Description
While the Indian nuclear tests (1998) heralded the ‘Second Nuclear Age’, 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. However, extant approaches are circumscribed by linear classifications between domestic and external processes and provide partial explanation for Indian nuclear behaviour. India is in certain ways an outlier case in nuclear issues, and the paper investigates Indian nuclear decision-making through a Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) prism by leveraging previously unexamined primary sources. To that end, Bayesian reasoning is utilised to perform process tracing and insights from international relations, security studies, diplomatic history and comparative politics integrated to explain these episodic transformations. Such an exercise, contests prevailing theoretical assumptions, connects domestic politics to the nuclear sphere, and contextualises nuclear policymaking in India – an emerging power with significant stake in the global nuclear order.
