(iPoster) Flight from Domestic? Decline of Political Science and the Surge of IR in India

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Political Science Education & Race, Ethnicity, and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Science Education

Abstract

Over the last two decades, International Relations (IR) has emerged as one of India’s most sought-after social science disciplines, evidenced by a fourfold increase in dedicated IR programmes. Existing scholarship attributes this growth to India’s rise in the international system and expanding market-driven job opportunities. This expansion, however, has coincided with declining academic freedom and institutional disinvestment in higher education. This paper asks whether the growth of IR can be understood as a consequence of the decline of Political Science (PS) in an increasingly constrained political environment.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork across 15 institutions and 200 interviews with faculty, students, and administrators, I argue that the assumed causal relationship between the domestic decline of PS and the rise of IR is largely illusory. While scholars across both disciplines report heightened self-censorship and a pervasive feeling of threat, these conditions generate liminal spaces of critique rather than large-scale disciplinary migration. Instead, the expansion of IR is better explained by broader structural shifts within Indian higher education, including the blurring of domestic–international boundaries, the postcolonial evolution of disciplinary pedagogy, and the increasing marketization of academic fields. Although PS and IR remain closely intertwined, their divergent trajectories in India reflect institutional and structural transformations rather than attempts at political evasion.

Author

• Unregistered Participant