In the context of a challenged rules-based international order, Western states are embracing heterodox responses to reshore investment and mitigate risk. As one response, social procurement involves instrumentalizing public sector purchasing to simultaneously meet secondary objectives like economic inclusion and development. While not new, some forms of social procurement outwardly frustrate the priorities of market-based public purchasing (such as, buy local). How are middle liberal market economies managing the tensions between competitive and social procurement? This paper examines three such case studies in the national social procurement initiatives of Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Applying a policy paradigm approach with primary document analysis, it observes first- and second-order change to accommodate social procurement. That said, the core ideas of competitive public procurement remain intact: each case favours free market approaches, open participation and downstream social value definition. This remains true despite renewed calls for buying local.
This paper explores how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), since coming to power in 2014 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has redefined the 'symbolic repertoires' of India's official nationalism using the visual iconography of postage stamps issued by the Department of Posts. Stamps are excellent primary data for analysis since they are the official product of a state and its agencies. The 2014 election marked a paradigm shift in Indian politics, alongside a radical transformation in the sights, sounds, and vocabularies of everyday life, particularly in relation to the discourse on national identity and nation-building. A content analysis of postage stamps issued from 2014 to 2020 reveals a statist push towards consolidating visual iconography centred on India's civilisational past, with recurring themes of Hindu national identity and a neoliberal discourse on development.
Renewed interest in Birsa Munda, an iconic anti-colonial Adivasi leader, has brought into sharp relief intensifying political contestation over Adivasi histories in contemporary India. Since 2014, commemorative initiatives, electoral strategies, and media representations have increasingly mobilised Birsa's legacy, projecting him as a national figure. This article situates this conjuncture within a wider 'memory turn' in Indian politics.The article traces Birsa's transformation from a regional symbol of resistance and Adivasi autonomy to a venerated figure embedded within nationalist cartography. It analyses how memory operates as a site of both incorporation and contestation, particularly through institutional forms such as museums, parliamentary installations, and commemorative days.I argue that memory politics in India functions through selective remembering, strategic forgetting, and the production of political icons, whereby histories of dispossession are reframed within narratives of national unity. Yet such incorporation remains partial. Adivasi articulations of memory, grounded in land, cosmology, and community practice, continue to exceed and contest state-led narratives.
Following success in the 2014 national elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi initiated a novel communication programme called Mann Ki Baat (MKB), which constituted monthly speeches broadcast over the radio. The content of the speeches covered a gamut of cultural, historical, governance and contemporary topics. In the article, we analyse the historical content of the speeches delivered by PM Modi during his first tenure between 2014 and 2019. We used content analysis to evaluate the speeches' salience, valence and ownership of diverse historical personalities. Further, we interpreted the symbolism accompanying the personality mentions. The results suggest that MKB was aligned with the BJP's historical revisionist project. The speeches gave more emphasis to ideological allies than ideological adversaries. The highest salience was given to ideologically ambivalent personalities, whose ownership was projected through symbols sympathetic to the party and government. The findings shed light on the historical revisionist project that underlay the apolitical positioning of MKB. Furthermore, it shows how efforts at historical revisionism go beyond revising textbooks to the practice of everyday politics.
This article explores the diffusion of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in Nepal. Various actors have been attempting to 'saffronize' Nepal's polity. However, these attempts face challenges in Nepal's diverse religious and social environment. Some expressions of 'Hindu politics' in Nepal diverge significantly from the movement character of Hindu nationalist politics in India while others stay closer to Indian variants. These factors suggest the diffusion of Hindutva will not be a linear or teleological process. Nepal provides a case study in a growing literature on how Hindutva articulates with social and religious formations outside its early areas of strength in northern India.
This paper examines the growth policies of the two small European island states of Malta and Iceland, from 1980 to 2004. It compares their primary economic, political, and industrial characteristics and analyses four growth policy domains: foreign trade policies and international relations, capital investment strategies, structural reform programmes and sectoral industrial policies. Novel economic strategies and policies marked the 1980s and 1990s, recognised for deregulation, structural reforms, monetarism and reduced government intervention. Globalisation, export dependence and growing European trade cooperation, prompted Iceland to sign the EEA agreement, effective in 1994, and Malta to join the EU, with effect in 2004. In 1980, the Icelandic economy exhibited a significantly higher output level, while the Maltese economy grew faster thereafter and had reduced the output gap with Iceland, measured in GDP per capita, by 2004. The paper will examine the factors that contributed to the different growth rates of the two island economies during the period under review.
An indicator of the increasing presence of business interests in contemporary Indian politics is the growing number of business politicians across the country. In this context, the paper examines the roles of such politicians through a bottom-up approach, focusing on Surat, Gujarat, western India. The paper maps the overwhelming presence of business politicians in the city, underlining the structural roles of money, caste, and the highly informalised nature of the local economy. It then presents a case study of a business politician to illustrate the trajectory from business to politics, and the political work that they engage in. This illuminates the importance of the economic context and socio-political networks in shaping these politicians' interventions and roles. It captures the processes through which business politicians help to maintain a business-dominated political-economic order. The paper thus contributes to understanding the implications of this growing cohort of politicians across India and beyond.
The Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party held in 1921 banned all tendencies of factionalism. Though this ban became an organisational principle, scholars recognise the presence of factions in communist and other parties across the world. Party factionalism is often viewed either reductively as power struggle or instrumentally as a form integrating/weakening organisational structures. The factionalism within the Communist Party of India (Marxist), however, suggests that a focus on factionalism in terms of the intentions of faction-leaders or its consequences ignores the significance of the popular experiences of politics in democracies. This paper argues that a spectacular dialectic of factional politics and organisational discipline constituted, beyond the authority of the party over the meaning of its politics, an aesthetic-cognitive field enabling autonomous popular reflections on both politics and the views of the party. In Kerala, factional politics restored to memory and the party's own profile its historical ideology.
The intersection of populism and foreign policy has garnered increasing scholarly attention. However, its manifestation through international summits remains underexplored. The 2023 G20 summit held in India under the leadership of Narendra Modi is an intriguing case of populist performance on the world stage. A qualitative approach is used to assess this case and finds that Modi's populist performance during the G20 presidency was articulated through three modalities: textual, visual, and participatory. These modalities functioned to construct his image as a global statesman while reinforcing his popular appeal at home. This paper contributes to bridging the gap between two strands of populism literature: one that views populism as a strategic means of acquiring and consolidating power, and another that emphasises its performative and stylistic dimensions. The paper enriches the literature on populism in Indian foreign policy with a case study of Modi's conduct during the G20 presidency.
