Acharya, Mahesh, and Gang Guo. 2024. “Political Trust in South Asia.” Asian Survey https://doi.org/10.1525/as.2024.2117071. Pdf 

This study examines relative trust in national versus local institutions in South Asia using a tripartite framework that combines performance and culture with religious identity to explain the three categories of relative trust that correspond to individuals whose trust in national institutions is stronger than, equal to, or weaker than their trust in local institutions. In particular, religious minorities in South Asia are often discriminated against at the national level but tend to cluster in local communities, which erodes trust in national institutions but not necessarily that in local institutions. The empirical analysis of two waves of South Asian Barometer surveys eight years apart produced consistent results which suggest that the religious segregation and discrimination in South Asian countries tilt relative trust patterns among religious minorities in favor of local institutions at the expense of national ones. 

Book Chapter

Acharya, Mahesh (2017). 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship: Road to Review. In P. Jaiswal (Ed.) Revisiting Nepal’s Foreign Policy in Contemporary Global Power Structure (p.65-78) New Delhi: G.B.Books. Pdf

After much wrangling for decades, Nepal and India have finally spearheaded in the direction to revise officially perhaps the most controversial treaty between them. Kathmandu and New Delhi have constituted a joint Eminent Persons Group (EPG) in early 2016 to review the past treaties and agreements and submit recommendations to the respective governments so that they befit the current realities. The Indo-Nepalese Treaty of Peace and Friendship signed in 1950 which has been a perennial irritant from the early years of its inception, is undoubtedly the major agenda on the table. There would be hardly disagreement that it could be a good starting point in the direction to quell the deeply ingrained mutual distrust but much will depend on the political will of both the capitals as the recommendations of EPG will not be obligatory. The chapter examines the different facets of the Treaty which both the parties see the need to review, and explores the reasons that held New Delhi and Kathmandu back for a whopping sixty-seven years to traverse the road to the review.

“ ‘Mark My Words’: Measuring Personality of Global Leaders.” Pdf 

Awarded Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant 2022,  National Science Foundation's fund via American Political Science Association (APSA)

By analyzing thousands of speeches delivered at the United Nations General Debates (UNGD) to detect the personalities of global leaders, this work contributes to the growing body of first image research, particularly within the psychological approach in International Relations and its stream of Foreign Policy Analysis. Theoretically, it advances trait models in the psychological approach by building on the lexical theory of personality psychology to examine the traits of global elites. Decades of research have demonstrated that linguistic cues, such as utterances, not only convey semantic information but also reveal aspects of the speaker, including personality traits.

Methodologically, to the best of my knowledge, this work represents the first attempt in International Relations to analyze the linguistic cues of global leaders using machine learning tools to assess their psychological characteristics based on the Big Five framework. With its stability across the adult lifespan and generalizability across domains and cultures, the Big Five provides a parsimonious tool to study the personality traits of global leaders, reducing concerns about context- and time-specificity that affect other established content-analytic at-a-distance methods, such as Leadership Trait Analysis (LTA). Additionally, this paper demonstrates that translated speeches can capture the nuances of native languages using existing psycholinguistic dictionaries, even without developing a language-specific coding scheme. Moreover, we show that the psycholinguistic properties of UNGD speeches are highly comparable to more spontaneous forms of text, such as media interviews, which are often considered to reflect a ``truer" personality. These findings give scholars greater confidence in using widely available public statements for analysis, despite the scarcity of more spontaneous textual statements. The availability of personality estimates of world leaders from public speeches opens several research avenues to explore the substantive implications of leader personality on policy decisions. In one substantive application to International Relations, we find that leaders scoring higher on extraversion and lower on emotional stability exhibit a greater propensity for risk-taking, such as initiating militarized disputes. 

“Populist Personality: Evidence from Text Analysis.” Pdf 

What personality traits generally define populist leaders? In this pursuit of identifying the populist personality, this work links the empirically and cross-culturally validated psychological framework of the Big Five to the performative school of populism. This school sees populism in terms of the personality style of populist leaders as displayed in their manners, demeanors, and use of language among others. In line with the previous literature, my analysis of speeches of populist leaders shows that they score significantly higher on extraversion when compared to their non-populist peers. The findings also suggest that irrespective of left or right ideological leaning, populists of every hue appear to share a common personality. By providing a common plank to understand all populist leaders, this work has important implications theoretically and empirically on the backdrop of diverse populism approaches speaking different languages of Tower of Babel as to what constitutes populist personality.

"Understanding Elite Behavior from Private Texts: Evidence from India." Pdf 

This work provides evidence of the link between leaders' psychological characteristics and their policy actions with a case study of India. India, though being a parliamentary federal system, stands as an important case to understand such linkage because of its repeated presidentialization of politics, and the central role the prime minister (the chief executive) asserts in decision-making processes. While doing so,   this paper analyzes private letters and spontaneous texts such as transcripts of interactive radio shows over 75 years to generate psychological profiles of 14 Indian prime ministers since the country's independence. These private letters provide insights into the personal observations of these leaders regarding foreign policy, internal party disputes, and inter-individual differences among other things. The personality profiles generated from these private texts shed light as to why a prime minister took a specific policy decision. For example, the low agreeableness of Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi explains well her excesses to curb the opposition views, and his less warm opinions and actions regarding the country's religious minorities respectively. This work also contributes by demonstrating that public speeches such as parliamentary debates can be used to understand the personality traits of political elites when the private or spontaneous forms of textual statements are in paucity.

“It’s not just the gender!: Personality of Women leaders and Foreign Policy.”  Pdf 

Two competing camps are prominent as to how the gender of a leader could play a role in foreign policy decisions. The first camp prioritising bio-evolutionary factors and social norms sees women leaders as pacifist (or dovish). On the contrary, the second school of thought argues that women leaders tend to be hawkish as they are under more pressure to counter gender stereotypes and to avoid punishment from the domestic electorate. Amid these contrarian beliefs, we argue that the personality traits of women leaders (yes, male leaders too) would play a significant role in determining the path they traverse in terms of foreign policy. This approach would also explain the variation within the women leaders' foreign policy directions. With the help of a novel dataset on leader personality traits approximated from their speeches using recent Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods, we report our preliminary findings. Women leaders who score higher on Openness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability are found to be more conflict prone. However, the institutional constraints appear to dampen the effect of those traits except the Openness.

“Approval and Legacy: Modi Mantra of Evoking Dead Leaders.” (with Amrit Poudel, University of Notre Dame) Pdf 

Recent works show that leaders evoke deceased party leaders or other political figures with strong and popular historical legacies when their approval ratings are declining, in a bid to temporarily boost their support. However, what is puzzling is that even popular leaders who consistently maintain very high approval ratings also frequently evoke deceased leaders. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the rare world leaders who consistently commands high approval ratings. Contrary to the existing belief in approval literature, Modi continues to evoke the historical figure Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel even when his popularity is not declining. Theoretically, relying on the concept of vertical accountability in democratic theory, we contend that incumbents also have an incentive to maintain their popularity by using image-based rhetoric (such as evoking a deceased leader) just as much as they do to spike popularity during periods of declining approval. Empirically, we test this argument by analyzing hundreds of Modi's speeches and find support for it. This means that higher approval ratings are positively associated with Modi’s likelihood of mentioning Patel. Patel, a historical figure associated with the Indian National Congress (the main opponent of Modi's party, the BJP), is widely admired for his role in uniting the independent princely states into a united India after British rule ended. Patel, who hails from Gujarat—Modi's home state—is portrayed by historians as one of the founding fathers of independent India, known for having a softer stance toward Hindu nationalists compared to India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. 

“Populist Attitudes and Political Participation: Evidence from South-East Asia.” 

This work contributes to the literature on populism by highlighting the unexplored association between populist attitudes and the modes of political participation. It does so in the Asian region which has got less academic attention vis-à-vis populism hitherto. Whatever the existing works are, they are primarily focused on the supply side (leaders/parties) of populism. Contrary to that dominant tendency, I explore the populist attitudes of people in Asia i.e., the demand side. My assessment of datasets from the Asian Barometer Survey Wave 4 (2014-16) covering a dozen countries demonstrates that almost all the components of populist attitudes, except the one related to people’s will, significantly affect the likelihood of participation in protests. Populist attitudes that are reflective of anti-liberal and anti-establishment sentiments as well as the perception that the ruling section is widely corrupt seem to increase the propensity to protest.