This forum comes from a 2016 panel at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. The forum participants offered midterm assessments of the foreign policy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This forum considers whether Modi heralded in a new era in Indian foreign policy, or whether Modi's policies just repackaged older policies. The authors in this forum answer these questions by focusing on a range of issues from the role of religion to economic issues, to the relations between India and major foreign partners. The authors conclude that while Modi has undeniably put a personal stamp on foreign policy, substantive changes have been minimal. The first significant change lies in the centralization of foreign policy decision-making in the Prime Minister's Office. Second, while religious diplomacy played an important role, the version of Hinduism that Modi has adopted in foreign affairs is more inclusive than the one on display in domestic politics. Third, India's foreign economic policy has adopted a distinct nationalist tone. Fourth, Modi has signaled a "neighborhood first" focus in foreign policy. Finally, despite attempts at imparting his personal stamp, India's foreign policy towards major partners and in most issue areas remains substantively similar to those of the previous administrations.Resumen: Este debate surgió a partir de un panel de la reunión anual de la Asociación de Estudios Internacionales realizada en 2016. Los participantes presentaron sus evaluaciones intermedias de la política exterior de Narendra Modi, primer ministro de India. El debate analiza si Modi instauró una nueva era en la política exterior india o si, por el contrario, simplemente les dio un lavado de cara a las políticas anteriores. Para responder estas preguntas, los autores del debate se centran en varias cuestiones: desde el papel que juega la religión y los problemas económicos hasta las Gupta, Surupa et al.

Various observers have emphasized a recalibration of India's stance towards the Middle East under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These accounts have generally highlighted Modi's public overtures toward Israel, including an unprecedented 2017 visit, as public signs of a break with India's traditional pro-Arab and pro-Palestine approach. Others have interpreted Modi's successive visits to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, and Oman as indicators of a new outreach to all relevant actors in the region. However, has this diplomatic balancing among regional stakeholders signalled a substantial foreign policy change? Can this apparent policy shift be attributed to the personal preferences of Modi? Or Can India's fluctuating Middle-East policy be explained by a wider number of fluid international and regional opportunities and constraints? Alternatively, can factors such as ideological and religious politics at the national and regional levels also help account for changes (or the absence thereof) in India's Middle-East policy? Building on foreign policy scholarship, this paper offers to derive theoretical understandings and expectations about Modi's role in (re)shaping this regional policy in order to problematizes the conventional understanding of Modi's engagement with the Middle East as a sign of substantial foreign policy change.

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When and how do regional parties influence foreign policy in federal democracies with multiparty coalition governments? The existing literature has focused on situations of foreign policy disagreements between subnational parties and the central government in multinational states. By contrast, we argue that under varying conditions, central governments either decide to accommodate the preferences of small regional parties when designing foreign policies, or co-opt these regional parties to push their own foreign policy agenda. Some scholars looked at the role of decentralization and federal power arrangements in providing more control to political sub-units over the external affairs of a state. Other studies showed that certain coalition-building configurations facilitated the inclusion of the concerns of small parties in the foreign policy debate. Bridging these two literatures, we argue that both structural and agential conditions behind regional and national coalition building processes—visible in federal settings—affect foreign policy-making in different ways, and not necessarily toward disagreement and obstruction. To illustrate these hypothesized mechanisms, we look at two case studies in the Indian context: the role of regional parties in the debate over the US–India nuclear deal of 2008 and the role of regional parties in shaping India’s Sri Lanka policy from 2009 to 2014.