The Wholesome Dialectic: Studies of Politics in India and India in the Study of Politics from: India: Commemorative Volume. Edited by Joseph Elder, Edward Dimock, and Ainslie Embree. New Delhi: Manohar, 1998. . The study of Indian politics offers a formidable challenge to political scientists. Good political analysis must be firmly rooted in relevant empirical data while being informed, and ultimately advancing, the latest developments in the theory of politics. The diversity, distinctiveness that are central to Indian politics means that making sense of Indian politics requires an extraordinary investment in intellectual resources. Collecting the data necessary for good analysis in a society with almost a billion people speaking 15 official languages, practicing all of world's major religions, and acting in a context with unique social and political institutions is a daunting prospect for any scholar, but especially to those primarily interested in making broader theoretical contributions and those non-specialists wishing to compare the lessons of the Indian experience with other countries. The magnitude of challenge of studying Indian politics is more than matched by rewards of integrating the study of Indian politics into the broader discipline of political science. Indeed, studying Indian politics and political science form a wholesome dialectic. The study of Indian politics, precisely because of its diversity and richness, has a lot to offer political science, and analytical approaches recently developed in the broader discipline provide powerful tools to improve our understanding Indian politics. While students of Indian politics have already made important contributions to the discipline, integrating the study of Indian politics with concepts and analytical frameworks of political science promises more advances than ever before. The chapter will begin by surveying the areas in which American political scientists have contributed to the study of Indian politics. I provide this overview to show the broad range and richness of American studies. The range and richness is important because only with a firm understanding of Indian politics, are analysts able to draw lessons that contribute to the broader study of political science. The chapter will then assess the areas in which the study of Indian politics have made outstanding contributions to the discipline of political science. I will argue that the analysis of politics in India has helped political scientists come to better terms with the concept of political development. Furthermore, analysis of India's rich culture has enabled important advances in our understanding the relationship between culture and politics. Finally, I will show how study of Indian politics has contributed to the broader study of political parties and party systems. Both Indian politics and the discipline of political science have changed considerably in the last few years. In my conclusion, I will contend that innovations in the discipline of political science can advance our understanding of recent developments in Indian politics. THE TERRAIN OF INQUIRIES Prior to the 1950s, American political scientists were largely unconcerned with politics in developing countries. They were especially indifferent to politics in the far off and exotic India which after all was in the domain of British rule. However, the end of World War II brought the beginning of the "American Century" with its American military hegemony, a concern for preempting the spread of communism, and the United State's rapidly growing international economic interests. Simultaneously, struggles for national independence spread throughout the colonial world liberating Africa and much of Asia from colonial rule, in the process creating "virgin territory" for the American idealism and its efforts to remake the world. These circumstances provided the impetus for the Americans' study of politics in what became know as the "Third World." American programs to study India became institutionalized only in the 1950s, and American scholars began publishing studies of Indian politics by the end of the decade. One of the earliest volumes written by an American on the Indian public administration was by Paul Appleby (1953), a veteran of promoting rural development in the United States through his role as Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the New Deal. Appleby's volume was widely read throughout India. The cold war, communist revolution in China and India's own communist insurrection in Telegana raised great concern about communist expansion, and two landmark books on Communist Party of India were published during this period. (Kautsky 1956; Overstreet and Windmiller 1959) The most prolific American analyst of Indian politics, Myron Weiner, began his corpus with Party Politics in India (1957), a volume that provides an insightful overview of India's major opposition parties and places the evolution of India's party system in a comparative perspective informed by contemporary theories of party politics. Drawing from papers presented in a 1956 seminar at Berkeley, Richard Park and Irene Tinker (1959) edited a volume on the role of political leadership in post-colonial societies. Joan Bondurant (1958) analyzed Gandhian philosophy and political strategy. American analysis began the 1960s with a concern for the integrity of India, but by the end of the decade, despite the war with China, the rise of cultural nationalism in the South and severe drought, the resilience of Indian democracy had earned the respect of most American political scientists. Selig Harrison's highly influential India: Dangerous Decades (1960), Myron Weiner's The Politics of Scarcity (1962) and his essays in Political Change in South Asia (1963) articulately expressed the apprehension that mixing democracy, economic growth, and traditional social institutions could be an explosive combination that threatened the integrity of India. Harrison and Weiner's concern for the survival of India set an agenda addressed by much of the work later in the decade. Paul Brass (1965), Myron Weiner (1967), Stanley Kochanek (1968), and Richard Sisson (1972) provided analysis that highlighted the importance of Congress party in building the new nation by bringing traditional groups into the democratic process while providing them with responsive and stable government. These studies along with Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph's The Modernity of Tradition (1967) and Robert Hardgrave's (1969) study of the political incorporation of the Nadar caste into Tamil Nadu politics played an important role in demonstrating that modernity and tradition did not amount to a volatile confrontation between the irresistible object and immovable force but rather were social forces which interacted in ways that might enhance political stability while producing continuity and change. Americans began to broaden their investigation of Indian politics during the 1960s. Weiner (1968) continued the trend concerned with local politics by editing a volume on state politics. Franda (1968) conducted a study of Indian federalism. Weiner and Kothari (1965) edited one of the first volumes to study Indian voting behavior. This was followed by Craig Baxter's (1969) examination of district level voting trends. Baxter (1969) also published a study of the Jana Sangh, and Howard Erdman (1967) published his examination of the evolution of the Swantantra party. Granville Austin (1967) completed a masterful study of the writing of India's constitution. David Bayley (1969) published his very interesting study of the Indian policy and political development. The 1960s also saw the publication of the first American academic studies of India's foreign policy (Harrison 1961; Fisher et al. 1963; Stein 1969). The tumultuous politics of the 1960s gave rise to a range of studies examining how Indian politics accommodated the radical forces that confronted it. Marcus Franda (1971) examined radical politics in West Bengal and then co-edited with Paul Brass (1973) a volume analyzing radicalism in other states. Lewis Fickett (1976) completed a study of India's socialist parties. Important work was also completed by Das Gupta (1970), Brass (1974), and Barnett (1976) on the politics of cultural nationalism with special attention paid to language policy. Some of the most interesting American work on Indian politics during the 1970s examined public policy and how it reflected and in turn shaped state-society relations. Francine Frankel's (1971) study of India's Green Revolution and her magisterial study of India's political economy (1978) were important examples of this trend. Many of the chapters in Education and Politics in India (Rudolph and Rudolph 1972) used local-level studies to generate insights about how the interaction between social groups and policymakers affected the formation of education policies. Stanley Kochanek's (1974) investigation of the role of organized business associations provided illuminating insights into the historical evolution of India's best organized interest group and its surprisingly limited influence over Indian policy. Donald Rosenthal (1976; 1977) completed two volumes that investigated the role of local elites in urban and rural politics. Meanwhile Stanley Heginbotham (1975) and James Bjorkman's (1979) books provided in depth examinations of the workings of Indian bureaucracy. During the 1970's, scholars based in the United States, at times collaborating with Indian scholars, provided some of the most thorough and sophisticated analyses of Indian voting behavior (Franda and Field 1974, Bhagwati 1975, Barnett 1975; Field 1977; Palmer 1975; Weiner 1978; Eldersveld and Ahmed 1978; and Blair 1979). Stephen Cohen published his important study of the Indian army (Cohen 1971). Americans continued to study Indian foreign policy (Barnds 1972). They provided assessments of Indira Gandhi's extraordinary political leadership with evaluations that ranged from sympathetic (Carras 1979) to critical (Hart 1976). Many of the most innovative American contributions to the study of Indian politics during the 1980's followed the lead of Francine Frankel (1978) in investigating the ways in which Indian democracy accommodated social inequality. Ron Herring's Land to the Tiller (1983) used an insightful comparison of agrarian reform in Kerala with reforms in Sri Lanka and Pakistan to make a sophisticated normative argument for radical land reform. Marshall Bouton (1985) examined the development of rural radicalism through a detailed ecological analysis of the agrarian structure in Tamil Nadu. Leslie Calman (1985) analyzed the forces behind the rural poor to mobilize and protest against inequity. Atul Kohli's (1987) comparative analysis of rural poverty alleviation in three states found the nature of political parties to be a key variable in explaining the efficacy of poverty alleviation efforts. Holly Sims (1988) comparative study of study of agricultural policy in Indian and Pakistani Punjab demonstrated how India's democratic regime promoted more equitable and effective development than the Pakistan's authoritarian regime. The Social Science Research project on South Asian Political Economy produced a volume edited by Desai, Rudolph, and Rudra (1984) which included contributions of political scientists as well as economists, historians and anthropologists from India and the United States which demonstrated the complex contingency of the impact of agrarian structure on agricultural productivity in India. The economic issues and interests highlighted by these studies arise in a societal context where caste hierarchies shape the structure and dynamics of inequality. Weiner and Katzenstein (1981) and Galanter (1984) completed studies of India's affirmative action programs. Paul Brass (1983, 1985) published a collection of his essays in two volumes that provide us with a nuanced analysis of the impact of caste on electoral competition in Northern India. In these volumes, Brass compares India's political parties with those of Western Europe to contend that Indian parties have been distinctively "ideological in principle but opportunistic in practice." In addition, he provides extensive documentation of his argument that in Northern states the Congress based its support on a coalition of elite castes (especially Brahmins and Rajputs), Muslims and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes. When read with his two chapters in Gould and Ganguly (1993) they provide a cogent analysis of the reasons for the decline of the Congress I in northern India. Before the end of the 1980s, three works appeared that were especially impressive in their empirical scope and theoretical contribution. The collection of essays by American, Indian, and British scholars jointly edited by Francine Frankel and M.S.A. Rao (1989, 1990) analyzed how, as democratic practice eroded the power and legitimacy of the Brahminical social order, India's increasingly assertive backward castes were incorporated into its democratic order through different patterns of interaction among its caste, religious, and political institutions. Atul Kohli's (1987) edited volume assembles essays that examine how the spread of political participation has shaped the evolution of India's political institutions. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph's In Pursuit of Lakshmi (1987) demonstrated the importance of the state institutions as both an objects of political contestation and as an independent actors shaping the political process. In addition to the concern for the dynamics of state-society relations, American political scientists pursued other areas of research. Two of the more innovative works investigated the interface between India's domestic and international political economy. Joseph Grieco (1984) conducted an interesting study of India's encounter with the international computer industry, and Dennis J. Encarnation (1989) examined India's efforts to limit the presence of foreign multinationals. Lloyd Rudolph (1984) edited a suggestive volume exploring the impact of public policy on the cultural change. Raju Thomas (1986) examined international and domestic variables in his examination of India's security policy. India's foreign relations with its neighbors were the topic of edited volume by Ziring (1982). While its relations with the United States was the focus of a volume edited by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1980). American work in the 1980, extended previous work in a number of areas. Field (1980) and Myron Weiner (1983) completed studies of India's elections and electoral behavior. Wood (1984) edited a volume on state politics in India. Sisson and Wolpert (1988) edited a collection of essays on the Indian National Congress prior to Independence. Anderson and Damle (1988) published a remarkably well research study of the history of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh. During the 1990s, much of the best American work on Indian politics employed innovative comparative research strategies to conduct more tightly focussed investigations of key issues in comparative politics. Atul Kolhi's Democracy and Discontent replicated Myron Weiner's (1967) study of the Congress party to demonstrate that the deterioration of party organization in the face of increased political mobilization of the Indian public had contributed to a crisis of governability. Amrita Basu (1992) explored the advantages and disadvantages of political activism in political parties and NGO's by comparing women's activism in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) with Shramik Sangathana. John Echeverri-Gent (1993) investigated the relative effectiveness of implementing rural poverty alleviation programs through government departments and through panchayats by comparing implementation of the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra with the Jawahar Rozgaar Yojana in West Bengal. Paul Brass (1997) compared the ways in which five incidents of collective violence have been interpreted in order to investigate the ways in which the politics of interpretation promote and subvert various understandings of the incidents. The effort to use comparative methods to more rigorously examine Indian politics during the 1990s has led to important attempts to incorporate India into cross-national comparisons. By comparing India's public policies with those of other countries in the domains of education and child labor, Myron Weiner's The Child and the State in India (1991) demonstrated how distinctive social and cultural features of India have contributed to a an underemphasis on primary education. In an effort to better understand the politics of affirmative action, Sunita Parikh (1996) compares the evolution of India's programs to reserve jobs, education and political representation for underprivileged castes with affirmative action programs in the United States. John Waterbury's (1993) study of public sector enterprises in India, Mexico, Egypt, and Turkey highlighted the parallels between the problems of India's and those of the other countries. Waterbury's concludes that the problems of public sector enterprises in developing countries are intrinsic to public ownership rather than country-specific historical and cultural variables. By comparing the development of the computer industry in India, Korea and Brazil, Peter Evans' book, Embedded Autonomy develops an important critique of neo-liberal economic policies, contending that the key issue industrial development is not whether the state should intervene to promote industrial development but how should it intervene. During the 1990s, Leslie Calman (1992) published an important study of women's politics. Dennis Dalton (1993) reevaluated Mahatma Gandhi's political strategy of civil disobedience. Gould and Ganguly (1993) edited a volume of studies of India's general elections in 1989 and 1991. There were also important works on India's foreign relations with the United States (Gould and Ganguly 1993), India's role in the Bangladesh independence struggle (Rose and Sisson 1993), India's relations with its neighbors (Babbage and Gordon 1992), and the conflict in Kashmir (Ganguly 1997). CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE STUDY OF INDIAN POLITICS TO POLITICAL SCIENCE Study of Indian politics during the last fifty years has challenged scholars to investigate the politics of change. At least through the early 1980s, political scientists analyzed political change through the concept of political development. Whether due to an interest in making the world safe for the United States or simple ethnocentrism, most American political scientists viewed political development as advancing along the path from traditional to modern polities, almost uniformly understood as Western liberal democracy. In their thinking, all good things capitalist development, secularism, liberalism, and democratic institutions went together. Deviations from the path were viewed as setbacks to development. Scholars analyzing Indian politics were among the first to critique this conventional wisdom. Selig Harrison and Myron Weiner asserted that democracy could derail development. Harrison's India: The Dangerous Decades traces how India's democracy in the 1950's gave birth to groups whose demands threatened the integrity of the country. For Harrison, traditional India was characterized by an overwhelming array of parochial interests that made political unity an exception to the complex mosaic of political authority that prevailed on the subcontinent throughout most of its history. If there was any basis for national unity in Harrison's view, it was the sanskritic culture that transcended the regions. However, the mobilization of the lower castes under Indian democracy threatened to undermine brahmanical traditions. Harrison's prescient work highlighted issues that in one form or another have confronted India to this day. Efforts to accommodate demands of traditionally subordinated groups continue to be divisive, and regions on the periphery of the Hindi-heartland continue to assert demands for greater autonomy. In retrospect, Harrison was unduly pessimistic about the capacity of Indian democracy to accommodate conflict. India survived its dangerous decades because of, not despite, its democracy, and Harrison provides us with few analytic insights to understand how. Myron Weiner's The Politics of Scarcity joined in highlighting the contradictions of political development. Weiner concluded that economic development, by promoting the organization of new interest groups, often disrupts rather than facilitates political development. (p. 238) As Weiner noted, many in India and abroad, viewed the organization of new interests with considerable disdain. In their view, the new interests were parochial and disruptive. At a time when India's national leaders looked to technocratic expertise to resolve the nation's problems, democracy obstructed technocracy. Weiner shows how the government turned to authoritarian measures e.g. the Preventive Detention Act, the Press (Objectionable Matter) Act, President's Rule, the Industrial Disputes Act and the Maintenance of Essential Services Act in an effort to restrain disruptive demands. However, Weiner puts little stock in authoritarianism which he asserts may radicalize the new groups. Instead, he advocates a strategy of "accommodation and absorption" based on his appreciation of the fact that India's democratic institutions can be altered so as to better accommodate the demands of the new groups. Works like those of Harrison and Weiner prefigure later seminal work by Samuel Huntington (1968, Crozier, Huntington and Watanuki, 1975) who argued that "premature" or "excessive" political mobilization can lead to a "crisis of democracy." Along similar lines, Mancur Olson (1982) later conceptualized economic development as a collective action problem in which the particularistic interests articulated by interest groups conflicted with the "national interest." For Olson, the conflict was an important cause of economic stagnation and the "decline of great nations." By the late 1960s, American political scientists drew from India's experience to demonstrate that democratic states had much greater powers of accommodation and resilience than had been anticipated. Theories of political development during the 1960s were preoccupied with national integration. They exalted the nation-state and posited identification with it as teleological endpoint of political development (Emerson 1962). Ethnic and religious identities were viewed as being "traditional" and parochial. They were therefore divisive impediments to "modern" national integration (Geertz 1967). Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1967) criticized the conventional dichotomy between tradition and modernity and contended that traditional forms of social organization could facilitate integration into modern polities. The Rudolph's argued that the distinction between tradition and modernity was based on crude ideal-types which created an artificial gap between the two. The "imperialism of categories" and false dichotomy obscured the variations and potentialities of societies. It was the Rudolph's contention that the continuities between tradition and modernity, or the "modernity of tradition", facilitated rather than impeded political development. Caste was not an anachronistic social institution, but a vehicle for incorporating citizens into the democratic polity. Mahatma Gandhi was neither traditional or modern but rather a political leader who used traditional symbolism to fashion a modern political movement. The Rudolphs cogently observed that the crude analytical categories and synchronic comparisons which were characteristic of political science in the 1960s were insensitive to the dynamics of political change. While their analysis is open to the criticism that the dialectic of tradition and modernity that they posited understated the problems of political development, their analytical framework was one of the first to suggest that political development, rather than diminishing the salience of caste and religion, might perpetuate or increase it. Paul Brass's Language, Religion and Politics in North India (1974) further advanced our understanding of political development by disabusing political scientists of the notion that modern democratic polities were confronted with a choice between cultural amalgamation or political secession. By distinguishing between political integration from nationalism, Brass demonstrated that multiple nationalisms or sub-nationalisms could coexist within a single state. His study of Sikh nationalism, in particular, showed political parties, rather than exacerbating conflict among nationalities, can help to accommodate ethic conflict either by accommodating different nationalities within their organization or by entering into alliances with other parties representing different ethnic groups. Furthermore, he demonstrated that states have a range of policy alternatives to accommodate subnationalisms. Brass's study of India advanced our understanding of the possibilities and prospects for multinational states. Brass's analysis contains an ingenuous research design that enabled him to advance an important model of ethnic/religious mobilization. By examining the abortive Maithili regional movement, the successful Sikh mobilization to establish a Sikh majority state, and the permutations of Muslim politics in Northern India, Brass is able to develop a sophisticated theory of ethnic mobilization that was a major contribution to the field. He levels a profound criticism of primordialist views of ethnicity by arguing that the "objective marks of group identity, such as language or religion are not 'givens' ... but are themselves subject to variation." (p. 45) Brass stressed the agency of elites in constructing ethnic identity. He contends that elites initiate ethnic movements by attaching symbolic value to certain objective characteristics of a group. They create a myth of group history or destiny, and they communicate that myth to the defined population (pp. 43-44). In contrast to prevalent theories at the time (e.g. Deutsch 1966), politics plays a central role in constructing ethnic identity. In his view, political organizations to do not arise spontaneously to reflect the demands of ethnic groups, rather they often precede the existence of group identity and play a critical role in shaping it (p. 38) Elites use different symbols in attempts to mobilize support, and ethnic mobilization often become part of a multi-layered struggle for power -- the outcome of which affects ethnic identity and culture. Additionally, Brass found that public policy plays an important role in affecting identities and conflicts. In later work, Brass (1985, 1991) added to our understanding of ethnic conflict by highlighting the role of the state in ethnic conflicts. He asserted that the state is an important factor in ethnic conflict. Brass argued that modernizing states, through their promotion of secularism, centralization, meritocracy, and democracy, pose a threat to local elites that can spur them to mobilize their communities. The state also may incite conflict because its programs in effect distribute resources among different social groups, and the leaders of some groups may protest inequities in the resource distribution by the state. Finally, the state often becomes an object of struggle because is it a source of limited resources -- jobs, revenues, education, legitimation of values,etc. -- that are sought after by different ethnic groups. Brass's study of the role of the state in ethnic conflict contributed to the development of institutionalist approaches to politics that have gained currency among social scientists in the last decade (Evans, Reuschemeyer and Skocpol 1985; Steinmo, Thelen, and Longstreet 1992). Brass's (1997) most recent work on communal violence is a logical extension of his work on ethnic conflict. He observes the multiplicity of interpretations of communal violence makes it virtually impossible to arrive at an "objective" understanding of what are ambiguous events to begin with. The search for objective understanding, according to Brass, misses the most important point. Different interpretations of events are constructed by various political interests. Indeed, Brass regards communal violence as profoundly political, not simply in the sense that they involve a politics of meaning, but also because their incidence is a consequence of political agency and therefore can generally be prevented. Despite criticizing ecological explanations, Brass asserts that communal violence occurs at sites where there are "institutionalized riot systems," political actors with vested interests turning local conflict into communal violence, and failures of local and state authorities to act decisively to prevent the transformation. Brass's discussion of the politics of interpretation not only adds to our understanding of communal violence in India, but it also contributes to recent literature on the framing of social movements (McAdam, et al. 1996). The study of Indian political parties has also contributed to better understandings of parties in the broader discipline of political science. The personalistic nature of India's parties have served a useful purpose in limiting generalizations based on observations from industrialized societies. For instance, Myron Weiner (1957) argues that the personalistic basis of party organization makes India's party system a counter-example to Duverger's law (1954), according to which first past the post elections produce two-party system. Similarly, Brass draws from the Indian experience to counter prevalent arguments that political instability in party systems arises from ideological claims made by political parties with disciplined organizations and strong ties to different groups of supporters. In India, Brass shows that indisciplined party organizations, lack of institutionalized ties to various social groups, and consequently defections from parties is the primary source of instability. In addition, he takes on Samuel Huntington's (1968) argument that political instability is caused by institutional decay in the face of rapid social mobilization by showing that in India it was in the areas of rapid mobilization where party institutions are strongest. Myron Weiner's (1965, 1967) study of the Congress party incited him to be an early proponent of the position that effective political parties can insulate democratic institutions from political instability. Brass (1974) later showed that political parties can play an important role in accommodating the demands of ethnic groups. Arend Lijphart (1996) uses the Indian experience to extend his theory of consociational democracy. He asserts that the Indian case illustrates how power sharing arrangements in pluralistic societies, usually reached through accommodations between parties, can be achieved within the organization of single parties. There is an irony to exalting the virtues of the Congress party in face of its steady decline over the last decade. Atul Kohli (1990), used his incisive study of Congress party decay to develop an alternative perspective to those who have argued that centralization of power enhances its efficacy (e.g. Haggard 1990). Kohli demonstrated how centralization of power within the Congress (I) and the central government ultimately landed Rajiv Gandhi in a situation of powerlessness. This insight contributed to the recent reassessment of institutionalist perspective based on the realization that linkages to society rather than diminishing state autonomy and power can play an important role in enhancing state capacity to achieve its policy objectives. (Evans 1995, Migdal et al 1994, Echeverri-Gent 1993). CONCLUSION Although the study of Indian politics is a formidable challenge for American political scientists, it has produced substantial rewards. While Americans' far-ranging research on Indian politics has made an important contribution to advance the general understanding of Indian politics, the breadth and depth of knowledge gained through the study of Indian politics has enabled these observers of American politics to add insights to the development of the field of comparative politics. In particular, the study of Indian politics has been fruitful in its contributions to the fields of political development, ethnic and religious conflict, and political parties. Indian politics and the discipline of political science have undergone important changes in recent years. These changes have generated new potential synergies in the study of Indian politics. The decline of the Congress party and the fragmentation of India's party system has created ample scope for applying recent theoretical developments in the study of political coalitions (Laver and Shepsle 1996, Mershon 1996, Enelow and Hinich 1990, Strom, 1990) to analyze the new dynamics of India's partisan competition. India's budget has become the most important forum for economic policy statements during the period of economic reform, but there has been very little study of the politics of the budgetary process in India. Study of budgetary politics has been quite extensive in the United States (Wildavsky and Caiden 1997, Schick 1990, Savage 1988) and the theoretical insights of studies offer possible departure points for analyzing India's budgetary process. One of the most important theoretical trends among American political scientists has been renewed interest in the study of political institutions (Shepsle and Weingast 1995, Steinmo et al., 1992, March and Olson 1989, and Evans et al. 1985). From the perspective of this "new institutionalism", many important India's political institutions are greatly understudied. There remains substantial scope for theoretically informed study of well-established institution's like Parliament, the Prime Minister's office, the police among others. Recent transformations in the Indian state have created a new set of institutions that remain largely unstudied. We are witnessing a transformation in the regulation of the Indian economy as direct government intervention is curtailed and more independent regulatory agencies are created. New agencies like the Stock Exchange Bureau of India do not intervene to determine market outcomes as did the old regulatory agencies but instead regulate the procedures of market transactions. American experience with economic deregulation and re-regulation (Mucciaroni 1995, Derthick and Quirk 1985) and roughly comparable independent regulatory agencies may provide American scholars with the intellectual resources to advance our understanding of India's new regulatory institutions. At the same time new institutions are being established, old institutional arrangements are being transformed. Indian federalism is of particular interest in this regard. As economic reform limits economic intervention by the central government, it enhances the relative importance of provincial governments in providing infrastructure, attracting domestic and foreign investment, and implementing social sector programs such as primary health and education. Greater capital mobility increasingly pits India's states in competition with one another. Will this competition result in more efficient state government or beggar thy neighbor inter-state competition? The ongoing exploration of these issues in the American context (Weingast 1995, Brace 1993, Eisinger, 1988, and Foster 1988) may give political scientists for the United States a distinctive perspective to contribute to discussion of India's changing federalism. By bringing a comparative perspective to the study of Indian politics, American political scientists have drawn interesting parallels between politics in India, the United States and other countries. Their comparative work also has enabled them to better understand what is distinctive about Indian politics. During the last fifty years, the work of American political scientists has added to our understanding of Indian politics and enriched the broader discipline of political science. Given the knowledge base that has already accumulated, the next fifty years promise more extensive and even deeper insights. List of Works Cited Walter K. Anderson and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism Boulder: Westview, 1987. Paul H. Appleby, Public Administration in India Report of a Survey, Delhi: Manager of Publications, Government of India 1953. Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of A Nation Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. Ross Babbage and Sandy Gordon (eds.) India's Strategic Future: Regional State or Global Power? New York: St. Martins, 1992. William J. Barnds, 1972, India, Pakistan and the Great Powers. New York: Praeger, 1972. Marguerite Ross Barnett. Electoral Politics in the Indian States: Party Systems and Cleavages. Delhi: Manohar, 1975. Marguerite Ross Barnett, The Politics of Cultural Nationalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. Amrita Basu, Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Modes of Women's Activism in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Craig Baxter, The Jana Sangh: A Biography of an Indian Political Party. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969. Craig Baxter, District Voting Trends in India: A Research Tool. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. David H. Bayley, The Policy and Political Development in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969. Jagdish N. Bhagwati. Electoral Politics in the Indian States: Three Disadvantaged Sectors. Delhi: Manohar, 1975. James W. Bjorkman, Politics of Administrative Alienation in India's Rural Development Programs. Delhi: Ajanta, 1979. Harry W. Blair, Voting, Caste, Community, Society. New Delhi: Young Asia, 1979. Joan Bondurant, Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958. Marshall Bouton, Agrarian Radicalism in South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Paul Brace. State Government and Economic Performance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Paul R. Brass, Caste, Faction, and Party in Indian Politics Vol 1 Faction and Party . Delhi: Chanakya, 1983. Paul R. Brass, Caste, Faction and Party in Indian Politics Vol 2 Election Studies. Delhi: Chanakya, 1985. Paul R. Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965. Paul R. Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Paul R. Brass, "Ethnic Groups and the State," in Paul R. Brass (ed.) Ethnic Groups and the State. Totwa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1985, pp. 1-56. Paul R. Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison New Delhi: Sage, 1991. Paul R. Brass and Marcus Franda. Radical Politics in South Asia Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973. Paul R. Brass. 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(New York: Praeger, 1982. Endnotes