BOOKS

Assessing participation - A debate from south asia
(1997) Co-editor, Assessing Participation: A Debate from South Asia. New Delhi: ITDG/Konark Publishers.

Devolution and Development in Sri Lanka
(1994) Editor, Devolution and Development. New Delhi: Konark Publishers.

Sustaining a state in conflict: Politics of foreign aid in Sri Lanka, Colombo:ICES, (2018)
This study focuses on politics of foreign aid to Sri Lanka from developed countries of the West, Japan and multilateral agencies during the period 1977 to end of the armed conflict in 2009. This period is characterised by economic policies that emphasised liberal economic policies and an armed conflict resulting from the Tamil demand for a separate state. The study looks at politics of foreign aid in this context. Foreign aid played a dual role. It helped to sustain a state engaged in an armed conflict, while at the same time trying to promote a negotiated settlement. Therefore it was neither a do-gooder that liberals tend to believe nor a 'foreign devil that Sinhala nationalists like to see.

The politics of foreign Aid in Sri Lanka
(2007) Politics of foreign aid in Sri Lanka, Promoting markets and supporting peace. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

ARTICLES

Recent Elections
Comment on the recent elections in Sri Lanka

(2009) Politics of Social Exclusion, State Reform and Security in Sri Lanka.
The debate on security in Sri Lanka is dominated by the traditional discourse of the security of the state. Primacy is given to the question of how to ensure state security from internal as well as external threats. Notions such as human security have had very little impact on mainstream debates on security.

Towards a debate on state formation in Sri Lanka (2021)
This article argues that analysing the Sri Lankan state as a product of history is essential to understand the current situation. This means state is not treated as a finished, self contained entity. State formation as an ongoing process is a better way of looking at the Sri Lankan state. These are initial thoughts on this. This analysis implies we need to have a political vision that combines social justice, pluralism and deepening democracy fas an alternative political vision..

(2010) Politics and Power in a Market Economy.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework to understand how politics and power operates within the market oriented economy of Sri Lanka. The chapter consists of five sections. The first section creates the background for the discussion that follows by analysing the social composition of the political class that rules Sri Lanka today. It discusses how the political power enjoyed by the English educated, westernised colonial elite was diluted due to the impact of electoral politics. It also shows how their influence continues through the control of key levers of power.

BLOG

Post 2015 Presidential Election-Some thoughts
An analysis of policy implications in the aftermath of the 2015 Presidential Election. The author argues aginst reductionist approaches that look for 'one big answer' to the problems faced by Sri Lanka. The article points out the need to focus on three areas of policy - strengthening the plural character of Sri Lanka, building the autonomy of the state, and an economic policy that integrates social dimensions into the growth strategy.

Post-war capitalism
A key issue in understanding the political economy of contemporary Sri Lanka is how we characterise the period after the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. I would call it 'post-war' rather than 'post-conflict'. A better way is to look at what happened in May 2009 as a point of historical transition, where there is a continuity and discontinuity with the preceding period. Probably we have seen an end to the period of violent challenges to the state that began in the early seventies.