What is the format of the ISA South Asia in World Politics Section Conference?

The conference is an academic gathering, implying a format that includes presentations, discussions, and networking opportunities.

ISA South Asia in World Politics Section Conference 2026

Name: ISA South Asia in World Politics Section Conference 2026
Start: 2026-08-06T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-08-08T00:00:00Z
Location: Colombo

Aug 6–8, 2026Colombo, Sri LankaIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

The ISA South Asia in World Politics Section Conference is an academic gathering focused on the international relations of the South Asian region. Hosted in Colombo, LKA, this event provides a platform for scholars and practitioners to discuss critical issues shaping the geopolitical landscape of South Asia and its global implications. The conference is structured to foster in-depth analysis and dialogue on regional dynamics.

Committees & topics

Topics
South Asia in a Changing International Order · Technological Transformation in South Asia · Weaponized Interdependence and South Asia · Changes in Global Power Distribution · Evolving Multilateral Institutions · South Asia's Security Environment · Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy in South Asia · Economic Trajectories in South Asia

Why it matters

The conference offers a crucial forum for understanding the complex interplay of political, economic, and social factors within South Asia, a region of increasing global significance. Discussions will likely cover a range of topics, from regional security challenges and economic development to the impact of external powers and evolving diplomatic strategies. For those involved in international relations, policy-making, or academic research, the insights generated at this conference are vital for comprehending the region's trajectory and its broader impact on world politics.

The event's location in LKA is particularly relevant, as the country itself navigates significant geopolitical and economic shifts. The perspectives shared will contribute to a nuanced understanding of how South Asian states engage with each other and with the wider international community. This understanding is essential for effective diplomacy and for addressing shared challenges such as climate change, trade imbalances, and regional stability.

How to prepare

To maximize engagement with the conference, participants should undertake a comprehensive review of current events and historical contexts relevant to South Asian international relations. This includes familiarizing oneself with the foreign policy objectives and domestic political landscapes of key regional actors. Understanding the various theoretical frameworks used to analyze international relations will also be beneficial, allowing for a more critical engagement with the presented research.

Consider how different theoretical lenses, such as those explored in the lesson on "power-interest-grid", can illuminate the motivations and strategies of states and non-state actors in South Asia. Additionally, preparing to discuss the implications of regional developments on global power dynamics, as well as the influence of external actors, will enhance participation. Engaging with the concepts of "dynamic-analysis" and "engagement-strategies" can also provide valuable frameworks for interpreting the discussions and contributing meaningfully to the dialogue.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Sri Lanka

As the host nation, LKA provides a direct context for discussions on regional stability, economic development, and international engagement.

Role in topic

LKA's strategic location and recent economic challenges make it a focal point for understanding both internal South Asian dynamics and the influence of external powers in the region.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

South Asia in a Changing International Order

South Asia sits at the intersection of multiple shifts reshaping world politics: the relative decline of unipolar American primacy, the rise of China as a peer competitor, and the growing assertiveness of middle powers. For decades the region's external relations were structured by the Cold War, then by post-1991 economic liberalization and the U.S.-led war on terror. India's strategic partnership with the United States, Pakistan's deepening dependence on China, and the integration of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and the Maldives into Belt and Road infrastructure have since reorganized regional alignments. The region's eight states now navigate overlapping pressures: a hardening U.S.-China rivalry that complicates hedging strategies, Russia's diminished but persistent role as an arms supplier, and demands from the Gulf and Southeast Asia for deeper economic ties. India's pursuit of strategic autonomy through groupings like the Quad, BRICS, and the SCO exemplifies the contradictions of the moment. Smaller states, meanwhile, face debt distress, climate vulnerability, and contested elections that external powers seek to influence. The core analytical question is whether South Asia is becoming a coherent strategic theater in its own right or remains a fragmented arena where great-power competition is refracted through bilateral disputes, particularly the India-Pakistan and India-China rivalries. SAARC's near-paralysis since 2016 and the rise of sub-regional formats like BIMSTEC underscore the institutional flux.

Key players

Technological Transformation in South Asia

South Asia is undergoing a rapid and uneven technological transformation. India has emerged as a global hub for digital public infrastructure, exporting models like Aadhaar, UPI, and the India Stack to other developing economies, and is investing heavily in semiconductor fabrication, AI compute, and space launch capabilities through ISRO. Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka are expanding mobile broadband and fintech but remain dependent on imported hardware and Chinese telecommunications infrastructure, including Huawei and ZTE deployments. The region is also a frontline for the geopolitics of technology. U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors, the Quad's critical and emerging technology working group, and China's Digital Silk Road all converge here. India's ban on Chinese apps after the 2020 Galwan clash, Pakistan's growing reliance on Chinese surveillance technology, and debates over data localization in Bangladesh and Nepal illustrate how technology choices have become strategic choices. Key unresolved issues include AI governance and labor displacement in IT-services economies, the regulation of cross-border data flows, cyber resilience against state and non-state attackers, and the climate and energy footprint of digital expansion. South Asia's young, connected populations make these questions politically explosive as well as economically consequential.

Key players

Weaponized Interdependence and South Asia

The concept of weaponized interdependence, popularized by Farrell and Newman, describes how states leverage chokepoints in global networks—finance, data, supply chains, energy—for coercive ends. South Asia is both a target and, increasingly, a wielder of such tools. U.S. secondary sanctions on Iran and Russia have constrained Indian and Pakistani energy procurement, while SWIFT-related restrictions have pushed regional actors toward rupee-rial-yuan trade arrangements and alternative payments rails. China's economic statecraft is particularly visible in the region. Sri Lanka's 2022 default and the politics surrounding the Hambantota port lease, Pakistan's IMF programs entangled with Chinese rollovers, and Nepal and the Maldives' debt exposure to Belt and Road projects illustrate how connectivity creates leverage. India, for its part, has used trade halts with Nepal in 2015 and informal economic pressure on neighbors to assert primacy, even as it builds counter-leverage through lines of credit and vaccine diplomacy. The debate today centers on how small and middle states can hedge against weaponization—through diversification, regional payment systems, strategic stockpiles, and selective decoupling—while preserving the gains of openness. The collapse of confidence in neutral institutions raises the stakes for South Asian states, many of which lack the scale to retaliate against coercion.

Key players

Changes in Global Power Distribution

The international system is shifting from post-Cold War unipolarity toward a more contested multipolarity. China's GDP, military modernization, and technological capabilities have narrowed the gap with the United States, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine has accelerated the fragmentation of the liberal order. India has emerged as the world's most populous country and fifth-largest economy, and is widely projected to become the third-largest within the decade. The BRICS expansion in 2024 and the growing assertiveness of middle powers signal a structural redistribution. For South Asia, this redistribution is double-edged. India's rise gives the region a genuine great power for the first time since decolonization, but also intensifies competition with China along the Line of Actual Control and across the Indian Ocean. Smaller South Asian states gain bargaining power from multipolarity but face sharper trade-offs between security partners and economic patrons. The erosion of Western dominance in development finance has opened space for Chinese, Gulf, and Indian alternatives, while also weakening conditionality on governance and human rights. Key questions concern whether the emerging order will be genuinely multipolar or bipolar with hedgers, whether regional security architectures will follow economic shifts, and how nuclear deterrence stability will evolve as conventional balances change in Asia.

Key players

Evolving Multilateral Institutions

Post-1945 multilateral institutions are under unprecedented strain. The UN Security Council remains paralyzed on Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan; the WTO's appellate body has been incapacitated since 2019; and the Bretton Woods institutions face legitimacy challenges over governance shares and conditionality. In response, parallel and overlapping institutions have proliferated—BRICS and its New Development Bank, the AIIB, the SCO, the Quad, IPEF, and informal groupings like the G20 troika and I2U2. South Asia's experience with multilateralism is mixed. SAARC has been effectively frozen since the cancelled 2016 Islamabad summit, with BIMSTEC and sub-regional formats partially filling the gap. India has invested heavily in shaping the G20 agenda during its 2023 presidency, championing African Union membership and digital public infrastructure. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have leaned on the IMF and ADB, while Pakistan and the Maldives have engaged with the OIC and Gulf-led groupings. Climate negotiations have given small South Asian states like Bhutan and the Maldives outsized moral authority. Debate centers on whether reformed universal institutions can be revived, whether plurilateral coalitions will become the default mode of cooperation, and how Global South states can avoid being squeezed between competing Western and Chinese institutional offerings.

Key players

South Asia's Security Environment

South Asia hosts two overt nuclear-armed rivalries—India-Pakistan and India-China—making it one of the most militarized regions in the world. The India-Pakistan relationship has been shaped by four wars, the unresolved Kashmir dispute, cross-border militancy, and the 2019 Pulwama-Balakot crisis that brought airstrikes between nuclear powers. The August 2019 revocation of Article 370 further hardened positions. The India-China boundary dispute, dormant for decades, reignited with the 2020 Galwan Valley clash and remains only partially disengaged along the Line of Actual Control. Beyond inter-state conflict, the region faces insurgencies in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Manipur, and parts of the northeast; the post-2021 Taliban return in Afghanistan and its spillovers; and maritime security challenges in the Indian Ocean involving piracy, Chinese naval presence, and contested EEZs. Climate-driven displacement, glacial melt in the Himalayas, and water disputes over the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra add non-traditional dimensions. The core strategic question is whether deterrence stability can be maintained as conventional asymmetries grow, missile and drone technologies proliferate, and the lines between conventional, nuclear, cyber, and space domains blur. Confidence-building measures from the 1990s have largely eroded, and there is no functioning regional security dialogue.

Key players

Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy in South Asia

Domestic political trajectories across South Asia have diverged sharply in recent years, with significant consequences for foreign policy. India has consolidated under a Hindu-nationalist BJP government with strong electoral mandates in 2014, 2019, and a coalition-led third term in 2024, reshaping its diaspora outreach, religious diplomacy, and approach to neighbors. Pakistan has cycled through civil-military tensions, the ouster of Imran Khan, and contested 2024 elections amid an acute economic crisis. Bangladesh experienced a dramatic political rupture in 2024 with the fall of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government after mass protests, ushering in an interim administration under Muhammad Yunus. Sri Lanka's 2022 aragalaya protests forced a presidential resignation and led to the 2024 election of NPP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake on an anti-establishment platform. The Maldives shifted toward a more pro-China orientation under President Muizzu in 2023, while Nepal continues to experience frequent coalition reshuffles. Afghanistan remains under Taliban rule without international recognition. Bhutan completed peaceful democratic transitions in 2024. These domestic shifts shape regional politics through diaspora and religious linkages, contested elections that invite external interference, debates over secularism and minority rights, and the durability of economic reforms. Civil-military relations, judicial independence, and press freedom indicators have deteriorated in much of the region, raising questions about democratic backsliding as a regional pattern.

Key players

Economic Trajectories in South Asia

South Asia is the world's fastest-growing major region in aggregate, driven principally by India, which the IMF projects to grow above six percent annually through the decade. Yet the regional picture is highly uneven. Pakistan has required successive IMF bailouts amid balance-of-payments crises, Sri Lanka defaulted on its external debt in 2022 and is mid-restructuring, Bangladesh entered an IMF program in 2023 after years of rapid growth, and the Maldives faces acute external financing pressures. Nepal and Bhutan remain heavily remittance-dependent, while Afghanistan's economy has contracted sharply since 2021. Structural challenges include low female labor-force participation, premature deindustrialization, energy import dependence, and exposure to climate shocks. The region has benefited from services exports—particularly Indian IT and Bangladeshi and Pakistani labor migration to the Gulf—but manufacturing-led development remains elusive outside pockets of Indian and Bangladeshi industry. Intra-regional trade remains under five percent of total trade, the lowest of any major region, reflecting political barriers more than economic logic. Looking forward, debates focus on whether India can absorb manufacturing diverted from China, how indebted neighbors will manage restructuring with Chinese and Paris Club creditors, the role of Gulf investment and remittance flows, and how climate adaptation will be financed. Digital public infrastructure and green industrial policy are emerging as the dominant policy frames.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for ISA South Asia in World Politics Section Conference 2026.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

The Power-Interest Grid

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Multilateral Negotiation

Advanced Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Sri Lanka August 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

ISA South Asia in World Politics Section Conference 2026

Aug 6–8, 2026Colombo, Sri LankaIn-person

ConcludedRegistration closed

Committees & topics

Topics
South Asia in a Changing International Order · Technological Transformation in South Asia · Weaponized Interdependence and South Asia · Changes in Global Power Distribution · Evolving Multilateral Institutions · South Asia's Security Environment · Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy in South Asia · Economic Trajectories in South Asia

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Sri Lanka

As the host nation, LKA provides a direct context for discussions on regional stability, economic development, and international engagement.

Role in topic

LKA's strategic location and recent economic challenges make it a focal point for understanding both internal South Asian dynamics and the influence of external powers in the region.