Description
If the Indian nuclear tests (1998) heralded the ‘Second Nuclear Age’, then the India-USA Nuclear Agreement (2008) marked the reorientation of the global nuclear order – these portended profound repercussions on international relations and epitomized the confluence of global and domestic factors. Nuclear issues are essentially entwined with the foreign policies of states, while the dynamics of globalization and power transition defies linear classifications between domestic and external processes. In the case of India, external factors provide a partial explanation for Indian nuclear behaviour. The paper examines the role of domestic politics in Indian nuclear policy through a Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) perspective; and argues that the matter is not whether domestic politics influence and nuclear (and foreign) policy, but rather how and when. Such an exercise, firstly, widens the conceptual and empirical template of FPA, which is circumscribed by Western moorings (in terms of assumptions and applications), secondly, connects domestic politics to the nuclear sphere, (an eminent domain of ‘high politics’) and finally, highlights foreign policy-making in India (an emerging power). Further, it illuminates the study of Indian foreign policy which remains understudied from an FPA prism and supplements topical scholarship pertaining to the intersection between foreign policy and domestic politics, which has often been driven by issues of economics and/or low politics. The paper leverages process tracing as an analytical tool and attempts to integrate insights from international relations, security studies, diplomatic history, and comparative politics to explain these episodic transformations; and thereby broaden and widen the understanding and scope of International Relations.
