Towards a Global History of Voting: Sovereignty, the Diffusion of Ideas, and the Enchanted Individual

Abstract

This article suggests a framework for moving toward a global history of voting and democracy that focuses less on the diffusion of European ideas (however important those ideas were) than on embedding the history of voting within a worldwide history of ideas on sovereignty. The article posits a general framework for such a history focusing on a -conundrum of sovereignty‖ grounding legitimate rule in a space imagined as simultaneously within and outside worldly society. Rooted in a -secular theology‖ such ideas shaped in the 19th and 20th centuries the establishment of systems of mass voting (including the secret ballot), and the sovereignty of the -people‖ both in Europe and other parts of the world alike, in the process producing an image of the individual voter as an -enchanted individual.‖ The article looks at developments within Europe and in India in these terms.

Insurgent Rule as Sovereign Mimicry and Mutation: Governance, Kingship, and Violence in Civil Wars

“… 10 This observation resonates with Heesterman's (1985) work on Vedic notions of sovereignty and Gilmartin's (2012; 2015) interpretation of these notions as antecedents to contemporary forms of sovereignty. Again, though, we do not see the LTTE's sovereign experiment as a direct citation of ancient Hindu practices, but instead place it in a sequence with modern anticolonial expressions of power, sacrifice, legitimacy, and charisma, which in turn reinterpreted precolonial traditions. …”

“…The point is not that there are benign kings who protect their people, and evil kings who torment or even devour them-all kings embody both capacities (ibid. ; see also Gilmartin 2012;Hansen 2001). This does not disqualify the basic idea of sovereignty as discipline with impunity, but it does mean that we have to expand our gaze beyond a purely instrumental deployment of violence.…”

What is a Public? Notes from South Asia

“…50 Even the institution of the secret ballot, as David Gilmartin suggests, demonstrates how the rationalÀcritical public emerges in tandem with the state. 51 As a theatrical space, the voting booth helps stage a drama in which the sovereign individual exercises her critical judgement free (at least apparently) from the external constraints of state and society. Far from preceding the state, however, this atomised (or, in Elaine Hadley's terms, 'abstract') individual is in fact the product of an elaborate set of institutional procedures devised and guaranteed by the state.…”

Special issue: electoral fraud and manipulation in India and Pakistan

“…Administrative efforts to secure the secret vote are generally considered to be the key precondition for free and fair elections (Gilmartin, 2012). The 'west' has promoted the secret ballot as the pillar of representative democracy (Bertrand, Briquet, & Pels, 2007).…”