Explaining Policy Drift—An Analytical Template Drawn from the World's Most Populous Democracy

Abstract

Explaining Policy Drift—An Analytical Template Drawn from the World's Most Populous Democracy Jivanta Schottli (bio) Subcontinental Drift: Domestic Politics and India's Foreign Policy was written in response to what Rajesh Basrur describes as three tensions: "a desire to investigate the contradiction between India's quest for power and status and the limitations of its policies and policymakers"; "the gulf between studies on India's external relationships and cutting-edge theory"; and "the materialist/normative divide in academia" (p. xi–xii). Basrur, drawing on an illustrious and unique career that has bridged area studies and international relations theory, is eminently well placed to address all three. He delivers empirically rich chapters, an elegant theoretical argumentation, and a clear message. Situating the Gap between Objectives and Outcomes The book frames its central question as "why policymakers, consciously responding to systemic incentives, often find their policy initiatives caught up in prolonged and meandering pathways in trying to attain their objectives" (p. 2). The gap between objectives or intent and subsequent diversionary processes is what Basrur refers to as the phenomenon of "policy drift." In framing its question thusly, the book addresses two long-running debates. Scholars have engaged in ongoing discussions about the particularities of India's emergence as a power, puzzling over the slow or gradualist path the country has taken, the purposefulness and intent behind policy choices, and the strategic thinking of the country's policymakers. At the same time, the book's central question confronts a deep ontological challenge of how to overcome the external-internal distinction that is so often drawn within and between the disciplines of international relations and politics and in the categories of agency and structure. Drawing on neoclassical realism, Basrur analyzes instances where Indian foreign policy outcomes have deviated from realist expectations—not those of theorists, he is careful to point out, but of policymakers. In other words, he demonstrates how policymakers have responded clearly to systemic [End Page 125] incentives, broadly defined as the power differentials between states. This is the case for India, for instance, when opting to improve relations with the United States as a result of the recalibrations caused by the end of the Cold War, in the effort to rebuild relations with Sri Lanka following India's "intervention" in the country's civil war, in the long-postponed decision to go overtly nuclear in 1998, and in efforts to manage cross-border threats from neighboring Pakistan. Explaining why these policy shifts took place when they did, and the ways in which implementation was subsequently hampered by domestic politics, is a major part of the book's analysis. However, Basrur seeks to do much more than describe or explain what happened in the past. The additional objective of integrating a moral dimension into the analysis by highlighting the question of responsibility adds a layer of complexity that is thought-provoking but which also leads to several further questions. What Is the Moral of the Story? At the end of the book, Basrur claims that his analytical framework, when applied to cases of Indian policy drift, highlights and integrates both material and nonmaterial factors into an explanation for why suboptimal outcomes occur and persist. He uses the categories of "involuntary" and "voluntary" policy drift to capture the extent to which material and nonmaterial factors play a role. In the case of involuntary drift, material constraints play a central role, defined largely as the control that decision-makers have over their policy environment. This is relatively easier to pinpoint, for instance, in the number of parliamentary seats the governing party holds and the extent to which it may be beholden to coalition partners. What is less clear are the nonmaterial factors that account for what Basrur describes as "the abdication of responsibility" (p. 196). His identified nonmaterial factors include a lack of epistemic rigor and knowledge among the civilian leadership on the issue of nuclear strategy, evidence of leadership incompetence, and sustained neglect across central and state governments to develop a robust security infrastructure and effective policies to prevent and deter terrorist attacks. By foregrounding policymakers and attributing to them a moral responsibility, Basrur is offering a way around...