Until 1991, he was President of a large NGO that placed thousands of volunteers in developing countries (MS - Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, the Danish Association for International Co-operation).
A talent for rigorous political analysis was evident in his path breaking work on the nature of the peripheral state in India and Pakistan, undertaken as doctoral research at the University of Aarhus, where he studied from the late 1960s.
While his approach was rooted in political economy, he incorporated neo-classical theories of trade and investment, and the ‘new institutionalism’ of incentives and transaction costs.
This was followed by Democracy, Competition and Choice (1995) which was a critical examination of local government in Nepal, while his Society, State and Market: a guide to competing theories of development (1997) received widespread acclaim as an accessible roadmap for students and practitioners – it has been published in at least six countries.
[3] From 1999 until his death, Martinussen headed a Roskilde research programme, GlobAsia, investigated the impact of globalization and regionalization on Asian countries – his own interest was again with India - a country that resisted external pressure to liberalize imports and capital flows for four decades - and the political fallout created by the increasing presence of transnational and foreign firms.