Priya Chacko

Trump, the authoritarian populist revolt and the future of the rules-based order in Asia

ABSTRACT In this short article, the authors analyse the implications of the election of Donald Trump for the future of the liberal rules-based order, with specific emphasis on its implications for the Asian region. Departing from the institutional fetishism that figures prominently in the literature, the authors argue that this liberal order needs to be conceptualised in terms of its social foundations. Particularly important to consider, in terms of understanding these social foundations, is the nature of social relations in the USA. The election of Trump reflects the deep crisis of the US state and the rise of a new ‘authoritarian populism’. The authors trace the roots of this authoritarian populism to patterns of global capitalist transformation, the crisis of the US state and the modes of crisis management that this has generated. They then explore the implications of Trump’s authoritarian populism for the region.

The rise of the Indo-Pacific: understanding ideational change and continuity in India's foreign policy

In 2011, the concept of the Indo-Pacific began to appear in Indias foreign policy discourse. This article argues that rather than signalling a dramatic shift in Indias foreign policy, however, the way in which the Indo-Pacific has been interpreted by the Indian leadership suggests significant continuity as well as change, which is contrary to the goals of the concepts most fervent proponents in India. The article seeks to develop a framework for understanding ideational change and continuity in foreign policy by theorising the interplay between ideas, political and economic flux, and social expectations related to effective and legitimate state-building. It is argued that the Indo-Pacific concept has instigated a new emphasis on regional architecture-building to manage the ongoing regionalisation in the area between the Indian and Pacific Oceans as a result of heightened trade flows and production and investment linkages. Yet, the Indo-Pacific concept, like the new policy ideas on regional engagement that preceded it—the Look East policy and the ‘extended neighbourhood’—has been articulated in ways that are also compatible with long-standing ideas—such as non-alignment—about what constitutes appropriate international behaviour. This reflects the nature of the broader state project that has emerged since 1990, which, while encompassing a new focus on economic growth and competitiveness as being essential to effective state-building, continues to prioritise older ideas about what constitutes effective and legitimate state-building.

The Modi lahar (wave) in the 2014 Indian national election: A critical realignment?

In Indias 2014 general election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured an outright majority of seats, the first time any party has done so since 1984. This has led to claims that this is a ‘critical’ or ‘realigning’ election. Yet, most Indian elections are initially described as ‘critical’ elections, which suggests that this concept needs to be further refined to be analytically useful in Indias electorally volatile and regionalised political context. This commentary conceptualises critical elections in India as those that enable the winning party to build lasting regional social coalitions. Such coalitions need to be consolidated in subsequent elections for a realignment to take place. A mastery of regional politics was crucial to the BJPs 2014 win, which does mark this as a potentially realigning election. Yet, questions remain about its ability to consolidate the coalitions that delivered this result. 2014年的普选中，印度人民党获得了绝对多数的议席，破了1984以来各政党的记录。这被看作一次“关键性”的、改弦易辙的选举。不过，印度的选举一开始也多被说成“关键性”的选举。所以，这个概念尚需推敲，以便能够用来分析印度变幻不定的选情以及地区化的政情。本文将印度的“关键性”选举界定为获胜党得建立长久的地区社会联盟。这个联盟需要在日后的选举中加固，才谈得上改弦易辙。把握好地区政治对于人民党2014年选举的胜利至关重要，它使得这次选举成为潜在的改弦易辙。但它是否有能力加固联盟以释放改弦易辙的效果，则还是一个问题。

The search for a scientific temper: nuclear technology and the ambivalence of India's postcolonial modernity

This article examines the relationship between Indias nuclear programme and its postcolonial identity. In particular, I argue that making sense of the anomalies and contradictions of Indias nuclear behaviour, such as the gap of two decades between its nuclear tests, its promotion of nuclear disarmament and its failure to sign non-proliferation and test-ban treaties requires an understanding of the racially gendered construction of Indias postcolonial modernity and the central roles given to science and morality within it. I suggest that Indias postcolonial identity is anchored in anticolonial discourses that are deeply ambivalent toward what was viewed as a Western modernity that could provide material betterment but was also potentially destructive. What was desired was a better modernity that took into account what was believed to be Indian civilisations greater propensity toward ethical and moral conduct. Indias nuclear policies, such as its pursuit of nuclear technology and its promotion of disarmament cannot be seen in isolation from the successes and failures of this broader project of fashioning an ethical modernity.

The natural/neglected relationship: liberalism, identity and India–Australia relations

Abstract Recent commentary on India–Australia relations has defined the relationship as ‘natural’ and based on ‘shared values’ and ‘shared history’. The relationship has simultaneously been considered ‘neglected’. The paradoxical juxtaposition of a natural/neglected partnership is yet to be adequately explained. We consider the historical construction of liberalism in both states as a facet of state identity to argue that, far from creating a natural relationship, differing liberal identities have served to keep these two states apart. This is illustrated through case studies of divergent opinions over the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Russias 2014 annexation of Crimea and the rise of China.

The New Geo-Economics of a “Rising” India: State Transformation and the Recasting of Foreign Policy

Abstract With a focus on India, and drawing on critical scholarship on geo-politics and geo-economics and “relational” state theories, this article examines the ways in which ideational and material processes of state transformation have shaped India’s international engagement in different periods. Prior to 1991, geo-political social forms linked to a national developmentalist state project shaped India’s engagement with global and regional multilateralism and the nature of this engagement fluctuated according to shifts in the legitimacy and viability of this state project. The erosion of the developmentalist state project from the 1970s laid the path for a deeper shift in the national social order in the 1990s with the recasting of statehood wherein India’s future was thought to be best secured through policies of economic openness, growth and competitiveness. This shift in India’s state project has given rise to new forms of global and regional engagement that are distinct to older forms of international engagement and reflect and further processes of state transformation in India. This is illustrated through a case study on energy policy.

The Right Turn in India: Authoritarianism, Populism and Neoliberalisation

ABSTRACT This article argues that the growth of authoritarian forms of politics in India should be seen in the context of a long-term crisis of the state as successive governments have been unable to establish legitimacy for the policies of neoliberalisation that have been pursued since the 1990s. These policies contributed to the fracturing of dominant modes of political incorporation. The previous Congress Party-led government’s mode of crisis management – which it dubbed, inclusive growth – failed to create new forms of political incorporation by addressing long-term structural problems in India’s political economy, such as jobless growth, and gave rise to new problems, such as large-scale corruption scandals. Subsequently, it increasingly developed what Nicos Poulantzas called, “authoritarian statist” tendencies to marginalise dissent within a framework of constitutional democracy. The current Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s mode of crisis management builds on these authoritarian statist tendencies but has sought to build legitimacy for these tendencies and neoliberalisation through an appeal to authoritarian populism. This seeks to harness popular discontent against elite corruption with majoritarianism to create an antagonism between the “Hindu people” and a “corrupt elite” that panders to minorities.

A capitalising foreign policy: Regulatory geographies and transnationalised state projects:

Proposals for regional economic integration, namely, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the One Belt One Road proposal, have recently been driving the security dynamics of the Asian region. To explain the growing ‘economic’ focus of states’ foreign policies, we need to go beyond the dominant approaches in International Relations and International Political Economy, which are limited in their analytical power because they often make a distinction between politics/security and economics, and prioritise one over the other, rather than seeing them as internally related. Drawing on Leon Trotsky’s theory of ‘uneven and combined development’ and Nicos Poulantzas’s notion of ‘internalised transformations’, we develop a ‘Poulantzian-uneven and combined development’ framework to argue that the increased focus on economics in foreign policymaking represents a fundamental change related to the transnationalisation of capitalist state-building projects. The paper argues that while the Trans-Pacific Partnership reflected an attempt by the Obama administration to fashion a new stage in the transnationalisation of American capital, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and One Belt One Road proposal reflect an emerging China-centred transnationalised state project. We characterise the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and One Belt One Road proposal as constituting different forms of a particular type of geoeconomic strategy called ‘regulatory geographies’ because they entail the export of distinctive modes of regulatory governance that aim to overcome key contradictions of uneven and combined capitalist development in the US and China. As the recent demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the election of Donald Trump shows, however, these transnationalised state projects generate resistance and contestation within, as well as between, states.

Women’s economic empowerment in the Indian Ocean region through gender equality in work: building a common agenda

Women’s economic empowerment (WEE) can be defined as the process of change that gives women (i) access to and control over resources and markets; (ii) increased agency and choice and; (iii) the capacity to improve and control specific outcomes or achievements (such as enhanced well-being and dignity and improved economic opportunities); and (iv) the ability to influence the wider policy, regulatory and institutional environment (WIEGO, 2016). Improving women’s labor force participation has long been seen as key to WEE. However, the vast majority of the world’s women, including in the Indian Ocean region, face significant challenges in entering the labor market, and if they succeed in doing so, are likely to work in low-paid jobs with little access to social protections. Hence, increased labor force participation may not necessarily lead to substantive poverty reduction but may, indeed, entrench poverty (UNIFEM, 2005, p. 19). This paper argues thatWEE should beplacedhighon the agenda of the IndianOcean Rim Association (IORA), with a focus on improving the conditions of women’s labor force participation to achieve gender equality in work, which can be defined as the ‘ability of women to find employment and be compensated fairly for it, share unpaid care work equitably, have the skills and opportunity to perform higher-productivity jobs, and occupy leadership positions’ (McKinsey Global Institute, 2015, p. 42). A significant hurdle in building a common agenda for IORA is the socio-economic diversity of countries in the region. All countries of the region, however, face significant challenges in the area of women’s labor force participation. Themajority of femaleworkers in the IndianOcean region, in bothdeveloped and developing countries, are engaged in precarious work through non-standard forms and self-employment in both the formal (regulated) economy and informal (unregulated) economy. While not all workers in non-standard forms of employment and self-employment face economic insecurity, research shows that the majority of such workers often have diminished or no access to legal and social protections and therefore experience significant economic uncertainty (ILO, 2013, 2016a). Finding ways to overcome these challenges should become not just a focus of consultations between officials and civil society leaders, but a means of facilitating people-to-people links through the sharing of experiences and strategies for securing better social and legal protections for female workers.

Myanmar and India: regimes of citizenship and the limits of geo-economic engagement

Since the 1990s, India and Myanmar have sought rapprochement through geo-economic strategies and discourses. The results, however, have been largely underwhelming. This paper offers an explanation for why this has been the case. We argue that the two geo-economic strategies deployed—sub-regionalism and diaspora-driven trade and investment—require the emergence of particular types of deterritorialised and denationalised citizenship regimes which facilitate the mobilisation of provincial capital and diasporic capital. The development of such social forces in India and Myanmar have been stifled by the persistence of older ‘regimes of citizenship’ associated with geopolitical strategies based on territoriality and pre-existing social hierarchies. In Myanmar, the emphasis on ‘Bamar’ identity has led to a hierarchical citizenship regime which marginalises people of Indian origin. While deterritorialised forms of citizenship have emerged in India as the government seeks to harness the economic power of the Indian diaspora, the target of its policies has been the more socially privileged diaspora settled in the West. Moreover, India’s Northeast has long been constructed as being culturally distinct and prone to ‘disloyalty’ which hinders sub-regionalism. Hence, transforming the relationship requires not just greater political will or technocratic policy changes, but addressing the long-held national anxieties and social hierarchies which underpin India and Myanmar’s regimes of citizenship.