Abstract
AbstractThis article situates the international activities of subnational governments in India within the broader political economy of federalism. It argues that the nature and the extent of subnational states’ engagements in international affairs are a function of the partisan political relationship the state incumbents have with the national incumbents. The article takes a mixed methods approach. An analysis of 1,153 episodes of international engagements of India’s states from 1996 to 2017 reveals that shifts in foreign policy engagement of selected state governments primarily reflect alterations in the subnational incumbents’ political affiliation with the Union government. Several qualitative case studies shed light on how the central government’s inclusion of subnational governments’ perspectives and representatives in foreign affairs is highly partisan and profoundly political. Therefore, the Indian case reveals how subnational diplomatic interactions merge domestic and international politics.
Highlights
Veröffentlichungsversion / Published Version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Zur Verfügung gestellt in Kooperation mit / provided in cooperation with: German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) German Institute of Global and Area Studies
In our empirical analysis, we study how regional variations in international engagements during a particular period are influenced by these two variables—the huge regional economic disparities and the tendency of the central governments in Indian politics to deal with states based on their political leanings or affiliation of the Chief Ministers (Sharma 2017b)
The lack of statistically significant correlations obtained for CMopp and CMnotaffil in the “a” group of models indicate that, under certain circumstances there can be center–state cooperation even when the Chief Minister belongs to a non-affiliated political party
Summary
H2: Center–state conflict on international engagement of a subnational government is more likely when that government belongs to a non-affiliated party. The lack of statistically significant correlations obtained for CMopp and CMnotaffil in the “a” group of models indicate that, under certain circumstances there can be center–state cooperation even when the Chief Minister belongs to a non-affiliated political party. The analysis shows that while the instances of cooperation might occur irrespective of party affiliations, the episodes of center–state conflict occur more significantly when the interacting governments at the two levels are controlled by rival political parties. In such instances, different policy preferences of the center and the state(s) cannot be resolved at the party level.
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