The Ghaznavid Empire of India

Almost all of our information on the Ghaznavids comes from two contemporary chronicles (one in Persian and one in Arabic) and a divan (poetic anthology) from the early eleventh century. The Arabic text is the Tarikh-i Yamini written by Abu Nasr al-ʻUtbi, and the Persian chronicle is the Zayn al-Akhbar by Gardizi. Virtually, all subsequent Persian chroniclers drew on the later Persian translation of the Yamini. After the Mughal period, a few used Gardizi as well. In the nineteenth century, H. M. Elliot translated parts of the Persian translation of ʻUtbi into English, which popularised that particular version of events in modern scholarship. This uncritical overreliance on a single source has led to perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of medieval Indian history. I will argue that the version of the Ghaznavid campaigns in ʻUtbi was meant strictly for the court of the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad where a sufficiently learned audience could actually be expected to understand the very difficult Arabic of the text. The Yamini did not simply embellish reality but was actually trying to create a narrative that was in contradiction to and even independent of reality. It was part of a campaign of misinformation to hide the fact that the Ghaznavids were creating an Indian empire both as a network of tributary kings and as an open trade zone ruled by a king of kings symbolised by the elephant.

Populism and Trade Around the World

This chapter uses a regression study to attempt to identify the link between populist governments and the country’s degree of trade openness, based on data from 1995 to 2018. The degree of protectionism associated with populism depends in part on its left-wing, right-wing, or anti-establishment orientation. Left-wing populist regimes tend to be more protectionist, and anti-establishment regimes more favorable to open trade, for example, but the results are often inconsistent and insignificant. Trade policy in populist regimes appears to depend in large part on the national context, export profile, and populist leader. A review of trade policy in several recent populist regimes reveals that Latin American populist governments tend to be the most protectionist. Smaller open economies, or those either participating in or seeking integration trade agreements with larger countries, tend to have more open trade policies.

Transition I

Due to many problems resulting from the heavy chemical industry (HCI) drive in the 1970s, including excessive input-oriented overinvestments, heavy-handed and highly detailed state control and imbalanced development, Korean capitalism in the 1980s underwent significant changes in the direction of liberalization, including open trade, privatization of banks, reduction of policy loans, and emphasis on private initiatives in the free market. Yet these liberalization measures do not mean an entire transformation of the developmental state to a neoliberal free market system. On the contrary, they initiated the transformation of the classical developmental state (DS) to a new version of state-led developmentalism. This chapter explores first to what extent Korea capitalism in the Chun Doo-hwan administration (1980–7) changed compared with the former DS. Second, we explore why Korea continued its state-led developmentalism by focusing mainly on bureaucratic contests inside the state.

A “Versailles of Trade”

Chapter 2 examines the French East India Company model of Sino-European trade, with a particular emphasis on the features that distinguish it from the two other major models, the English and the Dutch. In France, not merchants but the state itself gave birth to the French East Company, once memorably described as a “Versailles of trade,” and the state continued to play a dominant role in the Company’s operations, exerting the power of approval over the Company’s decisions and issuing the edicts that established its policies. But the lure of private trade, and in particular, the appeal of the Chinese market, played a major role in hastening the demise of the company model, which from the mid-1700s was seen as increasingly obsolete in view of contemporary attitudes and conditions. The creation of the third French East India Company in 1785 after a fifteen-year period of private (open) trade was followed in 1790 by France’s opening her East India and China trade once more to the private sector, and this time it was definitive; the French East Company was permanently abolished in 1793, and for the rest of the Canton era, trade remained open.

Will India's Disengaging Trade Policy Restrict it From Playing a Greater Global Role?

India's ambition of playing a prominent role in regional and global affairs has been particularly visible since the assumption of office by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014. The ambition has resulted in India's external engagement, abandoning the posturing of non-alignment for a more proactive multi-alignment strategy. Its efforts to engage with major powers such as the US and China, as well as other global middle powers such as Japan, the UK, and Australia, have been positioned on rapid economic progress, enabled by one of the fastest rates of growth among major economies. Attempts to expand global strategic influence, a natural outcome of robust economic expansion, should have seen India pursuing an aggressive outward-oriented external trade policy for increasing its share in global trade. India, though, has shown a marked resistance to open trade, including being reluctant to engage in regional and bilateral trade negotiations. This paper examines the dichotomy between India's desire to play a prominent global role and its aversion to open trade policies. Attributing the inward-looking approach to lack of competitiveness of Indian industry, absence of domestic pro-trade constituencies, and discomfort in negotiating new-generation trade issues, the paper argues India's quest for greater global strategic influence might be adversely affected by its restrictive trade policies.

Corruption Heterogeneity and Foreign Direct Investment

In this research, I study the relationship between bilateral Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and difference in corruption between source and host countries. Using instrumental variables (IVs) approach, the results suggest that bilateral FDI between two countries might increase if the difference in corruption between them decreases. In addition, I find that firms from corrupt countries tend to invest abroad to exploit natural resources while those from less corrupt countries take advantage of relatively low local wages and open trade policies.

The First WTO's Ruling on National Security Exception: Balancing Interests or Opening Pandora's Box?

For a multilateral system to be sustainable, it is important to have several escape clauses which can allow countries to protect their national security concerns. However, when these escape windows are too wide or ambiguous, defining their ambit and scope becomes challenging yet crucial to ensure that they are not open to misuse. The recent Panel Ruling in Russia – Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit is the very first attempt by the WTO to clarify the scope and ambit of National Security Exception. In this paper, we argue that the Panel has employed a combination of an objective and a subjective approach to interpret this exception. This hybrid approach to interpret GATT Article XXI (b) provides a systemic balance between the sovereign rights of the members to invoke the security exception and their right to free and open trade. But has this Ruling opened Pandora's box? In this paper, we address this issue by providing an in-depth analysis of the Panel's decision.