This chapter examines India’s emergence as a key player in the World Trade Organization (WTO) within the context of its foreign policy. It considers plausible mainstream explanations for India’s apparent rise to power, including growing market size, changing ideology, and the role of domestic interest groups in influencing foreign economic policy. It suggests that India’s emergence as a major player in the WTO can be explained by its negotiation behaviour. More specifically, it shows that India’s rise in the WTO is a product of decades of learning to negotiate within the specific multilateral rules of the organization (as well as its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)). The chapter also considers some of the problems that India’s WTO diplomacy raises within the trade context as well as its broader foreign policy goals.
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18. India and the World Trade Organization
Amrita Narlikar
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18. India and the world
Civilizational narratives in foreign policy
Amrita Narlikar
India under Modi’s leadership has been treated as an almost textbook case to highlight the dangers of illiberalism and democratic erosion associated with "civilizational states". This chapter focuses on the impact that an evolving civilizational narrative has had on Indian foreign policy. Investigating India’s record in global and regional governance, it argues that scholars may have overestimated the impact of Modi’s civilizational narrative: there are key continuities in India’s negotiation positions across different issue-areas. Critics may also have been somewhat hasty in proclaiming its effect as being necessarily detrimental for both India itself and also the world at large. The chapter demonstrates that despite important continuities in its foreign policy, India has, in recent years, begun to take on a role of greater responsibility in global governance. This role, interestingly, is more aligned with the liberal orientation of many western democracies, while also working in tandem with the country’s concerns and priorities.
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30. India’s Development Partnerships in the Twenty-First Century
Emma Mawdsley
This chapter examines the main trends and issues of South–South development cooperation, using India as a case study. Over the last few decades, India has been both a recipient of foreign aid and a provider of concessional loans, grants, technical assistance, peacekeeping forces, humanitarian assistance, debt relief, and so on. The chapter explores how and why India, a country that still has more absolutely poor people than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, gives development assistance to countries in Asia, Africa, and beyond. It first considers the issue of the ‘(re-)emerging’ development actors before discussing India’s development cooperation. It then shows how India and other developing countries are becoming bigger players in the international foreign aid regime. It also analyses India’s South–South relations and suggests that the benefits of India’s development cooperation are shared unevenly, both domestically and abroad.
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18. Race in world politics
Robbie Shilliam
This chapter examines the ways in which race can been understood as a fundamental ordering principle of world politics. It explores how the histories of European imperialism and colonialism are crucial for understanding the global impact of race, and whether contemporary world politics is less racist than it was in the past. It also considers the relationship between race, biology, and culture. The chapter concludes by discussing the historical processes that gave rise to race, some key debates around the conceptualization of race, and how race continues to order world politics. Two case studies are presented: the first is about race, caste, and Dalits in India; the second looks into the world of ecofascism.
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31. Nationalism, national self-determination, and international relations
John Breuilly
This chapter examines the role of nationalism and national self-determination (NSD) in shaping the major institution of modern international relations: the nation-state. It considers different types of nationalism and how they vary from one another, whether the commonly accepted sequence of nation > nationalism > nation-state is actually the reverse of the normal historical sequence, and whether the principle of NSD is compatible with that of state sovereignty. The chapter also explores the contribution of nationalism to the globalization of world politics and the changing meanings of NSD since 1918. Three case studies of nationalism are presented: Germany, India, and Yugoslavia. There follows one more case study that focuses on nationalisms in South Africa, making a distinction from South African nationalism.
