Domestic politics and systemic constraints in India's Sri Lanka policy: 1983–2014

• Main Author: Qin, Yu
• Other Authors: -
• Format: Thesis-Master by Coursework
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Political science::International relations
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/166380
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The aim of this dissertation is to examine the systemic incentives and domestic political factors that have influenced India’s Sri Lanka policy during the period 1983 to 2014. The first part of dissertation briefly introduces two core issues that have been the focus of India’s policy towards Sri Lanka and points out the importance of domestic politics in the study of India’s foreign affairs. The second part introduces the debate on theories of foreign policy studies and argues that neoclassical realism that dialectically integrates systemic pressures and domestic politics helps to better understand the drifts in India’s Sri Lanka policy. The following two parts use the cases of India’s policy evolution during the Sri Lankan civil war and India’s changing attitudes in the Sri Lankan human rights votes and argue that domestic politics, as a moderating factor, can explains the drift between the “rational” foreign policy under systemic pressures and actual foreign policy. At last, the conclusion is drawn that under the structural constraints of the international system, domestic politics in the short term may lead to a policy drift in India’s foreign policy towards Sri Lanka, but it is hardly likely to fundamentally change the overall direction of its strategy.