PLSC 223 - Politics of South Asia

Credit(s): 3
Lecture: 3
Non-Lecture: 0
This course explores the major political and socioeconomic forces shaping contemporary South Asia. We begin with an overview of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal, and Afghanistan), emphasizing subcontinental factors such as the impact of colonization and anticolonial freedom struggles; international relations; and regional conflicts such as Kashmir and the nuclearization of the Indo- Pakistani relationship. We then turn to the ways in which newly independent states have contended with challenges of governance, national unity, and socioeconomic development, through case studies of the states of the region. The major focus of the course is the evolution and nature of democratic and authoritarian regimes in the region. When demand is sufficient.