Biography

Tejas Parasher is Assistant Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and at the UCLA International Institute. He is the author of Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought (Cambridge 2023), the first study of a neglected tradition of participatory democracy in South Asia. His research interests lie in the relationship between empire, democracy, and constitutionalism within modern political and legal thought. His current research project explores the critique of political parties in twentieth-century anti-colonial thought.

Prior to joining UCLA, Tejas was Junior Research Fellow in Political Thought and Intellectual History at King’s College, University of Cambridge.

Education

• PhD (Political Science), University of Chicago (2019)
• B.A. Hons. (Political Science), University of Toronto (2013)

Selected Publications

• Radical Democracy in Modern Indian Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
• “M.N. Roy and the Problem of Parliamentary Democracy,” Journal of the History of Ideas. Forthcoming.
• “Federalism and Democracy,” in The Cambridge History of Democracy, vol. 3, eds. Christopher Meckstroth and Samuel Moyn. Forthcoming.
• “Beyond Parliament: Gandhian Democracy and Postcolonial Founding,” Political Theory 50.6 (2022): 837-60.
• “Federalism, Representation, and Direct Democracy in 1920s India,” Modern Intellectual History 19.2 (2022): 444-72.
• “Inequality and Tumulti in Machiavelli’s Aristocratic Republics,” Polity 49.1 (2017): 42-68.

Courses & Presentations

POL SCI 218 – Selected Topics in Political Theory: Comparative Political Theory
POL SCI 113A – Problems in 20^th Century Political Theory
GLBL ST 191 – Empire and International Thought
GLBL ST 1 – Introduction to Globalization