On 19 September 2018, Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung published an interview with Prof. Dr. Rahul Mukherji entitled "Unmögliche Friedensmission aus dem Exil? Wie der China-Tibet-Konflikt das Leben des Dalai Lama prägt". The article portrays the life of Dalai Lama, discusses his role in the China-Tibet conflict and gives an outlook on the political future development. You can read the online article here.

The latest issue of the South Asia Institute Papers (SAIP) has been released. The paper includes Prof. Dr. Rahul Mukherji´s lecture on „Governing India: What do we know and need to know?“, which he held at his Inaugural Lecture delivered in the Alte Aula on 15 November 2017. The paper is available here.

The Department of Political Science at the SAI cordially welcomes Dr. Ali Zulfiqar as DAAD guest professor. He is affiliated with the Department of Philosophy, University of Karachi, Pakistan and will stay till December 2018 to further develop his research in the areas of postmodernism, postcolonialism, Pakistan´s political system and corruption.

Routledge recently published the book „Governance and Development in India -  A Comparative Study on Andhra Pradesh and Bihar after Liberalization“ by Dr. Seyed Hossein Zarhani (Department of Political Science, SAI). The book was released as part of the series „Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies“. Further information is available here.

Description of the book:

The study of the political economy of development in India is significant as India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing countries during the last three decades and the rate of economic growth and poverty reduction have not been matched in India’s subnational states. Although the Union Government has introduced and implemented several economic reforms since 1991 to enhance the economic development, the results of implantation have varied.

Governance and Development in India compares two Indian subnational states, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. The book does not consider the state as an aggregate entity; rather, it disaggregates the state relationally and spatially. Concentrating on the micro-institutional variables and the role of regional elites, the author investigates the political roots of the divergence of development trajectories among India’s subnational states since liberalization, as an essential aspect of the political economy of development in India. The book explores the black box of the multi-layered state of India and interactions among the Central Government, the states, regional leaders and other stakeholders and explains why the regional leaders have pursued divergent economic strategies using the analytical narrative research method and the subnational comparative research method.

Firmly based on the theoretical foundations of the neo-institutional rational choice model of governance, polycentric hierarchy theory and the strategies for regional elite strategy analysis, combined with empirical research, this book is a valuable contribution to the fields of comparative political economy, state politics in India, governance and development in developing countries, and South Asian comparative politics.

Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies

South Asia, with its burgeoning, ethnically diverse population, soaring economies, and nuclear weapons, is an increasingly important region in the global context. The series, which builds on this complex, dynamic and volatile area, features innovative and original research on the region as a whole or on the countries. Its scope extends to scholarly works drawing on history, politics, development studies, sociology and economics of individual countries from the region as well those that take an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the area as a whole or to a comparison of two or more countries from this region. In terms of theory and method, rather than basing itself on any one orthodoxy, the series draws broadly on the insights germane to area studies, as well as the tool kit of the social sciences in general, emphasizing comparison, the analysis of the structure and processes, and the application of qualitative and quantitative methods. The series welcomes submissions from established authors in the field as well as from young authors who have recently completed their doctoral dissertations.