DescriptionThe characteristic changes we see in economic governance today could not have been predicted by structural theories. We know this, of course, through an examination of postinternational theory and the comparative perspectives on micro and macro-economic actors animated in this study. At the beginning of India’s 1991 economic liberalization reforms, with actually similar structural circumstances across states, we can see both upheavals within the national system and a commotion which begins to vary state economic governance as well as create a transformation marked by a bifurcation in which the state-centric system now coexists with an equally powerful, though more decentralized, multi-centric system. There are good reasons to think that structural circumstances catalyzed these internal changes, but it is not at all clear that the nature of the changes was predictable from structural conditions alone. This thesis focuses on governance, which is changing because of the impact of nonstate actors on the economic structure of at least three Indian states – Punjab, Orissa and West Bengal. The study demonstrates than the emergence of varying authority structures and the normative changes accompanied by economic liberalization reforms, cuts across state institutions, sometimes bending them to the wills of the contenders for power. Nonstate actors do not simply respond to and resolve or manage crises arising from within the state environment, but are, through their varied actions, one of the principal agencies directly and indirectly responsible for the liberalized structure. Nonstate actors, in this milieu, contribute to more balanced growth by removing structural impediments to domestic demand, for example. In addition, I want to propose that economic liberalization has been leading in India not to centralization but to differential economic advantages regionally, and loss of some national economic controls in parts of the country. It has produced a systematic authority predicament, which arises from the goals associated with a wide range of systemic measures designed to facilitate macroeconomic policies.