Prakash Kashwan

Associate Professor, Political Science

Primary Research Theme

Governance and Urban Services

Secondary Research Themes

Economic and Community Development, Social-Ecological Systems

Recent Cities-related Projects

  • Institutions and Policy Networks for Climate Justice Amidst Rapid Urbanization in the Global South: The project aims to 1-Develop a theoretically grounded and policy-relevant approach for researching institutional development for climate-resilient and socially just urbanization in the global South. 2-Develop methodological tools to integrate institutional analysis and Social Network Analysis for an analysis of urban climate justice. 3- Contribute policy insights about how residents from different socioeconomic categories, including the poor living in the urban periphery, experience the effects of climate change and the efforts to make cities climate resilient.
  • Gentrification and Justice in Global Sustainable Cities: Comparative Insights from the Urban Centers in Asia and the United States: The Global sustainable cities program, designed and implemented by the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility (GEF), seeks to foster urban sustainability and climate resilience through low-carbon infrastructure in sectors, such as, transport, energy, buildings, waste, and water in selected cities in the global South. Yet, it is unclear how the sustainable cities program accounts for and addresses the growing income and wealth inequalities in the rapidly urbanizing centers of Asia. The potential for gentrification of the sustainable cities could exacerbate the nexus between urban inequality and climate change. This research project investigates the prospects of climate justice at both policy and grassroots levels in the rapidly urbanizing centers in India, distills lessons from Baltimore’s network of “resilience hubs,” and analyzes the understandings and assumptions of policy elites in India and the World Bank professionals involved in the sustainable cities program.

Selected Urban-Related Publications

2018. Rethinking power and institutions in the shadows of neoliberalism: (An introduction to a special issue of World Development). World Development.

Kashwan P. (2017). Environmentalism of the rich, edited by Peter Dauvergne, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2016, xi + 218 pp., index, $26.95 (hardcover), ISBN 9780262034951. Environmental Politics.

Kashwan P. (2017). Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. Oxford University Press.

2016. Integrating Power in Institutional Analysis: A Micro-Foundation Perspective. Journal of Theoretical Politics,28(1), 5-26.

2017. Inequality, Democracy, and the Environment: A Cross-National Analysis. Ecological Economics.131: 139–15.

2016. What Explains the Demand for Collective Forest Rights Amidst Land Use Conflicts?Journal of Environmental Management, 183, 657-666.’

2015. Forest Policies, Institutions, and REDD+ in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. Global Environmental Politics,15(3),95-117.