and counterrevolutionary mobilization. The chapter concludes with the application of fear, greed and frugality in the creation of the British and American Empires, and their consequences in state strength and weakness.