Political Economy of Development

Tensions between markets and democracy in the developing world; the relationship between the type of polity and poverty alleviation; links between identity politics and economic reform; agricultural development and urban bias in the developing world; identity politics and entrepreneurialism; inequality in India and China.

Ethnic Identities and Conflict

Patterns of ethnic violence in the developing world; processes of identity formation; identity politics and democracy; rationality, ethnic conflict and nationalism

Urbanization

Emergence of citizenship rights, and decline of clientelism in patterns of urbanization; determinants of public service delivery in urban India; urbanization in India and China; comparison of corruption in contemporary India and the US in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

POLS 2330: Graduate Seminar on Politics in India

This seminar will present Indian politics in a comparative and theoretical framework. It will focus on four themes: British India and Indian Nationalism; India's democratic experience: politics of ethnic and religious diversity; and political economy, concentrating especially on India's economic rise. Readings include the classics of the subfield of Indian politics and political economy, but also quite a lot of recent scholarship.

POLS 2320: Graduate Seminar on Ethnic Conflict

What is ethnicity? What does it share with nationalism and in what respects is it different? Why do ethnic groups fight violently and kill wantonly, especially after living peacefully for a long time? Under what conditions do they manage their relations peacefully? When do they become nationalistic? Does ethnic conflict mark the politics of poor countries, or is it a wider phenomenon? Do people participate in ethnic insurgencies because of greed or grievance? Will ethnic groups disappear as modernity proceeds further? How should liberals look at nationalism? Is ethnicity, or ethnic conflict, best studied in a small-n, or a large-n, methodological frame?

POLS 1821O: Politics and Economic Development in Asia

It is widely accepted that development is not simply an economic phenomenon. Political processes are intimately tied up with economic development. Does the nature of the political system affect development? Does democracy slow down economic growth? What is the relationship between democracy and economic liberalism? As so many countries have embraced both political freedoms and market-oriented economic reforms, should one expect both to succeed equally? Why have some countries industrialized faster than others? Why do some countries do better at poverty alleviation than others? Why have some countries been successful in solving the problem of food production, while others have not been? Are their different paths to agrarian and industrial development? Since the Second World War, an enormous amount of intellectual effort has gone into understanding these issues. Asia has been at the heart of much of this literature. We will compare and contract the various Asian countries and models of development around themes identified above. The heaviest emphasis will be on China, India and South Korea.

POLS 1280: Politics, Economy and Society in India

Given its multi-religious, multi-linguistic and generally multi-cultural context, how has India defined its national identity? How was India transformed under British rule (1757-1947)? After independence in 1947, how has a liberal political order, defined by political equality, interacted with India's social order, defined by inequality and hierarchy? Is the former undermining the latter or the latter transforming the normal script of a democracy? Democracy does not last at low levels of income. In India, it has. How does one understand India's democratic longevity? What sort of economic transformation is underway? How does democracy interact with markets in its Indian setting?

IAPA 0200 Foundations of Development

This course presents an interdisciplinary approach to the study of development. The course examines what constitutes development from a variety of different disciplinary perspectives, and the course examines how and in what context the term “development” itself has evolved over time. The goal of this course is to provide students an intellectual and conceptual grounding for study of a variety of issues surrounding development, whether in the global North or South.