VIKASH YADAV
PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND ASIAN STUDIES
I have two new books coming out this year: Liberalism's Last Man and The Politics of India under Modi.
I have two new books coming out this year: Liberalism's Last Man and The Politics of India under Modi.
While Friedrich A. Hayek’s economic ideas and debates have been carefully examined, applied, formalized, extended, contextualized, and frequently dismissed or vilified, his political philosophy has been comparatively neglected outside the purview of a dedicated circle of Hayek scholars, many of whom are economists by training. Even though Hayek’s fame as a public intellectual was built upon an embarrassingly popular political pamphlet, his political ideas have languished in plain sight. Conservatives use Hayek as a prop to lend intellectual gravitas to their policy ideas, but his work is not read carefully – perhaps indicating that it is more complex than one might assume. Even his rejection of the label “conservative” is casually disregarded. And although Hayek lived long enough to see the triumph of the free market over state planning and to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, his ideas are not widely taught in the academy. Generations of academics in the social sciences and humanities have at least a passing familiarity with the 19th century ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but have scarcely any knowledge of the man that even his contemporary critics acknowledge as the most successful intellectual of the 20th century.
Liberalism's Last Man is an attempt to take the core of Friedrich Hayek’s political thought seriously, even though blurring the disciplinary boundary between technical economics and political institutions was integral to Hayek’s broader project. Thus, this book embraces Hayek’s Road to Serfdom as a political text worthy of close reading. The project does not seek to canonize Hayek; while his thought is complex, subtle, and erudite, it has flaws and weaknesses that must be noted. The book assesses what is still relevant from Hayek's thought for the century that is unfolding. The target of the text are young minds seeking to understand the merits of liberalism in an age when the leading liberal power is experiencing hegemonic decline, rising income inequality, growing corruption, and increased populism. Moreover, the rise of an immensely successful form of authoritarian or “political capitalism” in parts of East Asia, particularly China, Vietnam, and Singapore lend urgency to the need to re-examine the ideals on which “liberal meritocratic capitalist” societies are based. My project reflects Hayek’s own revivalist project, “If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.”
Available for purchase at Amazon.com
In The Politics of India under Modi: Democracy, Economy, and Foreign Policy, my co-author, Jason A. Kirk, and I provide a detailed overview of India’s political trends, economic prospects, and foreign policy in the twenty-first century. Since the right-wing, Hindu-nationalist, government of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the national level in 2014, and with its consolidation of power in the 2019 general election, India has witnessed a significant realignment of its national politics and a shift toward the right of the conventional political spectrum. Economically, despite the devastation of the COVID-19 Pandemic, India is projected to be the fastest growing major economy in the world for the next several years – far outpacing its rival juggernaut, China. India is no longer a poor country even though it continues to host one of the largest concentrations of entrenched poverty in the world. In terms of security policy, India is experiencing alarming confrontations along its Himalayan borders with China as well as its unending dispute with its fraternal enemy, Pakistan. At the same time, India has become a sought-after partner by global and regional powers in the “Indo-Pacific” region working to manage the rise of China to great power status. This accessible book aims to help undergraduate students “come up to speed” on these current issues and assess trends in the Indian republic by providing both a broad overview of the political and economic system in India along with a sober but critical analysis of specific domestic and foreign policy initiatives in recent years.
Available for purchase at Amazon.com