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Original Articles

Democratic Accountability and Foreign Security Policy: Theory and Evidence from India

 
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Identifying the links between democracy and foreign security policy has proven elusive. This paper engages this research agenda by developing a novel theory of “accountability environments” and exploring it in the case of India. We hypothesize that the varying electoral salience of foreign security policy and the clarity of responsibility for policy outcomes combine to create different accountability environments in which politicians operate. Accountability environments determine the incentives that politicians face for devoting effort to external security issues. We illustrate the argument with evidence from India over time and across issue areas (India, Pakistan, and defense procurement/development). Scholars need to incorporate the complexities and diversity of representation and rule into the study of democratic politics and international relations.

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Author information

Paul Staniland

Vipin Narang is an associate professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Paul Staniland is an associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago. They can be reached at and , respectively.

Acknowledgments

For helpful comments on this broader project we thank Peter Austin, Nicolas Blarel, Marshall Bouton, Austin Carson, Christopher Clary, Taylor Fravel, Will Howell, Charles Lipson, Austin Long, Aidan Milliff, Robert Pape, Jon Pevehouse, Tonya Putnam, Srinath Raghavan, Michael Ryan, Karthika Sasikumar, Elizabeth Saunders, Burcu Savun, Brian Shevenaugh, Alberto Simpser, Dan Slater, Caitlin Talmadge, Tariq Thachil, Adam Ziegfeld, two anonymous reviewers, the editors of Security Studies, and participants at the Brown University Conference on Six Decades of Democracy in India, 2010 ISA conference, 2010 APSA Annual Meeting, MIT Working Group on Asian Security, Harvard University's security studies workshop, University of Chicago Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security, the Centre for Policy Research, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania, the Columbia University International Politics Seminar, the University of Pittsburgh Global Politics Seminar, and the 2016 APSA Annual Meeting. Peter Austin, Christopher Clary, and Cullen Nutt provided excellent research assistance.