The Blackmail of Democracy: A Genealogy of British/Pakistani Democracy Promotion by Catherine Elliott A thesis submitted to University College London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 1 Declaration 2 Acknowledgements Any doctoral thesis is the product of a relational, radically ordinary, experience of collaboration, talk, mutual support and sometimes rather intense emotion. I have long been grateful to Mark Ferrigan for first introducing me to the ideas of Michel Foucault and other French “theory”. I still use his explanations and examples with my students. The idea of writing about the strange business of promoting liberal democracy first came to me when talking to Jack Elden one hot night in my garden in Islamabad. I am grateful not only to him but to all my other brilliant colleagues, too numerous to name, at the British Council in Pakistan and Manchester. Particular thanks to Jo Seaman for being a great boss, as well as all my friends and colleagues in Pakistan, particularly Parveen Hasan, Rehana Sheikh, Umbreen Baig, Aalya Gloeckler, Roohi Afrooze, Javed Akhtar, Aziz Ahmed, Hajji Mohammed Akhtar, Supriya Madhavan, Zarin Khan and, above all, Asghar Soomro for showing me so much about this beautiful and fascinating country. I am also deeply grateful to the extraordinary Tomáš Daňhel for teaching me, amongst many other things, that what should be is less important than what is. David Hudson and Sherrill Stroschein at University College London gave me a huge amount of support in taking this project from an idea to a research proposal and have been brilliant supervisors throughout. Sherrill’s detailed feedback has been invaluable, as has all the effort she makes to ensure that her PhD students make connections with each other and other colleagues. I am especially grateful to David, my primary supervisor, for his patience, kindness, encouragement, time, tact and cups of tea, as well as his insight, ideas and intellect. I would not have been able to write this thesis without him. My research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. As a consequence, I was able to undertake an internship at the UK’s National Archives, which considerably developed my research skills and was great fun, 3 not least thanks to the support of Amanda Bevan and Liz Evans. Many thanks are also due to innumerable helpful librarians and archivists at the British Library and the House of Commons Library, as well as all the helpful staff at the FCO and DFID who processed a huge number of Freedom of Information requests with incredible efficiency. I am deeply grateful to the School of Public Policy at UCL, especially Jennifer Hudson, Richard Bellamy and Nicky Henson, for awarding me the ESRC funding and for providing a stimulating environment to work in. The experience of being “not amongst my own people” at SPP has given me an abiding respect for all the many different kinds of knowledge that are produced in politics departments and the subtlety and intelligence that goes with them. In particular, my colleagues in the regular, and always enjoyable, PhD seminars on Monday nights have been superb interlocutors, asking pertinent and often unexpected questions. Susan Gaines and Javier Sajuria have been a great pleasure to work with, as have all my students who are always lively, interesting and thought- provoking. The same can be said of my students at King’s College London and I particularly thank Adrian Blau for being a great boss and letting me loose on his undergraduates with all my French ideas. I have presented parts of the thesis at the Essex Conference in Critical Political Theory, a workshop entitled “Epistemologies and Ontologies of the Political, the Global and the International” at Keele University, Patrick Jackson’s methods workshop at the International Studies Association-North East Conference and Aletta Norval’s summer school on agonistic democracy at the University of Essex. I am grateful to the organisers of these events and my fellow participants for their very helpful comments. Graham Burchell, Viv Jabri, Patrick Jackson, Matthew Dennis, Kathryn Fisher, James Dawson, Niheer Dasandi and Barbara Sennholz-Weinhardt have all read drafts of individual chapters. Their comments, questions and insights have been invaluable, but I have appreciated stimulating conversations with them all even more. Tony Taylor and Emily Robinson have also helped me enormously with their historical knowledge, suggestions and questions as well as friendship and support. 4 Emily Linnemann has gone above and beyond the call of duty in reading three chapters, as well as offering me the model of her beautiful writing. I treasure her intelligence and her friendship. Richard Martini also proofread the entire thesis with his usual meticulousness, as well as offering the best kind of musical and conversational moral support. Also to thank for warmth, love, friendship, music, wine and great conversation over the years have been Nick Evans, Marsha Healey, Gill Sampson, Nichola Frances, Michal Polák, Tomáš Samek, Kim Plowright, Lizzy Toon, Mike Grundmann, Natalie Raybould, Andy Still and especially Jenny, Nadeem and now little Noah. I would also like to thank all my friends at Republic for their support and understanding, especially Graham Smith. I scarcely know what I would have done without the wonderful Rachel Jones during the last few months of writing. Despite having troubles of her own, she has read more drafts than I can count, listened to my incessant chatting on, asked great questions, made brilliant jokes, cooked my tea, encouraged and looked after me. I thank her from the bottom of my heart. A particular thanks must go to Jill, Carlos, Luke and Sophie who have welcomed me into their life and home with unfailing love, support and occasional much- needed slave-driving. Luke in particular has been a worthy opponent at scrabble and someone with whom I can always talk about ideas. I look forward to reading his thesis one day. Finally, and above all, my parents have made everything possible from the time they first taught me to read and to cherish learning. They put up with a lot, have given me a lot in all sorts of ways and I love them. 5 Abstract This thesis begins from the premise that identity is only possible as a function of difference. If someone is British, that is because they are not French or Pakistani. What matters, however, is not the fact of these divisions but how they operate and with what consequences. For contemporary practices of thought, the identification of others by means of temporal distinctions has become extremely important. To explore this, I work genealogically to draw on empirical material from colonial and post-colonial Britain and Pakistan, including legislation, political discourse, government projects and broader cultural representations. I make two main arguments. First, I show the importance of these modes of “temporal othering”. I empirically examine the temporal distinctions that constitute a British, democratic, national identity by dint of positing an “other” that is barbaric, alien, despotic, violent and – most importantly – backward. It is in encountering and constantly re-narrating these threats to democracy that the British come to have a sense of an imagined, democratic community that has emerged - through a seamless, progressive history - by virtue of what it is opposed to. Relatedly, democracy is understood as the endpoint of history, with consequences for overseas Democracy Promotion. Second, I argue that it is possible to narrate alternative versions of history. In examining the emergence of such teleological versions of history, I show that teleology isn’t the driving force of history, but rather emerges from the messiness of historical events. Furthermore, the practices that it legitimates are deeply involved in promoting the violence and social marginalisation for which democracy is thought to be the remedy. However, I show that the version of history that currently pervades practices of thought about British identity and democracy promotion is contestable and that therefore it might be possible to think, act and live differently. 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abstract 6 Introduction 10 Section 1: Democracy Promotion in the Present 45 1 What is Democracy Promotion? 46 2 Representing Democracy, Democratic Representation 76 3 Disordering Histories 119 Section 2: The Other Without 160 4 Authoring the Codes Elsewhere: Colonial Governmentality 161 and Teleological Time 5 Blood in the Codes: Liberal Governmentality, Democracy 200 and Pakistan Section 3: The Other Within 231 6 Twelve Months that Shook the World: 1989 and the Salman 232 Rushdie Affair 7 The Art of Integration: Representing British Muslims 269 Conclusion: The Blackmail of Democracy – Renegotiating the Terms 299 Bibliography 320 7 List of Illustations Figure 1 Why Politics Will Not Fix Pakistan 8 It seems, as one becomes older, That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence – Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution, Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past. (T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets) 9 Introduction My thesis begins from the premise that identity is only possible as a function of difference. If someone is British, that is because they are not French or American or Pakistani and so on. This account of identity tells us very little, however, unless we flesh out the concrete empirical detail of the identities individual subjects have by virtue of what they are not: what matters is not the fact of these divisions but how they operate and with what consequences. I suggest that for contemporary practices of thought, the identification of others by means of temporal distinctions has become extremely important. Through my thesis, then, I empirically examine the temporal distinctions that constitute a British, democratic, national identity by dint of positing an “other” that is barbaric, alien, despotic, violent and – most importantly – backward.