Social Protection in India: A Welfare State Sans Public Goods?

Of the two principal components of social welfare policy—basic public services and social protection—India has focused disproportionately on the latter in the last two decades, expanding existing social protection programs and creating new ones. By contrast, the country’s basic public services, such as primary education, public health, and water and sanitation have languished. What explains this uneven focus? Why has India prioritized social protection over public services? This article considers explanations suggested by the existing literature on welfare states and concludes that they do not account adequately for the Indian case. Instead, it argues, the prioritization of social protection in India results from a combination of political, ideational, and institutional factors rooted in India’s political economy.     

Opening the black box – The making of India’s foreign policy

ABSTRACT

Most studies looking at India’s external policies continue to “black-box” the actual process of how Indian foreign policy is made. More specifically, most studies generally overlook how India’s complex domestic polity and bureaucratic apparatus shape India’s foreign policy outlook. Unlike works on India’s security policy which have built from and contributed to broader academic debates, studies on India’s foreign policy have failed to directly engage with concepts and theories developed by the sub-discipline of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). Why have these concepts and approaches not been consistently applied to the Indian context? There are various reasons for this, ranging from these disciplines’ excessive reliance on Western case studies, or the lack of interest in mainstream International Relations scholarship by South Asianists (in contrast to disciplines such as economics, political theory, and developmental studies, all of which have benefited from the Indian experience). This special issue is a step towards bridging this gap and to encourage a greater dialogue between FPA and the systematic study of Indian foreign policy. Through the careful analysis of specific case studies, the different papers offer a conceptually grounded and empirically innovative reading of India’s foreign policy across time, space, and themes.     

Coalition politics and the making of Indian foreign policy: a new research program

ABSTRACT

Do Indian regional parties influence foreign policy and under which conditions? Some foreign policy studies have shown that certain coalition-building configurations have facilitated the inclusion of the concerns of small parties in the foreign policy debate. Other works have looked at the role of decentralization and federal power-arrangement in providing more control to political sub-units over the external affairs of a state. Those separate scholarships provide interesting insights to account for the multi-level nature of coalition-building in a federal and pluralistic polity like India. Bridging these two literatures, I argue that the interdependence of regional and national coalition building processes (visible in federal settings) create locked-in alliances between national parties and regional parties which affect foreign policymaking. In these contexts, India’s national parties have to, under certain conditions, take into account the preferences of regional parties when designing foreign policies. This article looks at the hypothesized causal mechanisms and expectations through two illustrative case studies of India’s foreign policy.     

The dragon in the room: the China factor in the development of US–India ties in the Cold War

ABSTRACT

In recent years, as China has continued to rise as an economic, political and military power, there has been increasing consideration of its role in shaping US–India relations over the last two decades. However, this article, considering the period 1949–1979, shows that American and Indian perceptions of and policy toward China shaped the US–India relationship even during the Cold War. In doing so, the article seeks not just to bring China back into the story of past US–India relations, but also shed light on the China–India–US triangle of today and of tomorrow.     

Playing the Diversity Card: Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Policy under the Salmans

ABSTRACT

Since the 2003 regime change in Iraq and the 2011 Arab uprisings, the political map of the Middle East has been in flux. Regional actors have taken advantage of emerging windows of opportunity, which have affected the outcome of this process. Saudi Arabia’s role as an aspiring regional hegemon in the region is salient: the country’s assertive course in shaping its neighbourhood coincides with a more independent foreign policy that goes beyond the traditional US alliance and seeks to diversify its international partners. This diversification of Saudi foreign policy since the ascension to the throne of King Salman in 2015 is explained by using the IR concept of hedging.     

A. Lentin,The Last Political Law Lord: Lord Sumner (1859–1934)

ABSTRACT

Non-governmental organisations [NGOs] sought to expand American conceptions of human rights and contributed to shaping the American debate over Nicaragua policy in the 1980s. Progressive NGOs interpreted human rights to include political and civil liberties along with social and economic ones, an interpretation similar to that of the Nicaraguan government and embodied in Nicaraguan democracy. The Ronald Reagan Administration interpreted human rights narrowly to include only political and civil ones whilst recognising electoral politics as the essential ingredient of democracy. The Administration also considered the defeat of communism as its highest priority. Calling the Sandinistas, which controlled the Nicaraguan government after July 1979, both communist and allies of the Soviets and Cubans, Reagan’s anti-communism led him to support a counterrevolutionary force in Nicaragua—the Contras. NGOs and members of Congress regularly accused the Contras of human rights abuse; and NGOs used a lexicon of human rights to oppose Reagan’s Nicaragua policy and challenge the Cold War construct.     

Explaining recent increases in calorie intake in rural India: the role of social policy strengthening

ABSTRACT

During the past decade, considerable research efforts have sought to explain India’s “calorie consumption paradox”, namely, the coexistence of a decline in average per capita calorie intake in rural India alongside increased material living standards. Evidence from the most recent (68th) round of the National Sample Survey (NSS), released in 2014, however, indicates increases in calorie intake, notably among poorer income quintiles. This paper argues that the turnaround in these data is linked to the improved performance of pro-poor social protection measures. Analysis of data suggests a close association between states that have made the greatest improvements in social policy delivery systems, and increased calorie intake for the poorest quintile of rural populations. This conclusion supports wider international evidence on the importance of social protection strengthening for nutrition-sensitive economic growth.     

International Relations Theory and Minimum Deterrence

ABSTRACT

India’s government under Narendra Modi represents a return to single party rule. This paper investigates whether and why single party governments in India differ in their extremity of foreign policies from coalition governments. It particularly focuses on how different forms of government influence the saliency, contestation, and enactment of national conceptions about India’s global role. First, I situate India within the academic debate regarding coalitional governments and foreign policy. I suggest that one reason why India challenges scholars‘ assumption is the missing link between partisan conceptions of India’s global role and their institutional representation. Second, I propose a role theoretical approach and argue that the process of self-identification, consisting of ego and anticipated alter expectations, conditions a state’s role set and extreme foreign policy. It is hypothesized that the nature of contestation of national role conceptions varies between factions and fractions because of the nature of India’s party system, as well as the relative significance of external others for India’s identity. Third, I examine instances of role-taking in the field of nuclearization and Sino-Indian relations. Findings suggest that contested role conceptions during single-party rule caused more extreme variances in international role-taking, while coalition governments proved to induce more complementary role-taking processes.     

From “partnership” to “principled pragmatism”: tracing the discursive practices of the High Representatives in the EU’s relations with the Southern Mediterranean

ABSTRACT

The EU’s relations with countries in the Southern Mediterranean have a long history as the region is of great strategic importance for the Union and its member states. The High Representatives of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy have been highly involved in shaping these relations, and this role has been officially strengthened with institutional changes brought about with the Lisbon Treaty. This article analyses the role of the HR/VPs in shaping the EU's foreign and security policy towards the region with an analytical focus on discursive practice. Drawing on insights from practice theory in IR and EU studies, the analysis traces continuity and change in how the Southern Mediterranean is described in the drafting of key strategic documents. The main finding is that EU foreign and security policy towards the Southern Mediterranean shows a high degree of continuity despite several crises and institutional changes, although the discursive practices have evolved. The article ends by highlighting a conundrum that the EU can be said to implicitly acknowledge: if authoritarian states in the Southern Mediterranean are inherently unstable, yet stable enough to quench the democratic aspirations of their people, then what should be the basis for EU actions?     

US and India: Emerging offshore balancing in Asia

ABSTRACT

The US and India have become closer in recent times. Compared with the last century, the relationship between the two countries is in steady growth. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, and now the Trump administration too, India is receiving significant importance in US’ strategic policy toward the Indo–Pacific. India’s emergence as a credible power in the Indian Ocean region has brought both countries much closer. The relationship has also steadily progressed as result of China’s emergence as a potential hegemon in Asia. The US faces difficulty in maintaining its preponderant position across the Indo–Pacific and requires strong allies in the region to help share the burden. In this regard, India could be the offshore balancer in Asia to counter China’s emergence as a potential hegemon in the region.     

Muslim welfare bodies: New avenues of representation?

ABSTRACT

A lot of ink has flown over the issue of political under-representation of Muslims in India and over affirmative action measures needed to redress this imbalance. However, a minimal amount of attention has been paid to how Muslims are finding new ways to counter this under-representation. The Ministry for Minority Welfare and subsequent creation of the Minority Welfare Department seem to have expanded the locus of representation for Muslims beyond elections, legislatures, and membership of political parties. Consequently, the number of “Muslim representatives” has increased, in addition to MPs and MLAs who strictly speaking are supposed to be “people’s representatives.” Focusing on two Muslim groups’ engagement with the minority welfare bodies, the article contends that the success or failure of Muslim appointments to state bodies is based not so much on religious differentiation as on the ruling party’s electoral strategies, and their inclusion in these bodies only reinforces their minority status without integrating them entirely in the political process.     

Explaining India’s foreign policy: theoretical explorations

ABSTRACT

This article explores new lines of conceptualization to understand India’s regional behavior. It argues that the twin concepts of relational power and domestic balance of forces provide better insights into India’s post-Cold war responses than some of the available explanations. It allows us to connect the domestic and external dimensions of policy and identify the cluster of state and non-state actors that shape policy responses. Imagining India’s regional behavior in relational terms allows us to better explain the gap between power and policies, what current literature has identified as the key puzzle in India’s foreign policy behavior.     

Non-Alignment and Beyond: India’s Interest in Latin America, 1961–1972

ABSTRACT

Between 1961 and 1972, Latin America came to capture India’s diplomatic imagination. Officials within India’s Ministry of External Affairs identified strengthened ties with the region as a way to augment, restrain, and transcend the Non-Aligned Movement, further India’s international prestige and political influence, spread Indian culture, and bolster India’s economy. India’s interest in Latin America climaxed after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi prioritised the region and Pakistan strengthened diplomatic relations with Panama in autmn 1967. Yet uncertainty over the internal realities of Latin America hindered any Indian pivot. In the end, India’s aspirations for Latin America failed to materialise.     

India’s public opinion and foreign policy: a view from New Delhi

ABSTRACT

Incoherent, or even nonexistent, is the common criticism leveled at India’s public opinion. Given this criticism, scholars of Indian foreign policy often do not consider public attitudes in their research. Contrary to this, I trace the evolution of India’s public opinion and foreign policy connections since the early 1990s to demonstrate that the Indian public has opinions on foreign policy and that those opinions have limited but growing impact on the country’s foreign policy.     

Scheduled Castes Policies in Interstate Perspective: Constitutional Power,Argumentative Practices,and Governance in India

The article discusses legal and administrative dimensions that are relevant for comparing development policies for the Scheduled Castes across Indian states. The policies for the Scheduled Castes are subject to more central control than several other policy domains. The article therefore highlights the logic in India’s multilevel system of governance while specifying the constitutional meaning of the Scheduled Caste category, its related terms and discursive relevance. This provides a background to outline the relevant institutional dimensions at the center of India’s political system and the level of the regional states. The article suggests that the Scheduled Castes Development Corporations provide a useful basis to develop interstate comparisons. However, the comparison of development policies for Scheduled Castes cannot be complete without acknowledging the extent to which policies are often a result of argumentative practices among Dalit movements and actors in context, since their demands may generate decisions or information about policies.     

A theory of reform consolidation in India: From crisis-induced reforms to strategic internationalization

ABSTRACT

I use the policy feedback literature to present an argument regarding the new politics of reform consolidation in India. India’s reform trajectory can be understood in terms of three distinct phases of reforms interspersed by periods of slowdown. In this narrative that goes beyond 1991, an analysis of struggles, opponents, and reversals become important, revealing a more contested pathway. In the 2000s India has moved beyond the initial, crisis-driven phase to a deeper external integration with the global economy and structural reform within. I call this phase an era of strategic internationalization. Reforms of 1985, 1991, and 1998–2000, in different ways, have begun to create new constituencies of support across India, which underlies the consolidation phase of reforms. During this long trajectory, the opponents of reforms could delay reforms but failed to reverse the direction of economic reforms. The purpose of this article is to provide a temporal framework that pays attention to mechanisms underlying different phases of reforms and how new supporters and opponents of reforms were created across different phases of the reform trajectory. Policies, the social bases of the Indian economy, and classes have been re-configured as a result.     

Review essay: Alternative histories of revolutionaries in modern South Asia: context,chronology, and archives

Abstract

This review essay discusses two recent monographs on revolutionaries and political violence in South Asia, Kama Maclean’s A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text (2015) and Durba Ghosh’s Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (2017). Ghosh and Maclean’s books contribute to an expanding body of scholarly work on anticolonial politics in India, a rich historiography on liberalism in the British Empire, and studies of visual culture and oral histories in modern South Asia. Specifically, Maclean’s A Revolutionary History centers on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) in Punjab and Delhi in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Maclean reconfigures the political terrain of India’s independence struggle and illustrates the importance of revolutionary violence in nonviolent politics through unstudied visual sources and oral histories. In turn, Ghosh’s Gentlemanly Terrorists focuses on Bengal, particularly revolutionaries in the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar from 1919 to 1947. Complicating the history of colonial constitutionalism as a gradual expansion of rights and representation, Ghosh demonstrates how constitutional reforms that aimed to promote liberal governance in India were tied to repressive emergency legislation. This review essay addresses how Gentlemanly Terrorists and A Revolutionary History contribute to ongoing efforts to rethink both the political chronology and the wider political landscape of interwar India by incorporating revolutionaries into the story of independence. It also considers how Maclean and Ghosh creatively utilize non-state archives and vernacular sources, in conjunction with colonial records, to follow the retelling of revolutionary histories in different media.     

“How many miles make an inch?” Center-state relations and the 1967 India-Burma boundary agreement

ABSTRACT

Unabated protests in Manipur against India’s boundary with Myanmar and the lack of demarcation of some boundary pillars, despite the signing of the India-Burma Boundary Agreement in 1967, makes it an important case to study how center-state relations impact India’s foreign policy decision-making and implementation processes. Based on fresh archival material, this article explains why New Delhi refused to consult state governments in Northeast India before signing the boundary agreement, and the limiting consequences of such a top-down decision-making approach during the demarcation phase. A postcolonial entity that struggled to generate legitimacy in and assert sovereign control over the Northeast, India’s approach on this issue offers an opportunity to reflect upon the (limited) conceptualization of, and ongoing debates around, the idea of a ’state’ within foreign policy analysis.     

Globalization,Integration, and the European Welfare State

This paper considers three challenges to the mature European welfare states posed by economic and social integration, demographic changes, and the alleged decline of state capacity in the form of fiscal extraction in an era of globalization. I argue that the experiences of the older member states in the European Union are difficult to reconcile with the common assertions that globalization necessarily leads to a “race to the bottom” where welfare spending is downsized to the lowest common denominator. I develop a set of hypotheses on plausible linkages between demographic challenges, globalization, political capacity, and welfare spending, and test the propositions in an empirical analysis of 14 European Union member states from 1983 to 1998. My empirical results suggest that economic integration does not pose a threat to European welfare states. Rather, demographic changes such as low fertility rates and the aging of the population and their political implications for political leaders’ incentives are more serious challenges for the continuation of the welfare state in Europe.