Chapter 10 presents case study evidence for the foregoing theory from colonial areas under the control of a single European colonizer. It focuses on four European empires – British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese – because of their extensive historical literatures and because they have the greatest within-empire variation. These cases demonstrate that Europeans brought representative democratic practices (along with their religion, culture, language, and technology) to their colonies and that they spread these institutions where they (Europeans) were sufficiently numerous to control the political outcomes. As a result, democracy became a tool of white supremacy.

Chapter 11 presents statistical tests of the relationship between European ancestry and democracy. A wide range of model specifications is utilized including varying measures of democracy, varying measures and temporal configurations of "Europe," and varying samples. The chapter also replicates previous work in this area and demonstrates how the theory serves to complement extant research. The chapter concludes with some estimates of the causal impact and a discussion of challenges to causal inference in this context.

Dheeraj Tokas's entry into Munirka's political landscape has been nothing less than phenomenal. Particularly so because he is not from the wealthiest or the most connected families in the village. Dheeraj started his career under the aegis of a strong Congress leader, a former member of the legislative assembly (MLA) whose patronage, as many allege, helped Dheeraj to act as the broker for a huge land deal with a prominent real estate company. Rumour has it that the windfall from that land deal changed his fortunes overnight. It was this new-found wealth that helped Dheeraj's political ambitions grow, and he soon started challenging his patrons in the Indian National Congress (INC). After he had fallen out with the INC, his wife, Parmila Tokas, stood independently for the seat of councillor from Munirka in 2012 (as that year, that particular ward was reserved for women candidates) and won it by a stupendous margin. Parmila and Dheeraj were, however, more ambitious. It is common for the nouveau riche to enter municipal-level politics. But the real litmus test is the legislative assembly elections. After Parmila's massive victory, Dheeraj fought elections for the state legislative assembly in 2013 from the Bahujan Samajwadi Party, which he lost rather badly. But right before the 2015 state legislative assembly elections, within two months of joining the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Parmila won the much-coveted AAP ticket for the R. K. Puram constituency with a massive margin of over 19,000 votes. Dheeraj may not have been very successful himself in winning elections, but together with this wife, they seemed to have figured out the ‘trick’ to winning them. Dheeraj handles much of the work, and Parmila's connect with people gets her the votes.

Why Politics?

I shift gears to discussing electoral politics in this chapter because it is pivotal to one's understanding of the social life of rent. Money circulates through multiple registers of meanings and social realities.

Where previous chapters offered robust evidence of a correlation between natural harbors and democracy, Chapter 7 explores a possible causal relationship between these factors. Several plausible causal pathways are considered: economic development, state size, social diversity, and democratic values. The chapter concludes with a formal mediation analysis of these possible causal mechanisms, finding that there is support for economic development, state size (though attenuated over time), ethnic diversity, and democratic values.

We offer twelve proposals to make tap water service in the United States more excellent, open, and equitable, following the framework outlined in Chapter 8. The first set of reforms relate to improving the excellence of tap water service in the United States. They include consolidation of America’s 50,000 water systems, improvement to drinking water regulation, improvement to tap water aesthetics, increased investment in infrastructure, and increased investment in human capital in the water industry. Our next set of proposals deal with making drinking water services more open. They include the development of water system report cards, increasing the visibility and public nature of water infrastructure, and improving outreach to citizen-consumers. Our final set of reforms deals with equity. These reforms include making water services universal in the United States, conducting distributional analyses when making and implementing environmental rules, expanding the regulatory role of public utilities commissions, and embedding equity in the administration of water services.

Beenu was an affable man, and rather quick witted. Since he had seen his father run a brick kiln, and dabbled in the transport business, real estate and local financing himself, I asked him to tell me what the experience of seeing things changing so drastically right before his eyes had been like. He responded with a smile,

The contradiction that Beenu had drawn was not merely a spatial one. There is a world of difference between the city and the village. People of South Delhi belong to the upper middle class and might even be considered the city's elite. Businessmen to government officials to members of the cultural and intellectual elite inhabit the many localities of South Delhi—all built on the agricultural lands of these villages. The villagers, however, may have money, but they do not embody the cultural capital that defines South Delhi. Both the city and the village have become cosmopolitan spaces, with aspirations that are quite ‘urban’, with inhabitants moving in and out of them seamlessly. This blurs the conceptual borders between urban and rural without erasing them, while also producing differences and hierarchies spatially. It also messes up identities. Proud Jat men find themselves derided in an urbanised world.

Chapter 6 presents statistical tests of the relationship between natural harbors and democracy. Tests of the early modern era utilize a limited dataset from the Ethnographic Atlas while later tests offer broader coverage using a variety of regime type indicators. A wide range of model specifications are utilized including varying measures of harbors and harbor distance, varying measures of democracy, and varying samples. The evidence that natural harbors have a positive correlation with democratic regimes is robust to all of these different model specifications. The chapter concludes by considering the waning of this effect over time.