Eswaran Sridharan

Coalition Politics in the 2009 Indian Election

Professor Sridharan will be comparing patterns of pre-electoral coalition politics, state by state, within each pre-electoral alliance in the 2009 election compared to 2004, placing this in the context of coalition theory and the dynamics of first-past-the-post electoral systems.

Eswaran Sridharan is the Academic Director of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), (in New Delhi), from its inception in 1997, and was earlier with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is a political scientist with research interests in the political economy of development, party systems and coalition politics, and international relations theory, conflict resolution and cooperation-building in South Asia. He is the author of The Political Economy of Industrial
Promotion: Indian, Brazilian and Korean Electronics in Comparative Perspective 1969-1994 (1996); and has co-edited (with Zoya Hasan and R. Sudarshan), India’s Living Constitution: Ideas, Practices, Controversies (2002; 2005); co-edited (with Anthony D’Costa), India in the Global Software Industry: Innovation, Firms Strategies and Development, (2004); co-edited (with Peter de Souza) India’s Political Parties (2006); and edited The India-Pakistan Nuclear Relationship: Theories of Deterrence and
International Relations (2007). Two edited volumes, one on comparative patterns of coalition politics in Asian democracies, and one on international relations theory and South Asia have been accepted by Oxford University Press. He has published over forty journal articles and chapters in edited volumes. He is the Editor of India Review and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. He majored in chemistry at St. Stephen’s College, took graduate degrees in political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the India Initiative with funding from the Division of International Studies and WAGE.