The Political Churn in South Asia & Its Longer-Term Implications

This is a keynote address delivered as a part of King’s India Institute Graduate Conference 2021 & Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global India European Training Network Ambassadors' Event.
Grant Number 722446

The global pandemic has highlighted political changes in South Asia, which will have longer-term implications for individual South Asian countries, for the South Asia region, and at the larger global level. This talk will focus on the changing nature of hard and soft power and democracy in South Asia. It will also analyze the current efforts aimed at redefining national identities in South Asian countries, as well as the implications of these changing power and regime structures for the national, regional and global levels.

Speaker

Professor Rani D. Mullen

Professor Rani D. Mullen is an Associate Professor of Government at William & Mary. She is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, where she directs a research program on Indian development cooperation. She was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at India’s only Afghanistan Studies Centre at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2013–14, and a Visiting Scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University as well as a Liechtenstein Scholar on Afghanistan in 2008-09. Prior to teaching at the College of William & Mary, Professor Mullen worked as the Asia Project Manager at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University, was a consultant at the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. She also worked for a German think tank, as well as a member of the German Parliament.

Professor Mullen’s research and teaching focus is on South Asian Politics, particularly state-building and democracy in and foreign policies of India and Afghanistan. Her book, Decentralization, Local Governance, and Social Wellbeing in India, was published in 2011 by Routledge. She has published articles in Asian Survey and Foreign Affairs and book chapters in several Oxford University Press and Routledge publications on state-building in Afghanistan, India’s democratic institutions, and Indian foreign and aid policies. She is also a founding member and co-chair of the South Asia in World Politics section of International Studies Association.