Balakrishnan's work consistently displays an interdisciplinary erudition spanning the fields of history, political theory, philosophy, and economics. This breadth of interests formed the basis of his doctoral research, which evolved into his groundbreaking first book, "The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt." This work provided a meticulous analysis of Schmitt’s political thought conceived as a series of responses to the crises of the German and European state systems from 1919 to 1945. 

A collection of his essays, "Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War," came out subsequently offering reflections on the history of the interstate system and the future of warfare, the significance of Machiavelli as a theorist of the founding of new orders, of De Tocqueville as a conservative critic of democracy, and on the European origins of identity politics. 

As an editor, Balakrishnan has contributed significantly as an editor, assembling highly influential collections on nationalism, and the forms of empire in a supposedly post-national age in "Mapping the Nation" and "Debating Empire", respectively.
 
More recently, Balakrishnan has been working on a reconstruction of Karl Marx's economic thought that identifies its concealed conceptual structure, making its historical and logical assumptions more apparent and thus opening up new questions regarding its adequacy as an account of the structure and history of capitalism. 

His forthcoming association with the journal SS African Mercury is the beginning of a new chapter in Balakrishnan’s intellectual career. This journal sets a new standard for political and cultural criticism, and his contributions to it can be expected to further highlight its distinctiveness in the contemporary intellectual scene. He foresees writing pieces for this journal that continue the practice of criticism through careful reconstruction that characterized his earlier work but with a more trenchant style influenced by his study of the genre of polemics.   

Balakrishnan currently participates in a number of study groups and private seminars on topics as varied as classical political economy, Marxist writing on the Graeco-Roman world, and the Bible in its historical context. Here he seeks to inspire others with the spirit of pure intellectual inquiry, free from current fashion and ideological pieties.

Currently, he is working on a reconstruction of Marx’s Capital that uncovers its conceptual organization as a system and raises new questions regarding its adequacy as an account of the nature and history of capitalism.