International Conference on 'Law and Democracy in India'
Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla in association with University of London Institute of Legal Studies and South Asian Studies Council, Yale University is organizing an International Conference on 'Law and Democracy in India' from 20th - 21st June, 2012.
Theme:
- Engendering Pluralism:
The Conference wishes to provoke a comparative discussion on political discourse and mobilization in the context of the idea and practices of democracy and its relation to those of pluralism.
- Social Revolution through Law:
The constitutional vision of bringing the state to the aid of historically underprivileged groups has witnessed major challenges since Independence. It has, at times, tested the very efficacy of law as an instrument of desired social change.
- Contradictions between Deliberative and Distributive Functions of Democracies:
Since democracy rests fundamentally on the idea of adult suffrage, we could begin with a consideration of elections. But to answer the question of why universal adult suffrage produces all manner of distributive effects, we have to consider elections alongside governance - how states and other political institutions interpret the mandates of suffrage to reproduce the conditions of their perpetuation.
- Politics and the Living Constitution:
The working of democracy has certain entailments, not least the call to action at several levels of engagement in politics. At a descriptive level it is easy to observe that democracy has often led to a series of proliferations - of parties, identities, conflicts. It has also led to the proliferation of regulatory regimes, and lastly the proliferation of normative understandings of what may be democracy's value. One cherished value is, of course, civic virtue and one of the measures of this virtue is the accounting of civil association.
Contact:
Indian Institute of Advanced Study
Rashtrapati Nivas,
Shimla - 171 005
Website: http://www.iias.org
