HWS News
24 July 2023 • Faculty Yadav Publishes Two New Books
Professor of International Relations Vikash Yadav’s latest works explore international capitalism and India’s political outlook in the 21st century.
In two new books published this summer, Professor of International Relations Vikash Yadav brings his expertise in international finance and politics to bear on the contemporary state of capitalism, as well as India’s political landscape since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political Capitalism, Yadav offers a modern take on economist Friedrich Hayek’s famous work, The Road to Serfdom, reframing its message for the 21st century. As the publisher notes, Yadav “revives the core of Hayek’s famed work to map today’s primary political anxiety: the tenuous state of liberal meritocratic capitalism — particularly in North America, Europe and Asia — in the face of strengthening political-capitalist powers like China, Vietnam and Singapore.”
“Yadav debuts with a vigorous reappraisal of 20th-century economist Friedrich Hayek in light of today’s increasing authoritarian encroachment on liberal, meritocratic, free-market societies...Seamlessly intertwining political philosophy, intellectual history, and textual criticism, this is an expansive and robust defense of capitalist liberalism,” according to Publisher’s Weekly.
“Does Hayek’s critique of socialism and defense of liberalism in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom have any relevance for the very different challenges the international order faces today? Yadav’s ambitious goal is to answer that question via a close reading of Hayek’s classic text. The result is a penetrating, insightful, sometimes provocative and always stimulating performance,” says Duke University research professor and Hayek biographer Bruce Caldwell.
Peter Boettke, author of F. A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy and Social Philosophy, calls Yadav’s book “well-written, well-researched and engrossing.… [The] great accomplishment of Liberalism's Last Man is its engagement with modern political theory through the lens of Hayek. It’s a highly original work — and refreshing in that it takes Hayek’s critics seriously while also refraining from shortchanging Hayek for his supposed intellectual sins.”
Yadav’s other book, coauthored with Elon University professor Jason A. Kirk, The Politics of India under Modi: Democracy, Economy, and Foreign Policy, guides readers through the aftermath of the 2014 elections in India, which pulled the nation’s politics rightward. “The Politics of India under Modi provides a detailed overview of India’s political trends, economic prospects and international relations,” the publisher explains.
Rina Verma Williams, a professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati, says Yadav and Kirk's subject “is extremely compelling and important, as well as timely. BJP rule and the Modi regime, it is now clear, represent some critical turning points in Indian politics, which have yet to be analyzed in depth academically by experts. I see this book as a key first step in this process.”
Yadav is a scholar of international relations, focusing on the international political economy and issues like finance, globalization and poverty, and of comparative politics, exploring the political economy of South Asia, political capitalism developmental states. He is the author of a previous book, Risk in International Finance, as well as numerous scholarly articles. A member of the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association, Yadav holds B.A. from DePauw University, an M.A. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
