Dr Maya Tudor (PhD (Princeton) MPA (Princeton) BA (Stanford))

Post: Associate

Introduction

Dr. Tudor works in the field of comparative politics with a focus on regime politics in  South Asia.  In 2010, her dissertation, ‘Twin Births, Divergent Democracies: The Social and Institutional Origins of Regime Outcomes in India and Pakistan’ was awarded the American Political Science Association’s Gabriel A. Almond Award for the best dissertation in the field of Comparative Politics.   It also received an Honourable Mention for APSA’s 2010 Walter Burnham Award for the best dissertation in Politics and History.

Her primary research is centrally concerned with the determinants of regime outcomes.  Her dissertation posed the question of why India and Pakistan embarked upon divergent regime trajectories in the decade after their twin independences in 1947.  By 1958, India had established itself as a constitutional democracy while Pakistan had descended into autocratic instability.  She argues that the respective independence movements in each country were founded by different social classes who were motivated to create relatively stronger (India) and weaker (Pakistan) political parties. The core argument advanced is that respective party strength critically explains regime stability while respective class interests and their associated ideologies critically explain regime type.

Currently, she is editing her thesis into a book manuscript for Cambridge University Press and drafting related articles for journal publication. 

Research Areas and Interests

·      Comparative Democratization

·      Political Party Formation

·      Colonialism and Origins of State Capacity

·      Regime Politics

·      Qualitative Research Methods

Previous Posts Held

Predoctoral Fellow, Program in Intra-state Conflict and Program in International Security, JFK School of Government, Harvard University, 2008-2009.

Visiting Research Associate, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi, 2006.

Visiting Research Associate, Lahore University of Management Sciences, 2005.

Teaching Responsibilities

Democratization: Theory and Practice (Oxford University MPhil).

Seminar in Qualitative Methods (Oxford University MPhil).

The Comparative Political Economy of Development (Princeton University Graduate).

International Politics (Princeton University Undergraduate).

Ethics and Public Policy (Princeton University Undergraduate).

International Economics (Stanford University Undergraduate).

Media Expertise

Democratisation in South Asia

 

Publications

Books:

‘Twin Births, Divergent Democracies: The Social and Institutional Origins of Regime Outcomes in India and Pakistan, 1920-1958.’  Manuscript currently under review with Cambridge University Press.

 

Book Chapters:

 ‘The Historical Inheritance of India's Democracy’ in Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics (Atul Kohli and Prerna Singh, eds.) (Forthcoming 2011).

‘Sub-national Democratization in India: Colonial Competition and the Challenge to Congress Dominance,’ Laurence Whitehead and Jacqueline Behrend, (eds). (Forthcoming 2011, Johns Hopkins Press). Link: http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/Politics/papers/

 

Book Reviews:

“The Historical Exploitation of Pakistani Radicalism’ (Book Review of F. Shaikh, “Making Sense of Pakistan.” Forthcoming 2010, Journal of Punjab Studies)

‘India’s Democratic Journey’ (Book Review of S. Ganguly, L. Diamond, and M. Plattner, eds. “The State of India’s Democracy” Taiwan Journal of Democracy.  December 2008.)