Please join us for a seminar on South Asian politics co-hosted by the Saxena Center at Brown University, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, and the Mittal Institute at Harvard University.
Speaker:
Dan Slater, James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Emerging Democracies at University of Michigan
Discussant:
- Ashutosh Varshney, Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Political Science at Brown University
- Gautam Nair, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
- Feyaad Allie, Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University
- Mashail Malik, Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University
What prompted a white ruling elite to grant universal suffrage to a population of color for the very first time in modern history? This presentation discusses the surprising and puzzling decision by the colonial Donoughmore Commission to extend the franchise in British Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1927-28, offering a novel account for both why and how suffrage expansion unfolds in the absence of either elite or popular pressures to expand voting rights.
About the Speaker:
Dan Slater is the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Emerging Democracies (@umichDemocracy) at the University of Michigan. He has recently been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics (LSE), University of Cape Town, and with the Contestations of the Liberal Script (SCRIPTS) program in Berlin. He specializes in the politics and history of democracy and authoritarianism, especially in Southeast Asia. His books include From Development to Democracy: The Transformations of Modern Asia (Princeton 2022, with Joseph Wong) and Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia (Cambridge 2010). His published articles can be found in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, and World Politics. He also regularly publishes commentaries on contemporary democracy and authoritarianism in the East Asia Forum and Journal of Democracy.
