Towards a Comparative Subnational Perspective on India

Abstract

The article surveys the comparative subnational literature on India and suggests some promising paths forward. One, careful selection of sub-state regions can improve the legitimacy of inter-state comparisons and increase the validity of causal claims regarding state-specific governance and political economy. Two, there is greater scope for intra-state comparisons that control for state-specific factors and thereby identify more local, context-specific factors that drive political and other outcomes. Three, the roles and limitations of both causal and non-causal research designs need to be better understood in the subnational context. Four, for serious comparison, it is imperative to explore only a few carefully selected primary units of analysis. While this highlights the importance of the traditional comparative case study approach, the implied qualitative/quantitative dichotomy is false: methods based on inferential statistics can and should be usefully nested in a causal comparative case study framework. Five, greater emphasis on process tracing can improve insights from subnational comparisons.

Mapping the patchwork: Exploring the subnational heterogeneity of child marriage in India

“…National, and even state-level, analyses of these factors likely mask district-level inequities ( Liang et al., 2019 ; Roest, 2016 ; Srinivasan et al., 2015 ). Not only are states across India quite distinct from one another in a variety of aspects, including population, geography, economy, religion, and culture, but programs designed to mitigate child marriage are generally implemented at smaller scales ( International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) & ICF, 2017 ; Jha et al., 2016 ; Jacob, 2015 ; Dheer, Lenartowicz, & Peterson, 2015 ; Prakash et al., 2019 ; Harriss, 1999 ). This study thus responds to the global call for an increased understanding of intra-national differences in child marriage levels ( Anonymous, 2015 ).…”

State, scale and networks in the liberalisation of India’s land

“…Gujarat is reputed to welcome private investment in land, while West Bengal's land liberalisation or market-facing policies have witnessed political challenges. I investigate these directions through juxtaposition, or placing side by side, rather than systematically comparative research which would involve matching like for like (Jacob, 2015).…”

Politics and Society Between Elections

“…While we examine public opinion across categories of interest to social scientists such as castecommunity (religious) identity, gender, location (whether rural or urban), economic class, and levels of education, our primary focus is on the findings on subnational variations. Our approach follows in the tradition of studies that have advocated a greater focus on a subnational comparative politics of India (Yadav and Palshikar, 2003;Tillin, 2013;Jacob, 2015;Sinha, 2015).…”