States operate in an open, interdependent system where national policies are shaped by global interactions and flows. Equally significantly, globalization of commodities, people, and services is undergirded by global rules, laws, organizations, and mechanisms of global compliance. Yet, we do not know enough about how global trade rules of the game get translated and modified in diverse countries. While many ideas offer theoretical expectations about compliance and cooperation, rigorous empirical analysis of how globalization is embedded in specific countries lags behind such theoretical development. This book builds a new theoretical framework, the Global Design-in-Motion (GDM) Framework, and conducts an original empirical analysis of how global markets and global order-design shape Indian trade politics. This focus resonates with an argument “against compliance” and shifts attention to how global rules are interpreted by governments and shape and transform Indian institutions and preferences in turn. In order to understand this complex transformation within India and other large emerging countries, the triangular framework proposes a set of relational causal mechanisms that interact across domestic and global jurisdictions and might explain the long chain of implementing globalization within countries.

This book also offers a new perspective on India's ongoing transformations. I argue that India's trajectory of globalization can only be understood by relocating (or displacing) India from a predominantly national context to a more open, global framework where national politics and international regimes are not treated as dichotomous. Faced with a severe fiscal crisis, the Indian government liberalized its economy in 1991 in order to qualify for an IMF loan. Yet, between 1993 and 2000, trade liberalization slowed, and the government raised tariffs again. Despite the radical changes of 1991, a definite reversal in India's trade orientation was evident from 1993 to 2000 as the country returned to protectionist policies. India's global strategies were hesitant and inward oriented during the 1990s.

The year 2000 saw another paradigmatic shift, bringing India closer to global markets. This time, a more open economic paradigm was sustained throughout the 2000s. By 2013, foreign trade in goods and services had increased beyond expectations, constituting 53.2 percent of India's GDP (World Bank 2013). The 1999-2000 reforms represent a turning point in India's ongoing reform trajectory; they transformed India into a more open, global economy.