OVERLAPPING ORGANISATIONS AND EMERGING POWERS: INDIA’S SELECTIVE ENGAGEMENT THROUGH THE LENS OF FORUM SHOPPING

Abstract

The post-WWII era gave rise to not only an expansion in international organisations but also in regional organisations, resulting in the proliferation of overlapping organisations at both the global and regional levels (Panke and Stapel, 2018; Reinsberg & Westerwinter, 2023). This overlapping phenomenon also opens a room for forum shopping that leads states to navigate themselves among different organisations according to their interest (Busch, 2007; Hofmann, 2018). India, as an emerging power, has a dual approach with committing to global organisations, while actively engaging with regional organisations. Hence, India actively participates in international organisations such as the UN and WTO, while simultaneously taking an active role in shaping regional institutions such as SAARC, BIMSTEC, and RCEP. Thus, the study contributes to overlapping organisations literature focusing on the forum shopping strategy to understand how India, as an emerging power, navigates itself between overlapping organisations to contribute to regional and global efforts while maximising its national interests. This paper argues that India’s foreign policy behaviour reflects a strategic manoeuvre of forum shopping that selectively engages with overlapping organisations based on institutional design, membership, and issue-specific utility. The study employs process tracing since the early 1990s to map India’s historical and strategic shifts in organisational engagement, such as the move from SAARC to BIMSTEC or its withdrawal from RCEP, to uncover the causal mechanisms and motivations behind India’s institutional strategies. The findings demonstrate that India’s foreign policy rationality is neither a retreat solely from multilateralism nor a simple alignment with major powers, but rather an adaptive strategy to advance national interests through institutional diversity and regional substitution.