My research interests can be categorized as political economy of South Asia with a strong comparative focus on India and China comparisons. My current book project seeks to understand the international sources of India’s economic reform program with a specific focus on trade issues. I was awarded the Woodrow Wilson International Center Fellowship (2004-2005) for this current project titled: When David Meets Goliath: How Global Trade Rules Shape Domestic Politics in India. The book’s main focus is on India with some illustrative material on China and Brazil.

My first major book project (The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan, 2005) sought to understand India’s regional diversity within a comparative framework and won the “Joseph Elder Award for the Best book in the Indian Social Sciences.”

India is widely regarded as a failed developmental state, its central institutions characterized as both soft and strong—at once weak, predatory and interventionist. In contrast, I argued that the Indian state is a divided leviathan; it’s not a failed state but a regionally segmented state subject to concerted action by regional elites. Both its earlier developmental failure and recent economic successes are a combined product of central-local interactions, and political choices by regional elites. A comparative chapter applied this argument to understand developmental politics in China, Russia, the former Soviet Union, and Brazil.

This interest in infranational variations led me to explore issues of decentralization and federalism and I completed three journal articles on related themes (two published and one under review + a couple of edited book chapters). One of these sought to evaluate the theory of ‘market-preserving federalism’ for India and China, and was published in Comparative Politics (2005). In the near future I intend to continue my interest in India-China comparisons. One article that looks at the impact of decentralization on career patterns and national representation is under preparation. I have collected data on India’s cabinet members and their careers and intend to collect comparable data on China in the near future.

Subsequently, I have forged into a new area of research: the global linkages of India’s domestic trade politics. I am completing a book manuscript that examines the interplay between World Trade Organization, a powerful organization that regulates global trade, and India. Its title is: When David Meets Goliath: How Global Trade Rules Shape Domestic Politics in India. This book brings together and seeks to understand two interesting and consequential developments: the growing role of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in global politics, and India’s surprising global integration in the 1990s. I investigate the reciprocal impact of and interactions between international organizations and domestic politics of large developing countries, using the case of India as a powerful lens to illuminate this larger question. I ask: How do international trade regimes—GATT and WTO—affect trade reform and trade politics in a country that has traditionally resisted global integration? Are such international organizations able to transform trade politics and policy in self-reliant countries such as India, China, Brazil, and South Africa and if so, how exactly?

This project will have implications for theories of international organizations and international trade. Scholars interested in India’s recent transformation would also find this project of interest as most of the literature on India ignores the international dimension of domestic change. I have published one article from this larger project in Business and Politics, a refereed journal and one article is under review at Comparative Political Studies.

As with my previous work, this project’s insights should have larger comparative implications. In a recent article, I outline, in a brief comparative section, how WTO has affected institutional development in China, and Brazil as well as Japan and United States. I have organized a panel on WTO and India, China and Brazil for the International Studies International meeting in San Diego, March 2006.