| Publication |
Jan 2004.
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| Summary/Abstract |
India's economic reform program started in 1991, unleashing a process of decentralization and competitive race among its regional states. Yet the post-reform era in India is marked by both change and continuity in terms of center-state economic relations. Attention to the path and process of reform must attend to the reform legacies of the ancien regime and how they are transformed over time. I show that the pre-reform era was characterized not by an absence of competition, but by a different type of competition among states. A historical institutional framework shows that policy change in India transforms the existing balance of power, but does so shaped by the preexisting institutional context and preexisting linkages, resources, and skills. This approach, allows us to integrate an analysis of pre-1991 policy regime into evaluations of the post-1991 changes in a more cohesive, realistic, and yet nuanced manner.
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