Description
While the Indian nuclear tests (1998) heralded the ‘Second Nuclear Age’, the India-USA Civil 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. The paper contends that existing literature is circumscribed by linear classifications between domestic and external processes and provide partial explanation for Indian nuclear behaviour. India is several ways an outlier case in nuclear issues, and the paper investigates nuclear decision-making in India through a Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) prism. To that end, Bayesian reasoning is utilised to perform process tracing on data collected from recently concluded fieldtrip, 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. This illustrates nuclear decision-making in an emerging power and facilitates meaningful understanding and interpretation of nuclear issues.
