Polity aims to advance democratic consciousness, gender equality, state reform, and social change in Sri Lanka, while interested in South Asia and the World.
As its predecessor Pravada (1991-2002), Polity is published by the Social Scientists’ Association in Colombo, with critical content on politics, political economy, history, women, ethnicity, sexualities, religion, labour studies, agrarian relations, nationalisms, violence, ecology, and much more.
Horu versus Boru: The politics of the 2025 local government elections in Sri Lanka
Harindra B. Dassanayake and Rajni Gamage
In the 2025 May local government (LG) election, the National People’s Power (NPP) secured a nominal majority in 265...
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Noura Erakat. Stanford University Press, 2019
Kiran Grewal
Introduction A direct and consequential outcome of the past 19 months of hell experienced by the people of Gaza is...
System Stability not Change: The NPP abandons populism for liberal democracy
Pradeep Peiris
Judging by its record over the past six months, the National People’s Power (NPP) government arguably stands as one of...
Performing Sovereign Aspirations: Tamil Insurgency and Postwar Transition in Sri Lanka. Bart Klem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024
Sakuntala Kadirgamar
War and peace have remained unsettled business in Sri Lanka. Performing Sovereign Aspirations: Tamil Insurgency and...
Made in Sri Lanka, Taxed in America, and Failed by the IMF
Taniya Silvapulle
Introduction On 2 April 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, imposing trade...
The Revival of the JVP after 1989
Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri
What follows is a brief account of the history of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) from 1990 to the election...
Current Issue
Out Now! Vol. 13, No. 1 (2025), LKR800 from the Social Scientists’ Association and LKR1000 from Barefoot and Vijitha Yapa bookshops.
170 pages of analysis, commentary and perspective: the implosion of liberal internationalism; aspirations for, and appraisal of, the NPP government; the long march of the JVP from subversive to sovereign; feminist statements demanding action against misogyny and male violence; the May 2025 local government election and axes of polarisation; US and Lankan narratives on culling USAID; the thriving and prosperous national security state, and its gaze on queers; Richard de Zoysa’s short life, long death, and literary legacy; Asoka Handagama’s Rani and memory against forgetting in struggles against enforced disappearances; avatars of privatisation in higher education; continuities and concerns in AKD’s first budget; anatomization of an economy in permanent crisis; retrieving the political economy of SBD de Silva; an IMF poster-child in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariffs and the Washington Consensus; combating corruption in market mode; caricaturing gay representation in mainstream media; celebrating Bapsi Sidhwa’s itinerary and oeuvre; Indian and Pakistani women speak out against war and hate; the performance of Tamil nationhood in and after war; international law facts and fictions in Filastin; and Iranian voices against Israeli-US warmongering and state repression. Front cover art by Minal Naomi Wickrematunge.
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Pravada (1991-2002) and Polity (2003-) back issues available here.
Social Scientists’ Association
The Social Scientists’ Association (SSA) was founded in 1977, at a turning point in Sri Lankan politics, economy, and society, marked by among other aspects: the ‘open economy’ market reforms; deepening ethnic conflict; and the growing concentration of executive power. Its initiators were academics from public universities, seeking an autonomous space to grapple with these shifts; and to promote progressive political, economic, and social change.