Economic Transition in a Plural Polity: India

This paper analyzes how India managed the transition from import substituting industrialization toward trade-led growth, in the context of a plural polity. The author argues that a pro-trade executive orientation at the time of a severe foreign exchange crisis can enable the executive to initiate significant policy change by taking advantage of the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both the pro-trade orientation and the arrival of the severe foreign exchange crisis in 1991 are explained by tracing the process from India's path of import substitution industrialization. The argument highlights the strategic nature of the international and domestic bargaining tables and the need to consider them simultaneously rather than additively.

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