Paper short abstract:

The paper will provide and overview of the use of institutionalism in South Asia and the strengths and weaknesses of historical institutionalism and path dependence as frameworks for understanding contemporary policy debates in the region.

Paper long abstract:

Recent scholarship working within the frames of historical institutionalism and path dependence has refocused attention on the enduring influence of institutions in South Asia. This emphasis, which was common to an earlier generation of specialists working on South Asia across the disciplines of political science, history, and sociology and economic, both revisits and revises our conventional understandings. This paper will provide an over view for rethinking the role of institutions in South Asia by assessing earlier scholarship and drawing on the new departures provided by historical institutionalism and path dependence. It will review, in particular, the strengths and weaknesses of earlier studies in providing a comparative framework for the study of South Asian states. The paper will also reflect on the contemporary challenges of operationalizing historical institutionalism and path dependence in different fields of study - democratization, affirmative action, militarization, elite politics and economic policy. The methodological and conceptual issues that arise from employing this mode of analysis, it is suggested, have significant implications for South Asian studies and beyond.