When the brain drain is healthy for democracy

Endurance of Indian democracy is one of the great Indian puzzle. How a population so vast, so ethnically and linguistically fragmented and thus unequal economically has succeeded in maintaining a participatory democracy since 1947? What forces have kept the politically stable country, allowing the rapid economic growth of the last two decades?

One intriguing answer comes political scientist Devesh Kapur, who is studying the political effects of skilled migration (so-called brain drain) on the country of origin of migrants (we have explained in a blog before the positive economic effects of the brain drain) list.it a new book presented yesterday at the Center for Global Development, Kapur concludes:

[L] it is positive to the selection of indigenous migrants from the education has strengthened the Indian democracy by creating a political space already excluded social groups. Because the old Indian elites have an output option, they are less likely to withstand the loss of political power in the House.

Governments have historically used emigration such as a valve pressure, get rid of dissidents and other undesirable and preserve stability in the home. After rioting workers from Paris on the scale of 1848, the French Government tried to shake "subversives" offering Algeria land concessions. Kapur also cites examples of Cuba and the Zimbabwe where authorized managers periodic exodus of unhappy as a deliberate to maintain their hold on political power, then that migrant remittances strategy has helped keep things economically citizens.

In the decades following independence in India Kapur argues that migration of high caste India, allowed very educated elite middle and lower caste Indian more empowered by the new rights of voting to seek a more political power and a larger share of the pie.In the 1990s, positive action threatened elites, privileges the rich let go with less of a struggle, because the emigration to Europe or the United States gave them attractive alternatives.At the same time, however, Kapur says upper class members who have chosen the output have kept still voices: their continuing influence in the politics of the India perpetuate inequality.

Tobias Pfutze(formerly one of our own to DRI) has also worked on this aspect relatively neglected the brain drain, study Mexican immigrants in the United States and their influence on the policy back to the local elections in 2000 to 2002 maison.Aux Pfutze found that places the Mexico who sent more than immigrants to the United States was more likely to vote for booting on the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had dominated Mexican politics since 1929.Son work suggests that the influence of Mexican immigrants in United States really helped facilitate the Mexican transition from a single democratic party.

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