Journal of International Politics Volume 2, Issue 2, 2020, PP 24-32 ISSN 2642-8245 Journal of International Politics V2 ● I2 ● 2020 24 A Comparative Study of Women in Local Government in India and Pakistan Nadeem Malik* Development Studies Program, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia. *Corresponding Author: Nadeem Malik, Development Studies Program, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Australia INTRODUCTION The decade of the 1980s saw an increasing enthusiasm for decentralisation in developing countries. The concept itself was part of the good governance agenda of the World Bank and donor countries in the first world (Malik, 2016). It was thought that the failure of earlier development paradigms (especially the structural adjustment program) was due to bad institutional arrangement, corruption, and lack of accountability of government institutions (Malik, 2016). It was believed that unless more inclusive, appropriate and modern market-oriented institutions were introduced in developing countries, people’s empowerment, economic growth and poverty reduction was not possible (Malik, 2016). The decentralisation approach was based on the assumption that bringing decision making closer to grassroots communities, would strengthen electoral institutions, democracy and civil society making bureaucracy more efficient and less corrupt. Also, priority was given to more female representation in local government institutions. It was believed that decentralisation would empower women as well (Malik, 2016). However, what the empirical evidence suggests is that the predatory interests had managed to reinvent themselves in the new democracy at the local level. Thus, decentralisation could not produce ‘good governance’ idealized in the neo-institu tionalist scheme of the international financial institutions and the donor countries. With few exceptions, this is most vividly illustrated by the rise of political gangsters in the leadership of parties, parliaments and executive bodies at the local level in most countries 1 . The failure of decentralizing was due to inadequate local government framework, ineffective implementation or capture of local government by interest groups or a combination of these factors (Malik, 2009). There are, of course, limits to the way the examples of local governance experiments can be generalised across all countries within the less-developed world. Local officials can certainly be found who have performed relatively well compared to other governments in developing countries such as in the cases of Karnataka in India and Porto Alegre in Brazil (Dickovick, 2011; Heller, 2001; Manor & Crook, 1998;). However, in most cases in developing countries, the reforms that took place, in the absence of any reforms in the power structures, did not allow for them to be sustained (Malik, 2016). They were dissipated under pressures of money politics and political thuggery, which underpinned the working of democracy in most of these countries at the local and national levels. 1 For example, see: Paul S (2001); Paul S, Lewis BD (1996) Rondinelli D, McCullough J and Johnson R (1989); Rosenau JN (1995); Schonwalder G (1997); Smith BC (1985); Souza C (1998) of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 40: 145-148. ABSTRACT Women's participation and representation in politics at the local level is considered important for gender equity and women’s empowerment. The recent wave of decentralisation in the late 1990s in India and Pakistan promised to solve women-related community problems at the grass-root level and more importantly, to empower them socially, economically and politically. This article demonstrates the extent to which such aspirations could be realized. Keyword: women’s political representation, local government, India, Pakistan