Making a Muslim Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in Nineteenth-Century North India

"How do ideas shape government decision-making? Comparativist scholarship has conventionally given unbridled primacy to external, material interests - such as votes and rents - as proximately shaping political behavior. Although these logics tend to explicate elite decisionmaking around elections and the predictability of pork barrel politics, they fall short in explaining political conduct during a credibility crisis, such as when governments are faced with a nationwide anti-corruption movement. In such instances of high political uncertainty, the author argues in this book, elite ideas drive government decision-making. We have observed such arguments being made in the realm of international relations, American politics, and the political economy of development in western Europe; but an account of ideas fueling or sometimes even constraining government action in developing world contexts, where material pressures are high, is found wanting. The purpose of this book is to move beyond the banal claim that ideas matter, and trace where ideas come from, how they are chosen, and when they are most salient for explaining political behavior in developing democracies. The study focuses on India, with similar settings, including Brazil, Turkey, and Indonesia"--