Radhika Desai

Radhika Desai
Radhika Desai during the Fourth World Congress on Marxism, Peking University, Beijing, October 2025
CitizenshipCanadian
Academic background
Alma materMaharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
Queen's University at Kingston
InfluencesKarl Marx,
Friedrich Engels,
John Maynard Keynes,
Karl Polanyi,
Developmental state,
Indian communism
Academic work
DisciplineComparative Politics, Political economy, British politics and political economy, Indian politics and political economy, International Political Economy, Geopolitical economy, US and UK ‘hegemonies’, Development Studies, Marxism
InstitutionsUniversity of Manitoba, Canada
University of Victoria, Canada
Website

Radhika Desai (born 1963) is a Canadian political scientist of Indian origin, who is currently serving as a professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada.,[1][2] and is also the director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group.[3] She is the Convenor of the International Manifesto Group.[4]

Desai is best known for her book Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, in which she puts forward the concept of geopolitical economy, an historical materialist approach to the understanding of the international relations of the age of capital, which Marx called ‘the relations of producing nations’.[5]

Biography

After successfully completing her bachelor's degree in political science at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India, Desai continued her academic education at Queen's University in Canada, where she completed her master's degree in 1986 and received her Ph.D. in 1992. From 1992 to 2006, she taught at the University of Victoria, and since 2006 she has been at the University of Manitoba.[2] In 2000, she was a visiting professor at Bangalore University in India, in 2008 she was a research fellow at the Center for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin, in 2009 she was a visiting scholar at the Development Studies Institute (DESTIN) at London School of Economics and Political Science and, since 2024, she has been Visiting Professor at the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics.[6]

Radhika Desai has served as the Treasurer (2014–16) and then president (2016-2020) of the Society for Socialist Studies[7][8]

Positions

In her 2013 book, Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire she proposed geopolitical economy as a new and more accurate approach to the understanding of the international relations of the world of capitalism, drawing chiefly on the Marxist and other compatible traditions.[9] In doing so, she was also quite critical of ‘Marxist economics’ and ‘Western Marxism’ which tend not to understand the necessary relation between capitalism and imperialism theoretically.[10] In place of these, she returns to Marx and Engels’s original understanding of capitalism as contradictory value production. The contradictions of capitalism require an interventionist state, both to develop capitalism and to stabilize it on an ongoing basis, whether through domestic or international actions, the latter amounting to imperialism.[9]

Desai is also associated distinctive positions in other fields. In her work Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy, she argues that the covid pandemic would not only show the injustices accumulated over decades of neoliberalism in capitalist societies but also test these societies’ structures and their coping mechanisms severely. In the same book, she identifies a new form of neoliberalism, which she calls “pseudo-civic neoliberalism.” In this form, capitalist competition and consumer purchasing decisions are replaced by the state as the main buyer, which purchases overpriced patented products from monopolies and distributes them to consumers seemingly free of charge, but financed by taxes. Examples include medical devices and vaccines. This takes the intertwining of capital and the state to a new level, with organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation effectively gaining state power.[11]

In her work on India, she has proposed a new way of understanding the transition from Congress to Hindutva in Indian politics through a multilayered analysis, founded on the political limitations of the post-Independence Nehruvian project. They led to the progressive marketization of economic policy since the late 1960s, including in agriculture. The social result was the expansion of the capitalist class. In party politics, it has led to a decline of Congress, the rise of parties of the provincial propertied classes and the electoral success of the party of Hindutva.[12] Desai has demonstrated the viability of this framework in the case of the 2004, 2009, 2014 and the 2024 General Elections.[13][14][15][16]

Selected publications

Books

  • 2023. Coronavirus and Capitalism: A Geopolitical Economy, Routledge[11]
  • 2023 (Co-edited) Japan’s Secular Stagnation and Beyond, with Makoto Itoh and Nobuharu Yokokawa, Routledge,[17]
  • 2022. Beyond the Global Crisis: Noonomy, Creativity, Geopolitical Economy. With S.D. Bodrunov and Alan Freeman, S.Y. Witte INID St. Petersburg.[18]
  • 2022. International Economic Governance in a Multipolar World, Routledge, 2022[19]
  • 2021. (Co-edited) Revolutions, Routledge, 2021, (with Henry Heller)[20]
  • 2020. (Co-edited) The Enduring Legacy of Karl Polanyi, Geopolitical Economy series. Manchester: Manchester University Press. (with Kari Polanyi Levitt).  [21]
  • 2017. (Co-edited) Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, with Boris Kagarlitsky and Alan Freeman, London: Routledge, 2017,[22] being a reprint of Russia, Ukraine, and Contemporary Imperialism, Special issue of International Critical Thought, Vol 6, no. 4, December 2016, co-edited by Boris Kagarlitsky and Alan Freeman[23]
  • 2016. (Edited) Analytical Gains in Geopolitical Economy: Volume 30-Part B of Research in Political Economy, 2015, Bingley: Emerald, 2016.[24]
  • 2015. (Edited) Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy, Volume 30-Part A, Research in Political Economy, Bingley: Emerald, 2015.[25]
  • 2013. Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire, Future of World Capitalism series, London: Pluto Press, 2013.[9]
  • 2011. (Co-edited) Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism, Emerald, New York, 2011[26] (with Paul Zarembka)
  • 2008. (Edited) Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms, Routledge, London, 2009[27] (reprint of Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms, Special Issue of Third World Quarterly Guest Editor, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2008. 281 pp.)[28]
  • 2004. Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics, Second Revised Edition, Three Essays, New Delhi, 2004.[12]
  • 1994. Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the British Labour Party, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1994, pp. vi + 217. Book-of-the-Month New Statesman and Society, London, 1995[29]

References

  1. ↑ "Faculty of Arts | University of Manitoba - Political Science - faculty and staff". Faculty of Arts | University of Manitoba. Retrieved 2026-03-04.
  2. 1 2 "Radhika Desai - University of Manitoba".
  3. ↑ "Geopolitical Economy Research Group - Radhika Desai".
  4. ↑ "ABOUT - International Manifesto Group".
  5. ↑ Desai, Radhika (March 2022). "Marx's geopolitical economy: 'The relations of producing nations'". Capital & Class. 46 (1): 3–10. doi:10.1177/03098168211017433. ISSN 0309-8168.
  6. ↑ "LSE International Development Staff Profiles". The London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 2026-02-28.
  7. ↑ socialiststudies (2015-03-24). "A Message from the President". Society for Socialist Studies. Retrieved 2026-02-27.
  8. ↑ seancain (2022-06-15). "2022 Society for Socialist Studies AGM on June 17". Society for Socialist Studies. Retrieved 2026-02-27.
  9. 1 2 3 Desai, Radhika (2013). Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire. Pluto. ISBN 9780745329925.
  10. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2020-08-02). "Marx's critical political economy, 'Marxist economics' and actually occurring revolutions against capitalism". Third World Quarterly. 41 (8): 1353–1370. doi:10.1080/01436597.2020.1741346. ISSN 0143-6597.
  11. 1 2 Desai, Radhika (2022-11-29). Capitalism, Coronavirus and War: A Geopolitical Economy (1 ed.). London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003200000. ISBN 978-1-003-20000-0.
  12. 1 2 Desai, Radhika (2004). Slouching towards Ayodhya: from Congress to Hindutva in Indian politics (2. ed., rev. & updated ed.). New Delhi: Three Essays Collective. ISBN 978-81-88789-12-2.
  13. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2004-12-01). "Forward March of Hindutva Halted?". New Left Review (30): 49–67.
  14. ↑ Understanding India's new political economy : a great transformation?. Internet Archive. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge. 2011. ISBN 978-0-203-86852-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  15. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2014). "A Latter-day Fascism?". Economic and Political Weekly. 49 (35): 48–58. ISSN 0012-9976.
  16. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2024-07-02). "Peak Hindutva?". New Left Review (147): 89–109.
  17. ↑ "Japan's Secular Stagnation and Beyond". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 2026-02-27.
  18. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2022-01-01). "Beyond the Global Crisis (Sergey Bodrunov, Radhika Desai, & Alan Freeman)". Institute for New Industrial Development (INID).
  19. ↑ "International Economic Governance in a Multipolar World". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 2026-02-27.
  20. ↑ Desai, Radhika; Heller, Henry, eds. (2022). Revolutions. Thirdworlds. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-032-01364-0.
  21. ↑ Desai, Radhika; Levitt, Kari (2020). Karl Polanyi and twenty-first-century capitalism. Geopolitical economy. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-2788-4.
  22. ↑ Kagarlitsky, Boris; Desai, Radhika; Freeman, Alan, eds. (2019-05-17). Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism (1 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315205625. ISBN 978-1-315-20562-5.
  23. ↑ Desai, Radhika; Freeman, Alan; Kagarlitsky, Boris (October 2016). "The Conflict in Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism". International Critical Thought. 6 (4): 489–512. doi:10.1080/21598282.2016.1242338. ISSN 2159-8282.
  24. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2016-01-19), "Introduction: Putting Geopolitical Economy to Work", Analytical Gains of Geopolitical Economy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 1–21, doi:10.1108/S0161-72302015000030B001, ISBN 978-1-78560-337-2, retrieved 2026-02-27
  25. ↑ Desai, Radhika (2015-09-22), "Introduction: From the Neoclassical Diversion to Geopolitical Economy", Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 1–44, doi:10.1108/S0161-72302015000030A009, ISBN 978-1-78560-295-5, retrieved 2026-02-27
  26. ↑ Zarembka, Paul (2011). Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism. Research in Political Economy Series. Radhika Desai (1st ed.). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-78052-254-8.
  27. ↑ "Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 2026-02-27.
  28. ↑ Desai, Radhika (April 2008). "Conclusion: from developmental to cultural nationalisms". Third World Quarterly. 29 (3): 647–670. doi:10.1080/01436590801931603. ISSN 0143-6597.
  29. ↑ Desai, Radhika (1994-01-01). "Intellectuals and Socialism". Lawrence and Wishart, London.
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