Alfred C. Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at the School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University. He teaches comparative politics and his research interests include theories of democratic transitions, federalism, and the world’s religious systems and democracy. He has consistently argued for looking at the Indian model — be it secularism or federalism — on its own terms, and not just as a departure from the western norm. In the capital on Thursday, Prof Stepan spoke on ‘Rituals of Respect: Sufis and Secularists in Senegal’ at the CSDS. Excerpts from an interview with Vandita Mishra:

•As a theorist of democracy, how do you see the upcoming election in the United States?

We have a very tired discourse about what’s possible and what we can imagine for the future. Obama is imagining new things, challenging existing ways of seeing. If Obama is elected president, we’ll have the second chance that we almost don’t deserve.

America has done many bad things. Guantanamo did not receive the outrage it deserved. History will be shocked at how the US squandered opportunities in Iran. By the late 1980s, political figures opposed to the regime had won around 70 per cent of the votes for president and parliament. In Gramscian terms this may have been the fastest loss of hegemony of any revolution in world history. The elected president and parliament wanted to reach out to the US. We were not able to devise a coalition to do so. I hope Obama will have such opportunities. I hope he will not squander them.

... contd.