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Simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies have been proposed by the NITI Aayog and other government institutions to minimize the disruptions caused by frequent elections which include enormous expenditure, administrative burden, communal violence, policy manipulation, etc. These institutions endeavour to introduce and sustain simultaneous elections with the aid of mechanisms like constructive vote of no-confidence, fixed-term legislatures, and executive rule in case of premature dissolutions. Such proposals are based on the misplaced assumption of the dependence of simultaneity on these mechanisms. We find that simultaneity can be introduced without incurring accountability costs. In a bid to achieve stability in governance, they make the system rigid, attack the principles of democracy and federalism, and erode executive accountability towards the legislature, implicating an important tenet of parliamentary democracy. We suggest alternative models which introduce simultaneity without the aid of these mechanisms through flexible legislative terms and phased elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the evolution of the debates around lobbying regulation in India and Brazil. Studies on lobbying regulation have compared the results of regulatory frameworks implementation, but little work exists in countries where these practices are unregulated. Findings from this paper show that the debates in Brazil have evolved due to the pressure for the institutionalisation of the government affairs sector; while in India, the debates still remain fragmented with lack of cohesion amongst interest groups, since lobbying is associated with corruption. These findings have implications for Commonwealth countries since, in the majority of countries, lobbying is still unregulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Commentary, I propose a bold, four-step plan which would address the question of self-determination for Kashmiris and hopefully resolve permanently the 70-year-old Kashmir issue which has poisoned Indo-Pakistan relations since Partition. Two important elements of this plan would be: first, the involvement of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group to assist Kashmiris, Pakistan and India in the mediation of the plan; and, second, the holding of four UN-supervised referenda which would be held simultaneously but counted separately: Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir; Kashmir valley; Jammu; and Ladakh. All Kashmiris would have three options: Join Pakistan, Join India or independence. As an incentive to India and Pakistan, the international community would deliver substantial economic assistance for the development of all parts of Kashmir. But as a quid pro quo for the economic aid package, there would have to be guaranteed free movement of people, capital and goods between all parts of Kashmir after the referenda, regardless as to which option had been chosen by the Kashmiris. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign policies of landlocked states have been a topic of interest for scholarship on international relations but the landlocked states in South Asia have received negligible attention. Due to their geographical realities, South Asian landlocked states that include Afghanistan, Bhutan and Nepal, depend on their neighbours for trade with the outside world. A range of factors place landlocked states in an unequal relationship with their coastal neighbours. While these factors include the superiority of coastal neighbours in terms of economy, population size, and military strength, we argue that their landlockedness plays a crucial role. To further investigate the role of landlockedness, this study compares the foreign policy decisions that guide India-Nepal and Afghanistan–Pakistan relations. Based on the assessment of historical, economic and geopolitical factors, we argue that India and Pakistan exploit their landlocked neighbours to achieve their national interests. Frustrated by the treatment of their coastal neighbours and the presence of new trade opportunities have compelled Afghanistan to use its closeness with India to counter over-dependence on Pakistan and Nepal has enhanced cooperation with China to overcome its reliance on India, thereby creating a new geopolitical dynamic within South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that religious nationalism poses a unique challenge to the liberal theory of religious freedom. In arguing this, the article first develops and defines an ideal type of religious nationalism through an analysis of Hindu-nationalist and religious Zionist thought. I show that religious nationalism in states like India and Israel have the unique status of intimate rivals. They are intimate since they are able to successfully present themselves as the carriers of the authentic character of the nation-state and utilize modern political tools. As a result, they are free of much of the unifying pressures of state nationalism. And they are rivals because they promote a vision of society and politics that fundamentally challenges the political identity of the state. The paper then turns to the justifications and rationales of religious freedom—both in seminal cases and in political and legal scholarship—and applies them to religious nationalism. It argues that the status of intimate rivalry should, depending on which justification of religious freedom we adhere to, change the way in which we morally and legally understand religious nationalism. First, because religious nationalism is intimate—that is, acceptable and mainstream—it should be approached as a part of the culture of the majority. This implies that we should be less concerned about infringements of religious freedom in the case of the adherents and organizations of religious nationalism. Second, the rivalry of religious nationalism is in itself a good reason for the nation-state not to accommodate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I want to focus on some aspects of the political process in India that have an impact on the treatment of religious minorities. Much of the discussion on multicultural jurisdictions deals with differentiated citizenship rights that allow religious groups to maintain their normative universe. This literature shows the tensions surrounding individual and group rights. I want to approach the question of religious freedom from a rather different angle. I want to first focus on the protection of bare life in the face of religious violence and then examine the issue of conversion from one religion to another. The issues of human security and conversion are linked in India, since Hindu nationalists see Muslims as forcibly converted Hindus who should be reconverted. To highlight the importance of majoritarian nationalism rather than political systems in the treatment of religious minorities, I offer a brief comparison with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate concerning China's emergence as a revisionist power has taken a more direct shape under the Donald Trump administration in the United States. Such a debate is not as prevalent in India even though New Delhi began perceiving Beijing's assertive rise long-ago with caution. India's deductions of China as a revisionist power are drawn on its national security calculus and the anticipatory challenges it faces from China in the land and maritime domain that threatens the status-quo of the region. In other words, India's perception of China in Indo-Pacific is much more constructive, drawn on a dualist outlook of power-partner contention, that comes both as a challenge as well as opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For greater control over space and power continuous struggle occurring between different human groups and/or nations ultimately leads to conflict and war. The present paper is concerned with the conflict between India and Pakistan which is the longest conflict in the World Geopolitics with no end in the foreseeable future. The main objective of this paper is to study the geographical bases of India-Pakistan conflict. The paper is based on historical, political, economic, strategic and media sources. In methodological sense it is descriptive as well as analytical in nature. As the study is concerned with geographic influences upon the changing power relationship between India and Pakistan, thus, it is of great significance in the geopolitical studies. The study reveals some geographical bases of the conflict between India and Pakistan such as territorial (border disputes), strategic (importance of Jammu and Kashmir as buffer region), resource (water and maritime water disputes), religion or ethnic (displacement of large scale population from India to Pakistan or vice-versa) geography (geographical unity of a state or a nation in terms of physical and human phenomenon; e.g. Akhanda Bharat) and proximity (close proximity to Jammu and Kashmir to India and Pakistan). In conclusion, the study confirms that the conflictuality between India and Pakistan is geography stimulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The victory of India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has shaped current socio‐political discourse through the lens of Hindu fundamentalism. Driven by right‐wing Hindu nationals in the party that advocate the hegemony of the Hindu way of life, or Hindutva ('Hindu nationalism'), contemporary political narrative can be seen to recontextualise the country's history through 'saffronisation' of public space, social practice, and education. This paper will explore how under the governance of the ruling party, socio‐political sentiment is perceived to be shaped increasingly through Hindutva, by analysing the media framing of political ideology. To conduct the analysis, the paper draws on Bhatia's (2015) theoretical framework of the Discourse of Illusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's revocation of Article 370, which had granted Jammu and Kashmir a special status, has changed the security and strategic dynamics in the relations between India and Pakistan. India claims it is an internal matter whereas Pakistan considers it an international issue and pushes to resolve it in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions. While Pakistan has limited international support, it still vows to go to any extent to secure 'freedom' for the Kashmiris. The visit of US President Donald Trump to India and the signing of a peace agreement between the US and the Taliban have added new dynamics to this conflict. This article discusses the aftermath of the revocation of Article 370, outlines Pakistan's claims from an historical perspective, analyses immediate measures initiated by Islamabad, points out the available options Pakistan may see at its disposal, and provides critical assessment of each. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southern Asia has seen multiple standoffs between three nuclear weapon states. The face-off has escalated into multiple wars between the three- China-India-Pakistan, adversaries and rival nations. The stability-instability paradox exposes the vulnerabilities and deterrence that actually leads to higher crises escalation in an unstable strategic environment. The unstable strategic environment in southern Asia brings up two important objectives of this study: (1) The understanding of the strategic environment and practice of deterrence in Southern Asia, and (2) India's context and vistas of deterrence within the region. The conceptual framework of study examines various assumptions and relevance of deterrence in strategic complexities of Southern Asia. The theoretical account will enable analyzing the interlinkage between deterrence and the strategic scenario in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Modi regime in India shares many exclusionary features in common with authoritarian populists elsewhere, one distinguishing feature is its umbilical relationship to the semi-fascist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose long-term goal has been the establishment of a Hindu rashtra (nation). One of the major instruments for achieving this has been education, with the RSS seeing cultural hegemony as more foundational than political control. This article examines the transformation of school and higher education under the Modi regime in an effort to bring India more in line with the Hindu nationalist vision of its parent body, and the degree to which being in government supports or creates contradictions with the RSS vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic elections in the Philippines and India in 2019 yielded a paradoxical result: the strengthening of the political hegemony of personalities partial to authoritarian rule. An examination of economic, social, and political conditions prior to the elections shows that the usual paradigms used to explain voters' choices – class theory, rational choice theory, and patron–client theory – fail to account for the sweeping victories of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A more useful framework is that of charismatic authority derived from Max Weber. Employing this paradigm, the article discusses the origins of charismatic authority in the two polities, the differences in charismatic appeal, the social construction of charisma, charisma and the creation of the Other, and the democratic dialectic at the heart of charismatic authoritarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to analyze whether the United Progressive Alliance government in India (UPA, which was in power from 2004–14) was successful in implementing its Look East Policy (LEP). It will discuss to what extent it was effective in realizing its vision of a community of nations conscious of their historical ties, cultural heritage, and connective identity in the Asian platform. This article argues that the government's idea of a 'shared destiny' has formed the core of an emerging 'identity' in India, and has acted as the main anchor of India's approach towards the South East Asian region. The paper also examines whether the UPA government was successful in its vision of strengthening institutional cooperation, capability, and connectivity, in the region and how the implementation of the LEP has impacted on India's economic and security interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Security Council (NSC) has become the most important institution on national security coordination, planning and policymaking in India, particularly since 2014. However, the government has been criticised for not institutionalising its national security architecture as many changes in the NSC system are seen as personality centric. Vinay Kaura assesses the key characteristics and functioning of the evolving NSC coupled with the role and influence of individuals and institutions. He contends that a decline in prime ministerial trust or interest, which seems unlikely until 2024, could moderate the NSC's role in policymaking on national security. ◼ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government, led by Narendra Modi, imposed a stringent lockdown with only four hours notice. It paid no attention to the millions of migrants who work on a temporary basis in Indian cities. Most lost their livelihoods as a result of the lockdown, and millions sought to return to their native villages. At the same time, the rural economy confronted its own difficulties caused by the lockdown. The relief that the Modi government offered to the large numbers of poor people who had been adversely affected by its response to COVID-19 was limited and poorly delivered. The episode showed the lack of responsiveness of Indian democracy to the needs of working people and the failures of development. Yet Modi's particular brand of authoritarian populism worked so well that a government displaying very little compassion retained strong popular support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's development during its more than 70 years of independence was less spectacular than that of other nations, but nevertheless impressive. Therefore, today the country has a new position of international responsibility. While the high ambitions may have looked too illusive before, today it is a roadmap already in discussion. India, opposite to China, does not seek predominance within Asia or worldwide, but her "rightful place" within the community of nations, creating status, respect and recognition. This paper discusses the growing dynamics of changes within the last decade till 2020 as well evaluations and predictions until 2030. Observed are dimensions of power -- politically, economically, militarily -- both national and in their global recognition. Within the coming decade India will reach the third position in the world order ranking, behind the USA in second place and the then leading China. However, there will still be considerable distance towards both of them insofar global political leadership is operative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elections held outside of advanced, industrialized democracies can turn violent because elites use coercion to demobilize political opponents. The literature has established that closely contested elections are associated with more violence. I depart from this emphasis on competitiveness by highlighting how institutional biases in electoral systems, in particular uneven apportionment, affect incentives for violence. Malapportionment refers to a discrepancy between the share of legislative seats and the share of population, violating the 'one person, one vote' principle. Drawing on recent work on malapportionment establishing that overrepresented districts are targeted with clientelist strategies, are more homogenous, and are biased in favor of district-level incumbent parties, I argue that overrepresented districts present fewer incentives for using violence. In contrast, elites in well-apportioned or underrepresented districts exert less control over electoral outcomes because such districts have more heterogenous voter preferences, raising incumbent and opposition demands to employ violence. I examine the effects of malapportionment on violence using constituency-level elections data and new, disaggregated, and geocoded event data on the incidence of election violence in India. Results from six parliamentary elections from 1991 to 2009 show that electoral violence is less prevalent in overrepresented constituencies, and that violence increases in equally apportioned and moderately underrepresented districts. The analysis establishes additional observable implications of the argument for district voter homogeneity and incumbent victory, accounts for confounders such as urbanization and state-level partisanship, and validates measures of election violence. The findings illustrate that institutional biases shape incentives for electoral violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asset declarations requiring politicians to disclose their financial information are becoming increasingly common across the world. The information contained in these disclosures frequently reveals that politicians rapidly accumulate wealth while in office, a fact that may raise suspicion among voters. However, little is known about the ways in which such information may affect voter behavior. To address this gap, we use original experimental and survey data from India to explore voters' reactions to information about wealth and wealth accumulation. Results suggest that voters strongly disapprove of wealth accumulation in office and associate it with corruption and political violence. Further analyses suggest several mechanisms that may partly explain why many "wealth accumulators" win elections in India despite these negative reactions. Voters generally lack information about disclosures and many weigh wealth accumulation less than some other prominent concerns, such as performance in office or caste-based appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines growth patterns of government companies in India, whether their presence has crowded out private entrepreneurial activity and whether there has been a decline in the competitiveness of India's industry, measured as relative productive efficiency, for a 45 year period from 1957-1958 to 2001-2002. There was a significant growth in the number of government companies in India that effectively crowded out the entry and growth of private enterprise. This took place from the mid to late 1950s to the late 1980s and early 1990s. Correspondingly, the amount of private equity capital invested in firms declined until the late 1980s and early 1990s when there was an upsurge of private investment activity. Another feature was that a small number of government companies absorbed most of the corporate sector equity investment in India. The growth in the share of government companies in India that crowded out the entry and growth of private enterprises has had a significantly negative effect on India's industrial competitiveness. After the introduction of reforms in 1991, there has been a significant crowding in by private enterprises, displacing the government companies from their key position as holders of a very large portion of equity capital, and also reversing the trend in the decline of competitiveness of Indian industry as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's Smart Cities Mission (SCM) launched in 2015 has awarded 100 smart cities nation-wide, proffering funds, compulsory corporate partnerships, and new configurations of urban governance. Perhaps most striking are the ten smart city bids from Northeast India, a region shaped unevenly by separatism, military occupation, and heavy economic dependency. Smart cities in the Northeast have been awarded with key exceptions to SCM rules. We take this to be a largely unprecedented experiment in digital urbanism in what Dunn and Cons (2014. "Aleatory Sovereignty and the Rule of Sensitive Spaces." Antipode 46 (1): 92–109) label 'sensitive space'. Through a critical reading of the 10 smart city bids from the Northeast we make three arguments. First, despite the techno-utopian rhetoric, the primary aim of the SCM is integrating frontier space into national territory. Second, the extension of the SCM to the frontier accelerates the recalibration of the frontier into a market for corporate capital under the necessary stewardship of the Indian state, though the role for customary authorities in these arrangements is unclear. Third, with few other avenues for revenue generation and in response to perceptions of neglect, local authorities have used SCM bids to request conventional infrastructure rather than digitally networked projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • I examine the targeting performance of and access to social pensions in India. • Exclusion of poor older people continues to be a widespread problem. • The overall benefits from targeting are very limited. • Below Poverty Line (BPL) card as eligibility criterion can be misused by non-poor individuals. • Poor older people lacking a BPL card and/or political connections appear to be left behind. Abstract Whether social transfers should be targeted or universal is an unsolved debate particularly relevant for the implementation of social protection schemes in developing countries. While the limited availability of public resources encourages targeting, the difficulty to identify the poor promotes a universal allocation of benefits. To address this question, this study examines the targeting performance of and access to a social welfare scheme for an increasingly vulnerable group – India's poor older people. The results show that during a time period of social pension reforms, exclusion and inclusion errors were successfully reduced but the exclusion of poor older people continues to be extremely high. Comparing the existing targeting approach to a random allocation, I show that the benefits of targeting are limited. The reforms aimed at increasing the transparency of social pension allocation indeed made the Below Poverty Line ration card the most important determinant of access to social pensions for older people. However, this focus on the ration card promoted by the national government has its own weaknesses. Non-poor older people exploit the unwarranted possession of this ration card and results suggest that after the reforms individuals with direct connections to local government officials are more likely to access social pension benefits. The current targeting approach seems to be beneficial for well-connected older individuals while many poor older people typically lacking these connections lag behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the impact of globalisation in Asia in particular India. It mentions key features of globalisation in India which include rapid urbanisation, social change, modernisation and loss of traditional life, especially for younger generations. It informs that global activity increased since Indian government allowed foreign investment in 1991, as a result of liberalisation and the payment crisis with the International Monetary Fund.

Political parties have proliferated in India since the 1980s. A marked feature of the growth of parties has been the competitiveness of regional parties. Political entrepreneurs have broken away from established parties and formed separate parties that have competed at both state and national levels of the Indian political system. A few of the newly formed parties became strong competitors in their home units, sometimes leading state governments, demonstrating that they were large parties in their own region. A larger number of regional parties won representation in the Lok Sabha after 1989, but most of these newer parties, and some of the older ones, remained small. In the context of coalition politics many small parties were welcomed into national coalitions. Yet a lack of Assembly seats usually resulted in small parties being excluded from government at the state level. This article develops a typology that distinguishes small parties, active in national and state elections, from the larger regional parties and the hundreds of smaller parties registered with the Election Commission. The wider significance of the small parties is assessed in relation to party system change and the everyday conduct of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India concluded a fresh safeguards agreement (INFCIRC/754) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2009. All aspects of safeguards measures including the items to be safeguarded were deliberated upon, to ensure that India's safeguards agreement does not result in giving any flexibility to India to use safeguarded items for unsafeguarded activities. The safeguards agreement INFCIRC/754 came with many additional features. Some of them are a result of the IAEA's efforts to bring uniformity to subsidiary arrangements and structure and format for reporting requirements. Other features reflect India's readiness to extend the provisions of INFCIRC/754 to previous safeguarded facilities. There have been quite a good number of publications on the contents of INFCIRC/754. An attempt has been made in this article to critically study the text of INFCIRC/754 and analyse and interpret the safeguards provisions therein to assess their functionality, adequacy and effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 4 May 2014, as a tumultuous general election in India drew to a close, the Indian Express newspaper published a column by Tavleen Singh, with the headline 'No more petitioners: no more petitioners'. The column went on to quote P. Chidambaran, the outgoing finance minister of the defeated Congress government, who diagnosed a historical shift in the mentality of the Indian electorate. 'India has moved on,' Chidambaran was reported as saying, 'from a petitioner society to an aspirational one. Treating people as petitioners is a mistake... even the poor demand a better life and are no longer resigned to their fate.' In India, the column argued, 'poor people' now had 'middle class aspirations', desiring 'jobs and development' rather than 'charity' and that this was a major reason for the success of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 elections. To be a 'petitioner', in this analysis, was to be ground down by poverty and resignation, and dependent on the 'charity' of others. It was a passing historical condition, a sign of underdevelopment that could be sloughed off by the sudden awakening across society of 'middle class aspirations'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will argue that to understand Naga sovereignty, one must take into account the intimate connection between Christianity and nationalism. This relationship is centred on the idea of 'Nagaland for Christ', a central slogan (also seen as a covenant) for all Naga nationalist groups. It suggests that God is the primary agent in sovereignty, and that the land is connected with the idea of Nagaland for Christ. I argue that national territory is not an object or a place that can be fixed in time, but rather an act of narration and imagination with the power to shape where it belongs. I will make the case that we need to rethink modular forms of sovereignty that are based on a strong national state. Instead, it would be more useful to think about sovereign territories as the organisation of space, or territoriality (Sack 1986). Robert Sack argues that territoriality is 'intimately related to how people use the land', how they 'organize themselves in space and how they give meaning to place' (Sack 1986: 2). If history has shown us that ascertaining the precise territorial lines of national units are always a challenge, it is more helpful to try and understand how people give meaning to place regardless of boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With demand for the natural resources exceeds a certain threshold, it leads to a global ecological threat like the "Amphhan" catastrophe that had ravaged the eastern part of West Bengal during the month of February 2020 that resulted in the loss of lives and economic activity which is yet to be regained with its earlier momentum. The inflicted calamity has given a "blow" as well as "boost" to renewable energy sector that leads to greater seriousness on development of the energy storages devices/stations in the country. While India has already achieved 374 GW of total installed capacity of power generation in which the contribution from the thermal sector is about 62 per cent and that of the RP is about 22 per cent that comes to 90 GW as of today and 60 GW is under pipeline or under construction or under tendering process. The year 2020 is undoubtedly a year of change and the COVID-19 pandemic situation together with enforced lockdown in several parts of the country and even in globe has forced people to think differently to remain relevant against the New-Normal. In order to choose the sources of energy that does not cause pollution to the surrounding environment, the RET is the best and most favourable options to opt for along with the battery storage devices for making the power available throughout the day-long and even when the sun sets. Most of the batteries currently produced and used in our country is lithium-ion based and is mostly imported. To be on the self-reliant mode and moving towards "Atmanirbhar Bharat" through "Make in India" we need to have more and more indigenous manufacturer of Li-ion batteries. Good news is that 10 Indian companies have already procured manufacturing technology from DRDO and large scale production of indigenous Li-ion batteries is expected soon. The National Energy Mission of the Government of India has just rolled out with a focus on the Make in India and is envisioned to take all necessary formalities and policy decisions to be adopted to incentivise advanced energy storage manufacturing in India through the application of innovation and new technology options that are available. As a science communicator, the authors strongly opine that with the appropriate support from the Government of India through the policy decisions by the Niti Aayog, India will be one of the top markets for the energy storage adoptions and manufacturing and is another way forward to mitigate the climate change by producing electricity free from carbon dioxide emissions into atmosphere and provide green energy for sustainable path of development. As we see that the energy storage is a new thrust area along with introduction of FGD technology retrofitting with the thermal power plant, we look forward to the new ecosystem to be achieved by 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of Parliament in foreign policy with particular reference to examples from India. Topics covered include the reasons why the India Parliament does not exercise direct control over the making of foreign policy, the instances in which the India Parliament's interest in foreign policy issues was eloquently displayed, and the interest shown by the Parliament of India in the country's nuclear doctrine.

What explains the variation in states’ nonstate partners in civil warfare? States often use nonstate actors to do what their regular military forces cannot do well - navigate the local population. Some of their nonstate partners are ordinary civilians, while others are battle-hardened fighters with a rebellious or criminal past. The choice of proxy carries serious implications for the patterns and effects of violence during civil war, human rights, and international security. This article is the first to disaggregate the nonstate counterinsurgents and offer an explanation for why and how states use each type. It brings together the politics of collaboration with the politics of exploitation. The article shows that the state’s use of nonstate proxies is shaped by the supply of willing collaborators, the state’s ability to exercise control over them, and the trade-offs underlying the use of the different types of nonstate actors. The empirical evidence used to support this argument comes from a novel, comparative study of Turkey’s counterinsurgency campaign against Kurdish separatists and India’s counterinsurgency against Kashmiri separatists. The original data were collected through fieldwork in the disputed territories of each country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A profusion of recent research has focused on historical legacies as key to understanding contemporary outcomes. We review this body of research, analyzing both the comparative-historical analysis (CHA) and modern political economy (MPE) research traditions as applied to the study of communism, imperialism, and authoritarianism. We restrict our focus to the sizeable subset of arguments that meets a relatively strict definition of legacies, i.e., arguments that locate the roots of present-day outcomes in causal factors operative during an extinct political order. For all their differences, the CHA and MPE approaches both face the challenges of convincingly identifying the sources of historical persistence and of reckoning with alternative channels of causation. We find that mechanisms of persistence in legacy research generally belong to one of three main categories. While both traditions acknowledge the role of institutions in historical persistence, CHA research tends to emphasize the lasting power of coalitions, whereas work in MPE often argues for the persistence of cognitions. We argue that, at their best, CHA and MPE approaches yield complementary insights. Further progress in legacy research will benefit from greater cross-fertilization across research traditions and deeper recognition of commonalities across communist, imperialist, and authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have China and India, both energetic forces in the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), continued to resist the Court’s charms? In addressing this question, the present contribution’s analytical framework employs three points of reference — before Rome, at Rome, and after Rome. These will facilitate consideration of Indian and Chinese participation in the shaping of the ICC, its existence, and its forward trajectory. The aim is to identify and compare positions taken by both states about the ICC in the three different phases, not to second guess meanings or to interpret political contexts and cultural approaches. This culminates in a reflection on the issues where they have shared and divided positions, whether there has been any softening of perspectives, and what it would take to bring 36.56% of the world’s population under the protection of the ICC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]