Category: Comparative Politics

• Indian Public Opinion and Sino-Indian Relations

  The impact of popular opinion on Sino-Indian relations has received particular attention in recent years. However, this is no phenomenon. In the run-up to the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 and subsequently, popular feelings played an important role constraining the government’s freedom of action and in encouraging political players to make rash statements and promises.

• The Rise of China’s Cities

  China’s cities have risen as sites of power and opportunity in recent decades with huge potential impact on the territorial and administrative integrity of the provinces.

• ‘Beijing is far away’

  Studying centre-province and inter-province relationships in China from the perspective of the provinces, provides a new framework for analyzing political and economic developments in China. Four distinct phenomena deserve examination: localism, provincialism, regionalism and transnationalism.

• Will Emerging Powers Promote Democracy?

  The decline of Western dominance, symbolized by the financial crisis in 2008 and the rise of emerging actors such as China, India and Brazil, will fundamentally change the way decisions are made at the international level. Apart from changing the way decisions are made, the rise of non-established powers such as India and Brazil on…

• Border Provinces in Foreign Policy: China’s West and India’s Northeast

  China has given greater leeway in economic matters, to these provinces of the west under its Western Development Strategy (WDS). In India, too, there is greater attention being paid to connecting India’s Look East Policy (LEP), a foreign policy initiative, with the economic development of the Indian Northeast. Might the WDS and the LEP be…

• Guns, Blankets and Bird Flu

  The India-Myanmar border regions form a forgotten frontier in the Indian and global imagination but violence, trade and transnational challenges such as drug-trafficking and the spread of diseases have kept both a regional identity as well as specific community identities alive.

• The States in Indian Foreign Policy

  This presentation focuses on one particular aspect of centre-province relations in India – the nature of influence that Indian provinces (or States) exercise on national foreign policymaking.

• The EU, China and India

  How can the European Union intervene in a positive and creative manner to ensure that a ‘new cold war’ does not develop between the two Asian giants?

• Provincial Interests and Foreign Policy

  A combination of the success of economic reforms in certain provinces and of coalition politics at the national level underwritten by strong regional parties is beginning to translate into a ‘decentralization’ of Indian foreign policymaking. Indian provinces and their leaders are increasingly vocal in their opinions on foreign policy and international affairs and their views…