This edited volume brings together a group of scholars examining the effects of social change on the politics in South Asia. It cobbles an inductive analytical framework of South Asian margins to comparatively study the political transformations across the region.

This book envisages politics encompassing interests, imaginations, activities, and actions of numerous actors. Individual contributors analyze the collective choices made by national elites over the past few decades and their implications for development, democracy, and security of their respective country and the region. The resulting analytical framework provides a comparative political matrix of analysis that prioritizes the margins over the center. The matrix compares different countries around the axis of (1) Political Contestations and Engagements, (2) Decoloniality and Populism, and (3) Policy Frames and Visions. It is a contrapuntal analysis that establishes margins as a legitimate place to approach social scientific study of South Asia.

An important and timely contribution to the field, this book will be of interest to researchers studying Asian politics, comparative politics, area studies, in particular South Asia and Pakistan, and international relations.