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Book review: Christopher Clary, The Difficult Politics of Peace: Rivalry in Modern South Asia

Document Cited in Related
Published date01 December 2024
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1177/23210230241289453
AuthorAnamika Asthana
Date01 December 2024
Book Reviews 355
The book has achieved a commendable feat by addressing a significant gap in the existing body of
literature on Indian politics, particularly in studying the RSS’s functioning at the micro-level. Given the
rising influence of the RSS as a political force, this book proffers a detailed exploration of the function-
ing of right-wing politics at the micro-level. By focusing on the complex intersectionality of caste, class,
gender, and power struggle, the book elucidates the deeper societal manipulations. It unravels the modus
operandi of the RSS-BJP at the local, sub-regional, and national scales. Its clear language and theoretical
insights would be valuable to students and academics seeking to understand nuanced dynamics of Kerala
and broader Indian politics.
Biswajit Mohanty
Department of Political Science
Deshbandhu College, University of Delhi, India
E-mail: mohantyagastya@gmail.com
Christopher Clary, The Difficult Politics of Peace: Rivalry in Modern South Asia. Oxford University Press,
2022, 315 pp., `895.
DOI: 10.1177/23210230241289453
This book systematically explores the phenomenon of the intractable conflictual situation between India
and Pakistan from 1947 to 2021, characterized by cycles of alternate progress and stalemate. Its thought-
provoking analysis builds upon the author’s proffered theory, ‘Leader Primacy’, which argues that ‘the
policy of one rival state toward another is the product of the strategic incentives faced by the rival state and
the concentration of foreign policy authority (emphases in the original) held by the national leader of that
state’. Like the multitude of scholars and diplomats working on this theme, Clary too, seeks to explain why,
despite economic and strategic benefits to peacebuilding, peace remains elusive in this bilateral relationship,
and what accounts for phases of reconciliation and de-escalation amidst this rivalry over the years.
Drawing on existing theories and explanations, Clary characterizes the understanding of rivalry as
protracted conflictual relations internalized by state institutions and publics in the first substantive
chapter. He posits that, compared to existing theories (broadly dubbing them as ‘theories of cooperation’
and ‘theories of conflict’), the Leader Primacy theory offers superior explanatory capabilities, particularly
in terms of causal reasoning and predictive power, in deciphering the variations in decision-making
arising out of similar strategic incentives. The author employs a cautious and nuanced approach of
juxtaposing competing theoretical explanations with empirical investigation to demonstrate their
inadequacy. For example, economic factors and the emergence of a non-rival threat in India, in the form
of insurgency in the northeast and northwest in the 1990s, did not lead to higher normalization in India-
Pak relations even with the coexistence of procedural democracy in Pakistan from 1988 to 1999.
To familiarize beginners in the field, the second chapter provides an abridged account of the historical
origins of the bilateral Kashmir dispute. Chapter three examines how, in the early post-independence period,
Nehru’s dominant political authority in India enabled him to sign the Nehru-Liaquat pact in 1949 and sideline
hardliners during the Bengal crises in 1950 and the Kashmir war scare in 1951. However, despite the
de-escalation of these crises, no substantial resolution could be achieved due to the rapid political turnover in
Pakistan and Nehru’s unyielding stance—an inference consistent with the Leader Primacy theory.
Clary has drawn attention to the transformatory power of a protracted rivalry to manifest in internal
power centres committed to sustaining long-standing conflict. However, he posits that the complexity

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