Great-Power Competition No Longer Dominates the Region’s Politics

Foreign Affairs has recently published a number of articles on the global balance of power, the future of U.S. hegemony, and how great-power competition is playing out in the developing world. To complement these essays, we asked a broad pool of experts for their take.

While voters across South Asia were once optimistic about the future of democracy, recent political setbacks in the region have dampened these hopes. However, most accounts of democratic backsliding focus on the strategies and tactics of regime incumbents, leaving little room for close study of opposition forces.

The dominance of powerful regime incumbents in South Asia, from the BJP in India to the Awami League in Bangladesh and the military in Pakistan, should not obscure the reality that the opposition space in the region is dynamic, fluid, and highly consequential.

Carnegie India hosted Paul Staniland to discuss his current book project about the effects of major power competition on the internal politics of “swing” states, ranging from coups and insurgencies to party politics and political mobilization. The discussion was moderated by Srinath Raghavan.

In my book “Ordering Violence,” I show that there is a huge spectrum of relations between non-state armed groups and governments, ranging from tight alliance to intense warfare to live-and-let-live deals in between. Rather than pitched fights to the death, there is a lot of gray space and variation.

The Trump administration has reportedly pressured law enforcement agencies to downplay the threat posed by these organizations, allowing nonstate violence to creep back into the political mainstream to a degree not seen since the 1960s and 1970s.

South Asian expert discusses current events in India, Pakistan, and South Asia.

Most anti-state revolts across the Indian subcontinent have now been crushed, demobilized, or contained. Yet beneath that surface, state coercive power remains contested.