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Is India a Responsible Great Power?Amrita Narlikar aa Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge,Cambridge, UK

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To cite this article: Amrita Narlikar (2011): Is India a Responsible Great Power?, Third World Quarterly, 32:9,1607-1621

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Is India a Responsible Great Power?

AMRITA NARLIKAR

ABSTRACT To what extent does rising responsibility accompany rising powerin international relations? This article focuses on India to address the question:is a responsible great power in the making? Following a brief theoreticaldiscussion on the notion of responsibility and its relationship to rising power, thearticle offers an empirical overview of India’s achievements thus far, and alsothe international and domestic challenges that it faces today. It argues thatdespite the attempts by observers to thrust greatness upon India, the country isyet to achieve greatness. The article further illustrates that India’s record ofassuming global responsibility has been lacklustre at best. A central argumentof the article is that India’s reluctance to share the burden of providing globalpublic goods is inseparably bound with the nature of its rise to power.

With great power, we are told, comes great responsibility. As the balance ofpower evolves in the international system, we must investigate the extent towhich rising powers such as Brazil, India and China are able and willing toexercise their growing power with greater responsibility. In this article I focusspecifically on India to address the question: is a responsible great power inthe offing? This is of course a question that interests India specialists, but alsohas considerable and growing pertinence for those concerned with theevolving balance of power and its implications for the sustainability ofexisting institutions and norms of global governance.My argument proceeds in five steps. First, I provide a brief theoretical

discussion on the concept of international responsibility and its relationshipwith countries aspiring to great power status. I also demonstrate somepotentially interesting contradictions and paradoxes. The second sectionpresents an overview of some of India’s achievements that lead many to see iton a definite trajectory to great power status, or indeed regard it as a greatpower in its own right already. I argue, however, that despite the attempts bysome scholars and practitioners to thrust greatness upon India, India is yet toachieve greatness. While its power is undoubtedly on the rise, the samesection also offers reasons for scepticism and suggests why India’s trajectoryto great power status is less straightforward than mainstream scholarshipwould have us believe. India’s behaviour, when observed across regimes, is in

Amritar Narlikar is in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge,

Cambridge, UK. Email: an283@cam.ac.uk.

Third World Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 9, 2011, pp 1607–1621

ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/11/091607–15

� 2011 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com

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general that of a veto-player rather than an agenda setter in the internationalsystem. Contrary to what one would expect of a great power, there are only afew instances in which India has successfully managed to influence outcomesin its own favour. In the third section I highlight the many domestic constrai-nts that India faces, which further limit its emergence onto the internationalstage. In the fourth section I turn to the issue of responsibility, and investigateIndia’s willingness and ability to assume it as a rising power. I argue that if itsrising power behaviour is anything to go by, we must take issue with bothIndia’s willingness and also its ability to take on the responsibilities thataccompany rising and great power. The fifth and concluding section analysesthe close and sometimes negative linkage between the domestic pathways topower and the exercise of international responsibility. The analysis suggeststhat studies of increasing power in terms of aggregate growth figures do notsuffice if one is to explain and predict the behaviour of rising powers in theinternational system. Rather, power is a function of not just structure but alsoagency, and the responsibility with which this agency can be exercised in turndepends on the domestic roots of emerging power.

What does it mean to be a responsible rising power?

Responsibility is the ability and willingness to provide global public goods, iegoods that are non-excludable and non-rival, and thereby also harder tosupply because of the temptation of free-riding.1 Examples include free trade,climate change mitigation and nuclear non-proliferation. States mayprioritise public goods differently, depending on differing social, economic,historical and cultural backgrounds. Whichever public goods they prefer toinvest in, however, the provision of such goods entails some costs, and aresponsible rising or great power shows both ability and willingness to incurthese costs to lesser or greater degree.The greatest onus for the provision of public goods lies on the hegemon

and great powers.2 But amid power transitions and a growing reluctance ofthe declining hegemon to bear the costs of public goods’ provision, risingpowers may have to rise to the occasion. Especially for rising powers withgreat power aspirations, the assumption of such responsibilities can signaltheir commitment to the system and thereby make their entry into keydecision-making forums and emerging concerts somewhat easier.Even though the provision of public goods entails costs, the main driver for

such efforts need not be—and seldom is—altruism. The hegemon can usuallyshape the system, in goodmeasure, in its own interests, and the conformity of itsown interests with that of the system means that investing in the system’spreservation is perfectly rational.3 For the rising power that acquires increasingstakes in the system, especially if efforts have been made to accommodate it, asimilar logic applies: we can expect greater voice and influence in the system forthe rising power to translate into a greater willingness to also invest in thepreservation of the system. Add to this the accompanying motivation ofsignalling commitment to the regime and thereby acquiring positions ofgrowing importance in decision making and agenda setting, and the inclination

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of the rising power to assume greater international responsibilities becomeseven more likely. Importantly, however, public goods are not the only types ofgoods that demand the resources and diplomatic efforts of rising powers.Rising powers often rely on the strength of a smaller constituency, which

they nurture through the provision of club goods.4 Hence also the common(though neither necessary nor only) route of regional power that is taken bystates that aspire to great power status.5 In the case of international trade, aparallel may be found in the leadership that rising powers offer to coalitions ofdeveloping countries. The active participation of some rising powers in suchcoalitions can be seen as their provision of the club good of coalition unity.The costs of this collective action for the rising powers include the costs ofresearch, free-riding by and log-rolling of the demands of smaller members,sharing information through the negotiation process, and ensuring therepresentation of the interests of coalition allies. Coalition unity can helpensure that all the members of the alliance get a deal that leaves them betteroff than a deal that might have been negotiated individually. The margin ofbenefit thus secured is perhaps the greatest for some of the smallest membersof the coalition that lack individual weight. For the rising powers this marginmay be smaller (given their growing go-it-alone power) but this difference iscompensated for via the legitimacy gains (by offering direct or indirect repres-entation to the marginalised majority) that accrue to them in internationalorganisations seeking better democratic procedures and increased pluralism.While clubs that take the shape of coalitions are an invaluable source of

empowerment for both rising powers and their weaker allies, they can act as adeterrent against the provision of global public goods. We see this mostpatently in the case of the World Trade Organization (WTO), where theprovision of the public good of free trade is hampered by the recurrence ofdeadlock in the organisation. Another example of the contradiction betweenthe provision of global public goods and club goods is multilateral tradeagreements versus regional trade agreements.6

Rising powers on the cusp of great power status face a difficult choice: dothey contribute to the provision of public goods and thereby help preserve asystem in which their stakes are rising, or do they contribute to the provisionof club goods that cater to a smaller constituency of allies/audience that mayhave helped them achieve their rise thus far? Importantly this choice need notbe a function of a ‘logic of appropriateness’ argument accompanied by anadherence to old-fashioned loyalties and alliances. Rather, a ‘logic ofconsequences’ driven by realpolitik can provide the motivation for this choicejust as easily.7 While the former strategy, ie contributing to the supply ofglobal public goods represents a useful signal of bandwagoning with theestablished powers, the latter suggests balancing and hedging behaviour.8

Is India a great power? The difficult transition from international

veto-player to agenda setter

The oft-cited study by Goldman Sachs in 2003 predicted that, in 30 years,India’s economy would be larger than all others except those of the US and

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China. India’s economy was of course affected by the global economic crisis,claims of decoupling notwithstanding, but even at its lowest, GDP growth ratewas a very respectable 5.8 per cent in 2009. In 2010 it had returned to beingconsistently over eight per cent. Observers like Raja Mohan believe that suchgrowth rates are vital: ‘It is not a question of whether India wants to be orIndia should be a great power . . . If the logic of its current economic growthcontinues, there’s no escaping becoming a major power.’9

Aggregate growth figures, however, are simply not enough of an indicatorof the emergence of a great power; power is not just a function of structure butalso of agency, which has to be exercised to facilitate outcomes that oneprefers. Let us take the example of international trade negotiations, where wewould expect to see an easy translation of economic clout into influence. Thisis not the case, however. India, even as a relatively weak player in the GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), managed to punch significantlyabove its weight. Even today, several other countries that occupy biggershares of international markets do not enjoy the same voice as India does inthe WTO. This is because of several strategies that India has used to attempt toinfluence the organisation, several of which pre-date its rise. Hence, forexample, it used to lead coalitions of developing countries in the GATT; itcontinues to do this in the WTO, although with much greater efficacy. Indiahas, in fact, taken a lead in creating and sustaining powerful Southern coali-tions that can stand firm in the endgame. Examples include the G20 and theG33 on agriculture, which were formed at the Cancun Ministerial Conferencein 2003 and continue to exercise a collective voice to the present day.This growing economic clout, combined with a strategy of activism, has

paid off in the form of a bigger voice in different international institutions;witness India’s role in the Leaders’ Level G20. The WTO is a further good casein point. India follows Brazil as the most avid user of the dispute settlementmechanism (DSM) (Brazil has brought 25 cases to the DSM, while Indiaappears as complainant in 19 cases, and China in eight). Even moreimportantly, it has gained recognition in the organisation as a leadingplayer—it is thus consistently invited to all small group consultations thatare crucial to consensus building, along with Brazil, the EU, the US and morerecently China. Nor is this inclusiveness in the organisation a form of meretokenism: as the EU, the US and indeed the WTO Secretariat have learnt thehard way, India is not afraid to flex its muscle and hold up the negotiationprocess.What this effectively translates into is veto-player status for India.10

George Tsebelis has developed this concept with respect to domestic politics,where veto-players are actors ‘whose agreement is required for a change ofthe status quo’.11 In the international realm, veto-players are states withoutwhose support any potential agreement would be rendered meaningless. Thiscould be either because the state occupies great weight in the particular issue-area—eg a major market in trade—or it could be because an agreementwithout the particular state would be seen to be lacking in legitimacy, orsome combination thereof. India is certainly such a player in the WTO, as therecurrent deadlocks of the Doha negotiations indicate.

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Such veto-player status—the power to walk away—is a necessarycondition for the exercise of influence, but it is not a sufficient one. We seethis limitation in the exercise of Indian influence abroad: while India is ableto block certain agreements, it has not been able to secure agreements toreflect its preferred interests. Hence, for example, India was a key player inmanaging to block the conclusion of the Doha negotiations in 2008. Itsuccessfully persuaded not just smaller allies of the G20, but also conciliatoryBrazil, to stand firm and refuse to accept the US offer to cap its subsidiesuntil and unless the G33’s concern about import surges was addressedthrough a low threshold for the special safeguard mechanism (SSM). Butwhile its veto was effective, its agenda-setting power was not: the negotiationsstalled rather than resulted in an agreement on terms favourable to India orany of its allies in either the G20 or the G33. In climate change mitigation,too, its role has been similar: it has offered to take on voluntary restraints onemissions, but refused to take on any binding commitments. The result hasbeen that it has managed to avoid the particular agreement on offer, but ithas also failed to secure an agreement in its favour.While the ability to block agreements represents the norm for India, we can

find a few exceptions to this, in either direction. The decision-makingprocedures of the UN Security Council (UNSC)—particularly the existence ofthe veto-wielding Permanent Five—means that in this forum, India’sblocking power is considerably lower than in the WTO. This has not deterredIndia from taking a stance against the US and the established powers. InUNSC Resolution 1973 in support of air strikes on Libya, India expressed itsreservations through an abstention. Admittedly it was in good company(Brazil, China, Russia and Germany also abstained), but nonetheless it failedto block the resolution.12 Of course, India’s veto power would be greatlyenhanced were the Security Council to be reformed along the lines that itproposes. But this is unlikely to be an easy walkover, and not because of thecompetition from potential rivals alone. As George Perkovich writes, ‘India’slong position as a moralistic and contrarian loner in the internationalcommunity has not excited others about working with India at the apex ofthe UN system’.13

The nuclear non-proliferation regime offers us a different sort of exceptionto the norm of India’s behaviour as a veto-player; it presents us with a uniqueexample in global governance where India has displayed agenda-setting powerwith success.14 In this area the rising India has gone considerably beyond thestrategy of blocking, and has managed to acquire a de facto legitimacy as anuclear weapons state (NWS), despite the prohibition on the creation of newNWSs written into the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This process beganwith a joint declaration by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and PresidentGeorge W Bush in 2005. It was formalised via the Henry J Hyde US–IndiaPeaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006, which allowed theamendment of Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act and therebyenabled potential nuclear co-operation with India. The US–India nucleardeal was approved by the Indian parliament in July 2008 after much horsetrading, and was further passed by the US in October of the same year.

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In August the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cleared the India-specific safeguards agreement. Even the Nuclear Suppliers Group agreed to anIndia-specific waiver that allowed transfer of non-weapons nuclear technol-ogy to the country. These developments have facilitated a remarkabletransformation from India’s near pariah status after Pokhran I in 1974—adubious distinction that was only exacerbated with Pokhran II in 1998—tobeing a de facto legitimate nuclear power. Effectively India’s nuclear diplo-macy has generated outcomes on terms favourable to it similar to those thatwe would expect only from an established great power. Whether this isresponsible great power behaviour, however, is quite a different question, andone that I address in the next section. But at least in terms of its internationalpower projection, the non-proliferation regime provides us with a rareexample of the translation of India’s influence akin to that of a great power; inmost other issue areas, the evidence points to veto-player status at best.

Domestic constraints facing a rising India

The previous section illustrated that India’s international face, on balance, isnot that of a great power just yet. In this section we discuss the domestic sideof India’s rise to power. The limitations here are perhaps even more seriousthan India’s limitations at the international level. They are significant as notonly a useful indicator of the challenges that could derail India’s rise, but alsoin the impact that they have on India’s ability to assume greater responsibility.There is little dispute that India has prospered in the aggregate from the

opportunities provided by its greater integration into the global economicsystem. But amid this growing prosperity, which has been facilitated by whatJagdish Bhagwati refers to as Stage 1 of the reform process, many domesticproblems abound, stemming from the limitations of Stage 2 reforms.15 Justthree sets of examples follow below relating to the standard of development,high levels of corruption, poor infrastructure, and political problems.A recent issue of The Economist highlighted the problem of corruption,

citing the figure of $450 billion of untaxed earnings and other ‘ill-gotten gains’sitting illegally in foreign banks. Other striking examples of corruptioninclude the disappearance of over $40 billion-worth of food and other subsi-dies in just one state within a period of five years, and the re-routing of abouttwo-fifths of state paraffin subsidies to a ‘fuel mafia’ amounting to $2 billionper year.16 Unsurprisingly India scores poorly on the Corruption PerceptionIndex, and is ranked 87th (achieving a lowly score of 3.3 in comparison to thehighest scores achieved by Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore at 9.3, andalso finding itself behind Brazil at 3.7, and China at 3.5).17

India’s poor infrastructure is easy to spot even on a two-day visit to amajor city, evidenced in the severe electricity and water shortages that eventhe middle classes in urban areas have to endure (the situation in villages isconsiderably worse). The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index ranksIndia at 134 in a list of 183 countries. On certain indicators India performsparticularly badly, eg 182nd on enforcing contracts, 177th on dealing withconstruction permits, and 165th on starting a business.18 Poor infrastructure

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of course acts as a deterrent against potential investment; its impact on thepopulation is also adverse. One indicator of this is India’s low ranking on theHuman Development Index (121 in a list of 169 countries), again significantlybehind not just its counterparts in the developed world, but also Russia(which occupies 65th position), Brazil (79th), and China (89th).19

Finally, India finds itself subject to several security threats emanating froma region where it has already fought four major wars with neighbours (1947,1962, 1965, 1971) and also had several border conflicts (some as serious as theKargil war in 1999). At least some of the problems that had triggered theseconflicts persist today.20 Several of these, moreover, interact with andreinforce domestic threats, exacerbating the problems of both right-wingIslamic terrorism and also the left-wing Maoist insurgency of the Naxalites inEastern and Central India. The fact that the Naxalite movement is strongestin some of the country’s most under-developed states is not coincidental:extreme inequality and underdevelopment amid soaring aggregate growthrates provide the breeding ground for violent expressions of discontent.All these domestic problems influence India’s image abroad. They generate

difficulties for existing and potential investors. They also affect India’s rise topower by influencing the way in which it can (and cannot) assumeinternational responsibility, as the following section argues.

Is India a responsible power?

The previous two sections advanced the argument that India is not a greatpower yet in international politics, and its hands are further tied by domesticconstraints. But what can we learn about its willingness to assume the role ofa responsible player, based on its behaviour as a rising power today?Responsibility, as was discussed in section one, is the willingness to bear thecosts of providing global public goods.The answer to whether India is assuming the responsibilities that come with

increasing power lies partly in its aforementioned overall veto-player status.While it has shown considerable willingness to act as a naysayer, it has shownless willingness and ability to contribute to the delivery of global public goods.On the few occasions where it has been able to exercise the power of an agendasetter, it has arguably contributed to the creation of a global ‘public bad’rather than a public good, reinforcing the argument that it is still reluctant toshare the burdens of responsibility deriving from its rising power. I discussboth sets of examples below, and also explore possible reasons for thisbehaviour.India’s negotiating behaviour in the WTO is a good example of its

reluctance to assume responsibility. The global public good that the multi-lateral regime seeks to facilitate is freer trade. India has greatly benefitedfrom the opening of international markets thus far via its membership of theWTO. Further, it has acquired increasing voice in the organisation: asmentioned above, it is now consistently invited to consensus-building small-group meetings in all their permutations (other constant invitees are the EU,US and Brazil, and more recently China). We would thus expect India’s

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stakes in the preservation of the multilateral trading system to be high.Interestingly, however, despite having been welcomed at the high table of thenegotiation process and also its reliance on multilateral trade openness forcontinued growth, India has been extremely reluctant to make anyconcessions. For several of the deadlocks that the WTO has faced in thisround, India must take a fair share of the blame. The attempt to negotiate theJuly 2008 package is powerfully illustrative, when members came close toreaching an agreement on the prolonged Doha Development Agendanegotiations. India blocked the conclusion of the negotiations, taking aparticularly ‘vehement’ hard line on the threshold trigger for the SpecialSafeguard Mechanism that could protect Indian farmers against importsurges.21 It was joined by China in this rejectionist stance; attempts by Brazilto encourage a compromise as India’s ally in the G20 were firmly rebuffedand Brazil too was quickly brought back into toeing India’s rejectionist line.While the strategies of several other countries have of course contributed

to the persistence of the Doha deadlock in particular phases of thenegotiation, India’s naysaying stance has persisted fairly consistently throughthe greater part of the bargaining process. The former US ambassador to theWTO, Susan Schwab, presents an incisive and critical account of India’sposition (along with those of Brazil, China and South Africa) in thenegotiations:

At Doha, these emerging economies have minimized their own difficult market-opening decisions by seeking maximum flexibility for developing countries.And they have found it easier to avoid confronting their own needs for greateraccess to one another’s markets by focusing on what they can all agree on—namely, the market-opening obligations of developed countries. The result iswhat one African ambassador to the WTO once described as ‘the elephantshiding behind the mice’.22

And while Schwab, in her article, erroneously paints the rising powers withone broad brush, even she recognises the differences in the negotiationstrategies (particularly Brazil’s attempt to make concessions in 2008). Thedifferences in fact are much more significant; none of the other rising powershas had its trade negotiators dubbed recalcitrant naysayers with the sameconsistency that India has throughout the history of the GATT and the WTO.23

In other issue areas, too, we see a similar behaviour pattern emerging froma rising India, ie one that is characterised by attempts to evade internationalresponsibilities. On climate change it has remained unwilling to take onbinding commitments; even the voluntary restraints on emissions proposedby the Minister for Environment, Jairam Ramesh, attracted much resistanceand controversy at home. And while India is keen to secure a higher profile inthe United Nations, particularly in its goal of securing a permanent seat inthe UN Security Council, its attachment to traditional interpretations ofsovereignty render it cautious towards interventionism (witness its absten-tion, for example, over the Libya vote) and lukewarm towards emerging newagendas such as the Responsibility to Protect. In all these issue-areas,whether in the capacity of a veto-player (eg in climate change and trade) or

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less (eg in the UN Security Council), India has shown reluctance to assumeinternational responsibility.What of the one issue area that was mentioned in our second section,

where India has displayed agenda-setting power—the nuclear non-prolifera-tion regime—and its willingness and ability to assume greater responsibilityin this particular issue-area? Indian bureaucrats point to India’s exemplaryrecord on non-proliferation as evidence of its being a responsible power; theyfurther point out that India’s nuclear tests violated no treaty, given that itneither was nor is a signatory to the NPT. But this argument assumes a ratherlow threshold for what constitutes responsibility towards the regime. India’sagenda-setting efforts have in fact been quite disruptive to the regime, its ownclean record of refusing to pass on nuclear weapons technology to roguestates notwithstanding. The Indo-US nuclear deal awards de facto legitimacyand recognition to India as a nuclear weapons state (NWS), thereby turningthe irreversible division of the NPT between the NWS and non-NWS on itshead. Some constraints are admittedly placed on India, particularly viainspections that it must allow of its civilian facilities, but exactly how it willdraw the distinction between its civilian and military facilities remains to beseen. It is no mean irony that the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which wasconstituted specifically as a reaction to India’s first ‘peaceful nuclearexplosion’ of 1974, has now approved a waiver on the export of nucleartechnology specifically catering to India. And even after these major aspectsof the regime have been rewritten to accommodate a rising India, the countrystill refuses to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the NPT.The creation of a host of exceptions, anomalies, and waivers to the regime,

and that too on a one-off basis to accommodate one rising power, is a sign ofIndia’s effective diplomacy in the area of nuclear non-proliferation. But it isnot a sign of the thriving health of the regime. The argument could be takenfurther to suggest that India’s accommodation into the regime creates a‘public bad’ by sending a signal to other aspiring nuclear powers that non-adherence to international rules generates rewards, and also a signal to theregime-conformers (such as Brazil, Argentina and South Africa, whichsurrendered their nuclear option and became signatories to regional andmultilateral treaties of the regime) that regime adherence leads to the‘suckers’ payoff’.24 Despite having demonstrated its agenda-setting potentialin the non-proliferation regime, India has certainly not proven its reliabilityas a provider of global public goods.What explains India’s reluctance to assume the mantle of international

responsibility, or at least share its burden? I suggest three reasons belowrelating to India’s use of a strict distributive strategy, its prioritisation of clubgoods’ provision over the provision of global public goods, and problems atthe domestic level that constrain the pathways of its rise.First, India’s use of what negotiators describe as a ‘strict distributive

strategy’ is historic and persistent. In an oft-cited classic Stephen Cohen hasentitled a chapter on Indian foreign policy, ‘The India that can’t say yes’, andhas provided several examples of how Indian negotiators seem to relish‘getting to no’.25 In 2008 India’s vehement readiness to reject the window of

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opportunity to close the Doha deal led Alan Beattie to report in the FinancialTimes that its chief negotiator was nicknamed ‘Dr No’.26 Exactly how andwhy states negotiate the way they do is a deep-rooted and cultural questionthat lies beyond the scope of this article.27 Suffice to note, however, thatIndia’s distributive behaviour has been rewarded by the system, by and large:witness the legitimacy that it has received despite having blatantly overturnedthe NPT regime on its head through the exceptions in its own favour, orindeed its position of prominence in the WTO, despite its well documentedhistory of obstructionist bargaining behaviour in the GATT and WTO. It is notsurprising, then, that India has been all too willing to dig its heels in andblock negotiation processes.Second, while India seems reluctant to make concessions internationally, it

retains several of its old allegiances, effectively acting as a ready provider ofclub goods rather than public goods. This relationship is an interesting andcomplex one. The public face of Indian diplomacy is very much an assertionof its belonging to the G20 rather than the G77. In practice we still find itworking closely in coalitions, generously allowing free-riding by coalitionmembers, and thereby bearing the costs of supplying certain club goods, suchas coalition unity. However, the provision of club goods is sometimes atloggerheads with the provision of public goods. This is certainly the case inthe WTO, where India has helped in the creation of powerful Southerncoalitions that can stand firm in the endgame. These ‘strong coalitions’ are asource of unprecedented empowerment for the South, but they also make itvery difficult for their members to make the necessary concessions to achievethe global public good. This is partly because any sign of concession may beinterpreted by the outside party as a sign of weakness of the collective. Butfurther, concessions in any one area risk antagonising a part of the coalition’smembership (especially when coalitions bring together a diversity ofcountries and interests, as is the case with many coalitions involvingdeveloping countries), and thereby actually precipitating an unraveling of thecoalition. Recall, for example, the attempt by Brazil to persuade India andChina to make concessions over the July package, which seriouslyjeopardised the unity of the G20 coalition. The reaction of the coalitionmembers—and particularly India—was to focus determinedly on Brazil andshame it into returning to the collective position. The coalition was thuscobbled back together and the collective position retained, which also meantthat the July 2008 talks ended in yet another deadlock.28 We could quiteeasily see similar problems occurring in other issue areas, such as climatechange, where coalitions of developing countries are active, and wherethe provision of the club good acts as a deterrent against the supply ofpublic goods.29 India’s engagement with Africa conforms to this pattern.Its engagement is not limited to the energy and mineral-rich countries ofWest Africa, but also extends to East Africa and includes conditionality-freeaid. Here, too, we can see the potential conflict between club and publicgoods: conditionality-free aid to less developed countries (LDCs) is in directconflict with multilateral aid (and also bilateral aid from the developedcountries).30

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It is worth bearing in mind that the decision to contribute to club goodsthat cater to a smaller constituency, rather than public goods, is not one thatnecessarily requires an assumption of primordial Third World-ist loyaltiesper se. Real interests can sustain the links between old allies and risingpowers: in the Indian case investing in collective action from the South isimportant because the backing of developing country allies reinforces thelegitimacy of claims. Such backing is also useful when claiming a place at thehigh table of most international negotiations. But additionally the demandsof the South also happen to conform to some of India’s own needs, especiallythose emanating from the domestic constraints that it still faces in spite of thegains indicated by the aggregate figures. This brings us to the third reason forIndia’s reluctance to assume international responsibility: the skewed patternof its development at home.India’s aggregate and relative power may be rising, but an argument that

Indian politicians frequently make is to point to the low per capita income oftheir country, and thus also to insist upon retaining its developing countrystatus, which would allow their country special privileges of limitedinternational responsibility. This argument has recurred in the context ofclimate change mitigation, taking the shape of the common but differentiatedresponsibility principle, and has also featured in the GATT framed in terms ofSpecial and Differential Treatment, and in the Doha negotiations as Lessthan Full Reciprocity. In the trade negotiations over agriculture in the WTO

in July 2008 India added an extra component to this idea by emphasising theneeds of its small, subsistence farmers. Minister Kamal Nath was vehementon this when he stated:

Most of Indian agriculture is subsistence level agriculture. For us, agricultureinvolves the livelihoods of the poorest farmers who number in the hundreds ofmillions . . . The poor of the world will not forgive us if we compromise onthese concerns . . . We are not at all happy about the SSM [special safeguardmechanism] proposal. All manner of objections are being raised to our right tosafeguard livelihood concerns of hundreds of millions. Are we expected tostandby, see a surge in imports and do nothing? Do we give developed countriesthe unfettered right to continue subsidizing & then dumping those subsidies onus jeopardizing lives of billions? The position of developed countries is utterlyself-righteous: they have enjoyed their SSG [special agricultural safeguard] (andwant to continue it) but our SSM must be subject to all sorts of shackles andrestraints. This self-righteousness will not do. If it means no deal, so be it.31

While such positioning does not endear India to its negotiating counterparts,particularly those from the developed world, the reasoning behind itsbargaining position becomes more understandable (if not justifiable) whenone examines the figures. It is true that the contribution of agriculture toIndia’s GDP is small and declining (from 23 per cent in 2000–01 to 18 per centin 2005–06).32 Concessions in this area, in return for pay-offs in other areas,would be to India’s advantage. But any indication of making concessions onagriculture—which employs between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of India’spopulation—would be a hard sell by an Indian government to its voters.

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Eighty-one percent of Indian farmers are small or marginal farmers of twohectares or less, and they constitute the major proportion of India’s ruralpoor.33 India’s ability to make concessions in this area is reduced not onlybecause of low literacy levels and poor safety-nets and welfare mechanismsavailable to farmers that could help them transition to alternative forms ofemployment, but also because of the limitations of India’s industrial sector.India’s industrial sector is relatively small (accounting only for 16 per cent ofIndia’s GDP in 2005–06), especially in comparison to the services sector, andridden with infrastructural problems. This means that farmers forced out ofagriculture by any reform instituted under the provisions of the WTO wouldhave few alternative avenues of employment to turn to. Minister Nath wasnot exaggerating when he argued that a sudden surge in agricultural importswould jeopardise the lives of India’s 600 million small farmers.Under these circumstances it is not surprising that India has found it

difficult to take on the international responsibility of facilitating a Doha dealvia concessions on agriculture. The adherence to collective positions ofdeveloping countries, typified by the G33 in this case, also makes more sense.And until major domestic problems, including poor infrastructure, lowliteracy and education levels, and low levels of labour mobility are addressed,it is difficult to see how India could take on the role of a responsible interna-tional leader, even if the impressive current growth rates were to be sustained.India’s inability to provide international public goods in a responsible way isthus greatly constrained by the inadequacies of its rise to power.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that India is not yet a great power; further, atleast as a rising power, it has been reluctant to take on the responsibility/shared responsibility of supplying global public goods.It could be argued (as a counter to the argument presented in this article)

that responsible international behaviour need not necessarily entail theprovision of the same public goods that the system has traditionally prioritised.It is possible to perhaps hypothesise that, even though India has been reluctantto contribute proactively to the provision of existing global public goods (suchas freer trade, climate change mitigation, international security via non-proliferation, or the Responsibility to Protect), it might be willing to providesome alternative global public goods implied by differing visions of globalorder. At this point, however, it is difficult to findmuch evidence of this. Acrossregimes we find that India is reluctant to contribute significantly to the supplyof existing global goods, nor does it offer alternative public goods in theirplace. Institutional differences do not seem to produce a huge variation on itsbehaviour on this, nor does the extent to which India acts as a veto-player orindeed agenda setter. Its reluctance to take on new international responsi-bilities in certain areas of security, for instance, might not elicit surprise: whyshould India contribute to the Responsibility to Protect when it enjoys suchlittle ownership of the UN Security Council? But even in the case of the WTO,where every effort has been made to include India at the heart of negotiations,

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we still find few credible signals that the country is willing to take on aleadership role that involves a major contribution to the supply of publicgoods. The non-proliferation regime reconfirms and reinforces the argumentmade in this article. This is the one regime where India has actually emerged asan agenda-setter. But so far we have seen no sign from India that it is willing toprovide, say, a system of rules to reinforce the regime that has been bent andtwisted to accommodate it, nor do we see an alternative vision emergent. Ifanything, as has been argued in this article, a credible case could bemade to saythat India’s integration into the regime provides not a public good but a publicbad.Importantly India’s tendency to shirk international responsibilities is not

replicated when its leaders and negotiators are catering to a smallerconstituency. While still not amounting to an alternative vision of globalorder, we do find at least the seeds of interesting and original ideas inIndia’s willingness to provide certain club goods such as coalition creationand maintenance, and aid to LDCs, particularly in Africa. These club goodsare important for the recipients, and they also assist India in creating apowerful constituency backing its bid for increased international power (forinstance in its attempt to secure a permanent seat in the UN SecurityCouncil). However, as has been argued here, the provision of several clubgoods in this case acts as a deterrent against India’s willingness to supplypublic goods.The article has also suggested some reasons to explain India’s behaviour as

a rising power. An important conclusion that emerges is that the domesticchallenges that constrain India from achieving its potential as a great poweralso constrain the pathway of its rise and thereby its assumption ofresponsibility. The policy implication of this is that international institutionalaccommodation will not—on its own—persuade India to share the burden ofinternational responsibility. Different degrees of accommodation, rangingfrom the minimal in the Security Council and very considerable in the WTO

and non-proliferation regimes (albeit in different ways), have failed toproduce a change in India’s behaviour on the issue of ownership andresponsibility. For both an understanding of why India behaves the way thatit does, and also to produce a change in its position, the key lies in thedomestic politics of ideas (of India’s place in the world, and of the bargainsthat are deemed acceptable to achieve it), of economic interests (particularlythe issue of inequality amid conditions of high growth), and of thegovernment’s successes and failures in managing the domestic bargains overideas and interests.

Acknowledgements

This article was first presented at a workshop at Oxford University, May2011. The author thanks participants at the workshop for useful feedback,and is particularly grateful to Professor Andrew Hurrell, Professor Joseph SNye and Ambassador Roberto Jaguaribe for helpful comments andsuggestions.

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Notes

1 WD Nordhaus, Paul Samuelson and Global Public Goods: A Commemorative Essay, 2005, atwww.nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/PASandGPG.pdf, accessed 18 July 2011.

2 The standard definitions for these categories are used. Great powers are conceptualised as per thedefinition provided by Hedley Bull: ‘Great Powers are powers recognised by others to have, andconceived by their own leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights and duties’. Bullconceptualised those belonging to the ‘club’ of great powers as those of the ‘front rank’ in militarystrength; this argument could, however, be usefully extended to include other arenas of power. H Bull,The Anarchical Society, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977. A hegemon is the one poweramong multiple powers that Immanuel Wallerstein defines as ‘truly primus inter pares’ in I Wallerstein,The Politics of the World Economy: The States, the Movements and the Civilizations, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1984. Charles Kindleberger further identifies the hegemon as the ‘onestabilizer’ that can stabilise the world economy. C Kindleberger, The World in Depression: 1929–39,London: Allen Lane, 1973.

3 There are some qualifications to this, for example A Stein, ‘The hegemon’s dilemma: Great Britain, theUnited States, and international economic order’, International Organization, 38(2), 1984, pp 355–386.

4 For an analysis of club goods, see T Sandler & J Tschirhart, ‘Club theory: thirty years later’, PublicChoice, 93(3), 1997, pp 335–355.

5 This regional route can involve offensive and military means, as argued by J Mearsheimer, ‘China’sunpeaceful rise’, Current History, 105(690), 2006, pp 16–162, in the context of China, or alternativeroutes as suggested by D Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power and Order in East Asia, New York:Columbia University Press, 2007.

6 For a particularly accessible and insightful account of regionalism versus multilateralism, see JBhagwati, ‘Regionalism versus multilateralism’, The World Economy, 15(5), 1992, pp 535–556.

7 J March & J Olsen, ‘The institutional dynamics of international political orders’, InternationalOrganization, 54(4), 1998, pp 943–969.

8 A Hurrell, ‘Hegemony, liberalism, and global order: what space for would-be great powers?’,International Affairs, 82(1), 2006, pp 1–19.

9 CR Mohan, ‘Rising India’s great power burden’, lecture at the Sigur Centre for Asian Studies, GeorgeWashington University, 16 November 2009, published in Report of the Sigur Centre for Asian Studies:Asia Report, 7 January 2010.

10 Note that the argument about India’s role as a veto-player was originally made in A Narlikar, ‘All thatglitters is not gold: India’s rise to power’, Third World Quarterly, 28(5), 2007, pp 983–996. The validityof this argument across most regimes persists to this day as subsequent empirical examples illustrate.

11 G Tsebelis, ‘Decision making in political systems: veto-players in presidentialism, parliamentalism,multicameralism and multipartyism’, British Journal of Political Science, 25(3), 1995, pp 289–325.

12 UNSC press release 10200 on the 6498th Meeting of the Security Council: Security Council Approves No-Fly Zone over Libya, 17 March 2011.

13 G Perkovich, ‘Is India a major power?’, Washington Quarterly, 27(1), 2003, pp 129–144.14 For details of this argument, focusing on the different abilities of the trade regime versus the non-

proliferation regime to accommodate India, see A Narlikar, ‘Reforming institutions, unreformedIndia?’, in A Alexandroff & A Cooper (eds), Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for GlobalGovernance, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2010.

15 J Bhagwati, Indian Reforms—Yesterday and Today: Address to the Parliament of India, 2010, reprintedin Bhagwati, Growth and Poverty: The Great Debate, Jaipur: CUTS, 2011, at http://cuts-international.org/Book_Growth_and_Poverty.htm, accessed 19 July 2011.

16 The Economist, ‘The Hindu rate of self-deprecation’, Banyan, The Economist, 20 April 2011.17 Corruption Perception Index, Transparency International, at http://transparency.org/policy_research/

surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results, accessed 19 July 2011.18 Ease of Doing Business Index, at http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings, accessed 19 July 2011.19 Human Development Index, at http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/, accessed 19 July 2011.20 A Verma, ‘Security threats facing India’, Indian Defence Review, 23(2), 2008, at http://www.indian

defencereview.com/homeland-security/Security-threats-facing-India.html, accessed 20 July 2011.21 P Blustein, ‘The nine-day misadventure of the most favoured nations: how the WTO’s Doha Round

negotiations went awry in July 2008’, Brookings Institution, 10 December 2008, at http://www.indiandefencereview.com/homeland-security/Security-threats-facing-India.html, accessed 18 July2011. See also F Ismail, ‘Reflections on the WTO July 2008 collapse: lessons for developing countrycoalitions’, in A Narlikar & B Vickers (eds), Leadership and Change in the Multilateral Trading System,Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009; and A Narlikar, ‘A theory of bargaining coalitions’, in Narlikar &Vickers, Leadership and Change in the Multilateral Trading System.

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22 S Schwab, ‘After Doha: why the negotiations are doomed, and what we should do about it’, ForeignAffairs, 90(3), 2011, pp 96–103.

23 On the differences in the negotiation behaviours of Brazil, India and China, see A Narlikar, NewPowers: How to Become one and How to Manage them, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Adetailed documentary analysis comparing Brazil’s and India’s differential record in providing publicgoods in the WTO was conducted by A Narlikar & H Coskeran, ‘Rising powers and responsibility:Brazil and India in the World Trade Organization’, paper presented at the conference on ‘South–SouthRelations: Political Coalitions and Cooperation for Development’, Rio de Janeiro, 13–14 June 2011.

24 Narlikar, ‘Reforming institutions, unreformed India?’.25 S Cohen, India: Emerging Power, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2002.26 A Beattie, ‘Expectations low as Doha trade talks commence’, Financial Times, 22 July 2008.27 Narlika, New Powers; and A Narlikar & A Narlikar, Bargaining with a Rising India, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, forthcoming 2012.28 Narlikar, ‘A theory of bargaining coalitions’; and Ismail, ‘Reflections on the WTO July 2008 collapse’.29 Again, an exception to this is the non-proliferation case, where India seems to have abandoned its

traditional position of leading coalitions of developing countries and also its traditional discourse of‘nuclear apartheid’. Narlikar, ‘Reforming institutions, unreformed India?’. In this case, however, itsdeclining commitment to the provision of the club good, ie a defence of the rights of the nuclear have-nots, has not been replaced by a growing willingness to contribute to regime stability or strengthening.

30 Importantly India’s investment, trade and aid relations produce quite a different package from theBeijing Consensus. A Narlikar, ‘India’s rise to power: where does East Africa fit in?’, Review of AfricanPolitical Economy, 37(126), 2010, pp 451–464.

31 K Nath, TNC Statement on July 23rd, 2008: Statement of Shri Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce andIndustry, India, at www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/meet08_stat_ind_21jul_e.doc, accessed 21 July2011.

32 WTO Secretariat’s Trade Policy Review Report: India, WT/TPR/S/182, 18 April 2007.33 Government’s Trade Policy Review Report: India, WT/TPR/G/182, 18 April 2007.

Notes on contributor

Amrita Narlikar is Reader in International Political Economy at theDepartment of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge.She is also the director of the Centre for Rising Powers, and an OfficialFellow of Darwin College. Her recent works include New Powers: How tobecome one and how to manage them, London: Hurst, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2010; and Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causesand Solutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 (edited).

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