An examination of how, despite similar historical contexts, India became a stable democracy post-independence, whilst Pakistan became an unstable autocracy.

Maya Tudor is a Fellow in Politics at St John's College, Oxford. Her dissertation, upon which this book is based, won the American Political Science Association's Gabriel Almond Award for the Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics.

1. How India institutionalised democracy and Pakistan promoted autocracy; 2. The social origins of pro- and anti- democratic movements (1885-1919); 3. Imagining and institutionalizing new nations (1919-47); 4. Organizing alliances (1919-47); 5. Freedom at midnight and divergent democracies (1947-58); 6. The institutionalization of alliances in India, Pakistan, and beyond.