Pol218 State, Society & Power in Comparative Perspective PDF

Pol218 State, Society and Power in Comparative Perspective Week 1 Intro Notes States are seen (in IR) as units of analysis But in this class we are breaking it down and understanding what is that state and what makes it different from another one, why we see different kind of states today, why they take the form that they take The modern state. We live in a world where we cannot escape the modern state. How do we conceptualize what the world was like before the modern state? Became a world of nation-states (why is that problematic) The modern state is relatively young (couple 100 years old) Learning what has fed into the formation of state structures: The state now employs clear territorial boundaries. Coming from an evolution of states in Europe. A lot of modern nation-states we see today came out of colonialism! Or significant revolutions that overthrew young nation-states and created very different state structures (into a communist path) Theocratic state (i.e Islamic revolution) Class politics Nationalism Ethnic identity civil war Week 2 Reading Tilly the idea of a social contract, the idea of an open market in which operators of armies and states offer services to willing consumers, the idea of a society whose shared norms and expectations call forth a certain kind of government. analogy of war making and state making with organized crime from a few hundred years of European experience coercive exploitation played a large part in the creation of the European states. Racketeer = someone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it But consider the definition of a racketeer as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction. Since governments themselves commonly simulate, stimulate, or even fabricate threats of external war and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often constitute the largest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate in essentially the same ways as racketeers. Racketeers, by the conventional definition, operate without the sanctity of governments. How do racketeer governments themselves acquire authority? governments organize and, wherever possible, monopolize violence. governments stand out from other organizations by their tendency to monopolize the concentrated means of violence. The distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" force, furthermore, makes no difference to the fact. If we take legitimacy to depend on conformity to an abstract principle or on the assent of the governed (or both at once), these conditions may serve to justify, perhaps even to explain, the tendency to monopolize force; they do not contradict the fact. Arthur Stinchcombe's agreeably cynical treatment of legitimacy– "The person over whom power is exercised is not usually as important as other power-holders."1 Legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a given authority. Other authorities, I would add, are, much more likely to confirm the decisions of a challenged authority that controls substantial force; not only fear of retaliation, but also desire to maintain a stable environment recommend that general rule. emphasises importance of an authorities monopoly of force – A tendency to monopolize the means of violence makes a government's claim to provide protection, in either the comforting or the ominous sense of the word, more credible and more difficult to resist. Frank recognition of the central place of force in governmental activity does not require us to believe that governmental authority rests "only" or "ultimately" on the threat of violence. Nor does it entail the assumption that a government's only service is protection. Even when a government's use of force imposes a large cost, some people may well decide that the government's other services outbalance the costs of acceding to its monopoly of violence. Recognition of the centrality of force opens the way to an understanding of the growth and change of governmental forms. War making, extraction, and capital accumulation interacted to shape European state making. Nor did they ordinarily foresee that national states would emerge from war making, extraction, and capital accumulation. resulted in the principal variations in the forms of European states. It all began with the effort to monopolize the means of violence within a delimited territory adjacent to a power holder's base. Early in the state-making process, many parties shared the right to use violence, the practice of using it routinely to accomplish their ends, or both at once. The continuum ran from bandits and pirates to kings via tax collectors, regional power holders, and professional soldiers. A king's best source of armed supporters was sometimes the world of outlaws. The distinctions between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" users of violence came clear only very slowly, in the process during which the state's armed forces became relatively unified and permanent. before the seventeenth century, regencies for child sovereigns reliably produced civil wars. For the same reason, disarming the great stood high on the agenda of every would-be state maker. There occurred a change in English habits that can only be compared with the further step taken in the nineteenth century, when the growth of a police force finally consolidated the monopoly and made it effective in the greatest cities and the smallest villages. taming their habitual resort to violence for the settlement of disputes In France, Richelieu began the great disarmament in the 1620s. With Richelieu's advice, Louis XIII systematically destroyed the castles of the great rebel lords, Protestant and Catholic, against whom his forces battled incessantly. He began to condemn dueling, the carrying of lethal weapons, and the maintenance of private armies. By the later 1620s, Richelieu was declaring the royal monopoly of force as doctrine. The doctrine took another half-century to become effective Everywhere the razing of castles, the high cost of artillery, the attraction of court life, and the ensuing domestication of the nobility Before quite recently, no European government approached the completeness of articulation from top to bottom achieved by imperial China. Even the Roman Empire did not come close. In one way or another, every European government before the French Revolution relied on indirect rule via local magnates. Yet the same magnates were potential rivals, possible allies of a rebellious people. In the long run, it all came down to massive pacification and monopolization of the means of coercion. Protection as Business If a power holder was to gain from the provision of protection, his competitors had to yield. As economic historian Frederic Lane put it twenty-five years ago, governments are in the business of selling protection Lane argued that the very activity of producing and controlling violence favored monopoly, because competition within that realm generally raised costs, instead of lowering them. The production of violence, he suggested, enjoyed large economies of scale. Nevertheless, inside or outside, they properly draw the economic analysis of government back to the chief activities that real governments have carried on historically: war, repression, protection, adjudication. Richard Bean has applied a similar logic to the rise of European national states between 1400 and 1600. He appeals to economies of scale in the production of effective force, counteracted by diseconomies of scale in command and control. He then claims that the improvement of artillery in the fifteenth century (cannon made small medieval forts much more vulnerable to an organized force) shifted the curve of economies and diseconomies to make larger armies, standing armies, and centralized governments advantageous to their masters. Hence, according to Bean, military innovation promoted the creation of large, expensive, well-armed national states. The arrival of effective artillery came too late to have caused the increase in the viable size of states. (However, the increased cost of fortifications to defend against artillery did give an advantage to states enjoying larger fiscal bases.) Both of them understate the importance of capital accumulation to military expansion. 1. War making: Eliminating or neutralizing their own rivals outside the territories in which they have clear and continuous priority as wielders of force 2. State making: Eliminating or neutralizing their rivals inside those territories 3. Protection: Eliminating or neutralizing the enemies of their clients 4. Extraction: Acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities — war making, state making, and protection Extraction, for instance, ranges from outright plunder to regular tribute to bureaucratized taxation. Yet all four depend on the state's tendency to monopolize the concentrated means of coercion. From the perspectives of those who dominate the state, each of them - if carried on effectively - generally reinforces the others. Each of the major uses of violence produced characteristic forms of organization. War making yielded armies, navies, and supporting services. State making produced durable instruments of surveillance and control within the territory. Protection relied on the organization of war making and state making but added to it an apparatus by which the protected called forth the protection that was their due, notably through courts and representative assemblies. Extraction brought fiscal and accounting structures into being. The organization and deployment of violence themselves account for much of the characteristic structure of European states. Week 2 Lec Notes - States in the Past Kingdoms, City States, Empires, Ungoverned territories Origins of the modern state Accident of history that we have ended up with our current modern state, not inevitable and not linear in how we got here A world of modern states Nothing natural about it. Over 193 states now and if you look at a world map, you can cover almost all the territory of the globe that is carved out of all these states Why is it important? States are a basic unit of political organsiation in the modern world They govern territory, people and exercise power both over their citizens and outwardly toward other states Studying states allow us to understand scale of governance The formation of states are connected to how societies are structured We see lots of varied poli orgs, centralised and decentralised politcal organisation - Forms are barely states Couple thousand years ago would be growing city states (very small poli unit) Concentrations of power, kingdoms (small) Empires were different - there for a long time and was and is a poli organisation – beyond what we understand as states and are a little different, they are much more vast and includes a lot of people in different forms under authority of an empire Ungov territories are recent we are able to claim this kind of territorial connection toward the state - many vast ungov territories, a lot of people who were under gov under empire or kingdom rarely had a connection to that source of power, it was occasional States in previous times (maps) Even after roman empire expanded – some places look like boundaries that we might see today byzatnine empire, france, hungary, italy → as a result of the erosion of the roman empire, hundreds of years where there is still an attempt to consolidate into something biggers like the kingdom of france. Different forms of legitimate power - the church, christianity became powerful at this time Inherited right to rule and other hand ideas of having to be relioguosly ordained or recognised by the church as a source of power and they start mixiing into which source of legitmation is important which is understood through the wars at this particular time 1499 shows fragmentation of political states and more states, allying states and creating federations Ebb and flows of poli orgs States - forms of poli orgs (not modern states) Tilly: Coercion wielding orgs that are distinct from households and groups … overall organisations There is a predominant source of control and power is the main characteristic of the state but not the modern state Holy roman empire was very fragmented - history of centralisation Vast empire that was spreading and very well organised What is significant about the great wall of china? Took many years - Material effort to define boundaries It was still hard to keep people out - still porous The idea you could enforce territory and those boundaries was difficult even for the chinese empire The limits to our ability to centralise power - rules in and outside the walls Associating power with control of territoriry is demarcated by the wall How you control people not territory, loits of fluidity because controlling people was not easy when centre of power was far away from people you claim to govern The Modern State When? 17th and 18th century Where? Mostly Europe What did it look like: Territorial boundaries Centralised power (before could not govern empire with out lots of decentralisation with kingdoms, rulers etc) Advanced administrative and bureaucratic structures (taken for granted today) China one of them developed very sophisticated administrative structures Became a way to maintain control over territory and extracting resources to maintain state power Dismantling empires Facing opponents with more expansive technology In europe they defined a certain kind of state that ended up being pretty solid and modern state was reproduced A modern state is: a distinct set of political institutions whose specific concern is with the organisation of domination, in the name of the common interest (the legitimacy of governance under some common interest), within a delimited territory (. Controlling territory more than controlling people). Where did it come from? Classic explanation: it appreased in europe, around 17th-18th century Not a linear path: interactions between different political orginisations, some consolidation some disintegration some emulation Europe in the early middle ages Unconsolidated Small Kingdoms: Wessex, Northumbria Papal Estates and Jurisdiction History of europe can be seen through lens of these kingdoms and changes/power of influence of the church amd fragentation of chrisitnaity - chirch was a powerful org in itself and had a state, alliances and degrees of influence so overlapping forms of recognition, jurisdiction etc ambiguity of who had power City States Process: Tillys argument “War makes States, States make War” Three aspects: 1. Organisation of coercion and preparation for war 2. Relations between states: most powerful set the terms of war preparations → argument about competing for power and control 3. Organisations of classes and relations to state affected strategies of extraction of resources for war – how you obtain soldiers, military campagins were expensive Result Pre modern (city states, kingdoms, empires) going to war → Transition to modern (kingdoms) → Modern State (Absolutist state) Not a linear convergence but became efficient ways to manage modern miliataries and extracting resources 1. Organsiation and preparation for war Raising an army (raised for particular purposes at a particular time) -soldiers -support personnel Technology of War (if its linear its most likely technological change) -Calvary -Ships Paying for War (necessary fro organaising and preparing) -Food -Soldiers pay 2. Relations between states (Extracting means of war from other who had the resources) State Powerful State States What were the sources? Men power, weapons 3. Classes and Relations to State: Strategies of Extraction Commercial Class Most societies were egragarian states with vassals and lords who controlled tax production, peasants | military class had a certain kind of relationship to the king The hierarchy was not so clear (variance), not clearly defining ways where the king always controlled these lords, the king was dependent on the lords rather than the other way around The king concretely had authority but that authority differed from place to place The lords had a huge degree of autonomy so the king was highly dependent on them Important to understand the variance between states Peasants (serfs) Where you had little bigger cities → emergence of banking and merchants Like city of florence → developing idea of cash/finance Not something that really existed or wasnt too developed Youd be raising food, soldier, supplies but not really borrowing money which comes later This is part of the evolution of the modern state Reliance on people to raise these armies How did this happen? Some examples Patrimonial Structure Middle Age rulers before 1450: Rulers dependent on military leaders or those who could organise resources Not much cash and finances Disadvantage relative to others with similar resources Paying soldiers is relatively new Direct Rule Middle Age rulers after 1450: Control over administrative and bureaucratic structures Could learn from others What can raise revenue: i.e Household taxation Raise resources to prepare for war etc. Example of France: from patrimonial absolutism to modern state Happens around year 1000 Phase One: Prior to 1000: highly fragmented After crumbling of Roman Empire, Visigoths, Visigothic kingdom in Spain 484-711 Lombard kingdom in italy shared control with a series of isolated byzantine strongholds, 568 to 774 Merovingian kingdom of the franks in gual: 511 to 751 Carolinfian kingdom Phase Two: 1000-1540 State Consolidation State competition and Reosurce limits: finance from campaigns not enough to compensate for manpower needed for those campaigns franc : extended power through expanding concentric circles: consolidation of church, the nobility and the military orders as basis of power Increase competition between france, italy, spain forced convening of assemblies to increase sources of revenue (estates were the assemblies, exchange of benefits given to the nobles, creating titles giving certain rights to rule areas, obligations etc). Frances resource crunch: ❖ South ward expansion in conflict with crown of Aragon from 12 c ❖ 1337-1453: hundrew years war with england Phase Three: 1500 - 1789 Massive increase in the role played by private finance, proprietary officeholding and military entrepreneurship Lous XIV reforms: ❖ Mostly network of well connected money lenders personally loyal to Colbert (institutionalised) ❖ By ties of parentage, patronage/clientghe or partnership with nobility ❖ And creed a whole host of new offices, connected to him adnd the crown through patronage But structural inabiloity of aboslutist france to reform (became extremely extractive), especially in face of war with britian, lef to revolution Adhoc raising of armies → raising professional soldiers starts to take form Phase Four: Transformation to the Modern State (Post 1789) Revival of a national rep body in the form of the Estates General/Constituent assembly 1789-91 Proprietary officeholding, “inside credit” and military entrepreneurship replaced by a salaried professional bureaucracy, a centralise system, of direct financial administration (institutions of taxation) and nonvenal army and navy Generally different phases of coercive forces Patrimonialism: predominant up to 15th c. in Europe Brokerage: roughly 1400-1700 in many parts Nationalisation: from 1700-1850: phase of convergence toward modern state Specialisation:1850 onwards Paths differed: (how armies were extracting) Coercion intensive Capital intensive: emphasis on production and raising revenue through developing such as credit, debt, banking and diversify source of revenue Capitalised Coercion: mix of forcible extraction and development of alternative forms of financing war and military Weak way of waging/organising war Result: Convergence By 19th century, already rise of several modern states Continued pressure from neighbouring states But still continuity of other forms in particular ‘empires’ Result: the Modern State Unified sovereignty in system of competing states Formal and complex organisation Legal-rational legitimacy Rule of law, constitution guarantees of rights of citizens and centrality of representative institutions Week 3 Reading The political Kingdom in Independent Africa postindependence African leaders were faced with the problem of how to extend power over their territories given the incomplete and highly variable administrative systems they inherited from the Europeans. the new leaders rejected the entire precolonial tradition of multiple sovereignties over land with soft borders. Instead, Africa’s leaders devised a set of domestic and international strategies that, much as during the colonial rule, gave maximum flexibility to the leaders when deciding how to expand the actual geographic reach of the state while formally preventing any outside challenge to their territorial control. the most revolutionary aspect of Africa’s independence: the attempt to build a large number of states during peace. It devotes special attention to the boundaries and state system that the Africans constructed for themselves. wave of decolonization, which began with Ghana’s independence in 1957, and the process of colonization formalized by the Berlin Conference in 1885. in precolonial Africa, a wide variety of political organizations—villages, city-states, nation-states, empires—rose and fell. However, at independence, African leaders turned their backs on this diversity of forms. The international embrace of the nation-state was also an important element in the rapid African rejection of any indigenous alternative. g a practical monopoly on organizing political activity across the globe. Second, the United Nations and its related organizations (including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization) created an extraordinarily powerful template that molded international society by recognizing only nation-states as legitimate actors in the international community. In particular, membership in the General Assembly, the essential gateway to sovereignty, was open to any nation-state that gained independence but was not available to any other form of organization. [T]he independence movement maintained the same administrative core as had existed during the colonial epoch. Only the names were changed: Africa is also littered with the carcasses of failed economic unions (e.g., the Economic Community of West African States), and the volumes planning putative continental organizations that were never realized are legion. 1980 Lagos Plan of Action, the apotheosis of the Organization of African Unity’s (OAU) desire to create panAfrican institutions, asked for the creation of an African Economic Community, Of course, none was even attempted because the hopeful architects of these new creations, like the planners of many aborted groupings, could not offer leaders significant enough incentives to abdicate even small bits of power. among the first acts of the Organization of African Unity was to eliminate any hope that the idea explicit in its name could actually be realized. In particular, the OAU’s 1964 resolution on border problems pledged member states, “to respect the frontiers existing on their achievement of national independence.”19 Thus, there was an almost immediate determination that the OAU Charter, written in 1963 and demanding (article III, paragraph 3) the, “Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each State and for its inalienable right to independent existence”20 meant the states as mapped by the Europeans. , African boundaries have been almost unchanged since independence; the only significant deviation was the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia. However, even this development was, especially from the perspective of the Eritreans, to a significant degree a question of decolonization rather than secession. Tanzania invaded Uganda in 1979 to overthrow Idi Amin, not to annex Uganda. African armies expanded rapidly after independence and took roughly fifteen years to reach maturity. In 1963, at the dawn of independence, the average African army had 0.73 soldiers for every thousand people. By 1979, that figure had more than quadrupled to 3.10 soldiers per thousand citizens. The size of African armies then began to decrease so that by the mid-1990s, there were only two soldiers per thousand citizens across the continent.21 African armies are, by comparative standards, small. In 1994, African countries had on average only 57 percent as many soldiers per thousand citizens as the average developing country (2 versus 3.5) One of the primary reasons for coups in Africa and the rest of the third world is that soldiers have so little to do. As a result, they seek to carve out a role for themselves in politics Tilly estimates that the “enormous majority” of states in Europe failed.26 Even those that survived changed frequently, given the hostility of their environments. For instance, it took between three and five hundred years for the modern French frontier to be established. However, all of Africa’s weak states have survived. Neither the colonial nor the independent state system that have, successively, defined international relations in Africa since 1885 have been hostile to weak states. Rather, both systems have been highly organized and designed to protect the frontiers of countries who could not necessarily defend themselves. Thus, Kenneth Waltz notes that, “contact generates conflict and at times issues in violence.”28 Without having to compete for territory, Africans could devise rules by which all could become more secure. the OAU Principles are designed to promote the rights of states rather than individuals. The first three items of the principles (in article 3 of the Charter) affirm sovereign equality of all member states, noninterference in the internal affairs of member states, and respect for the states’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.29 Self-determination was deemed only to apply to those countries that were still colonies or that were still under white minority control.. Instead, Eritrea only was recognized as an independent state once a military victory was won over the government in Addis Ababa, the traditional way that international society has recognized new states. Togolese president Olympio was killed in a military revolt on 13 January 1963. There was significant sentiment to condemn the coup because African leaders were obviously afraid that the same fate might be visited upon them. However, after a brief period of ostracism, Togo was allowed to reenter normal diplomatic relations with other African countries and to sign the Charter of the Organization of African Unity, While the OAU Charter does (article III, paragraph 5) offer “unreserved condemnation, in all its forms of political assassination,” leaders were not willing to make judgments about the legitimacy of governments. As a result, even if an African country did not have physical control over its own territory, by the rules of the international community, it could not be challenged by other domestic groups or by outsiders. Thus, Samuel P. Huntington argued that “war was the great stimulus to state building,” and Charles Tilly went so far as to claim that “war made the state, and the state made war.” Weak states do exist in Europe today—Belgium is one example—but the near-constant threat of war prompted most states to become stronger in order to survive. Pg 113 More specifically, war in Europe played an important role in the consolidation of many now-developed states in ways that are particularly important to an understanding of how power is broadcast: war caused the state to become more efficient in revenue collection by forcing leaders to dramatically improve administrative capabilities (thereby allowing states to fund nationwide administrative and economic systems), and war created a climate and important symbols around which a disparate population could unify and bond with the state in a manner that legitimized the capital’s authority. That African countries have, to date, largely failed to solve these problems has important implications for their ability to consolidate power and has had a significant impact on the evolution of their political economies. There is no better measure of a state’s reach than its ability to collect taxes. If a state does not effectively control a territory, it certainly will not be able to collect taxes in a sustained and efficient manner. At the same time, a widely distributed tax base helps guarantee consolidation of the state by generating a robust revenue stream. Perhaps the most noticeable effect of war in European history was to cause the state to increase its ability to collect significantly more revenue with greater efficiency and less public resistance. War affected state finances for two reasons. First, it placed tremendous strains on leaders to find new and more regular sources of income. Second, citizens are much more likely to acquiesce to increased taxation when the nation is at war, because a threat to their survival will overwhelm other concerns they might have about increased taxation.114 war often causes a “ratchet effect,” whereby revenue increases sharply when a nation is fighting but does not decline to the ante bellum level when hostilities have ceased War’s effect on the structure of government revenue is important to Africa because the continent’s political geography has a profound influence on possibilities for taxation. Given low densities of population dispersed across large hinterlands, it was difficult for precolonial states to tax individuals. The ECA recognized that African countries relied on indirect taxes because they were convenient and relatively inexpensive to collect, given the nature of the inherited colonial administrative systems, by then only slightly modified. t the nation and the state are bound together through a series of emotional ties often expressed in the iconic symbols of nationalism. Nationalism can be thought of as another way for the state to consolidate its power over distance not, as with taxes, through the agencies of coercion but through the norm of legitimacy. nationalism is a particularly interesting issue for Africa because it may represent a way of broadcasting state authority that does not require the financial resources that poor countries lack. The dawn of independence in Africa thus presented leaders with another avenue for the extension of state power. 126 n. External threats have such a powerful effect on nationalism because people realize in a profound manner that they are under threat because of who they are as a nation; they are forced to recognize that it is only as a nation that they can successfully defeat the threat. Michael Howard notes the visceral impact of wars on the development of nationalism throughout Europe: Self-identification as a Nation implies almost by definition alienation from other communities, and the most memorable incidents in the group-memory consisted in conflict with and triumph over other communities. As a result, it is hardly surprising that the critical monuments (e.g., Trafalgar Square, Arc de Triumph, Brandenburg Gates ) in so many European capital cities are militaristic. They celebrate the central events that not only preserved the state but also forged its links with the population. In this anthem, there is a clear disjunction between the desire to bless Africa and the needs of national leaders to create ties to their populations by invoking specific national icons. As a result, the development of a national identity is that much more difficult. , the threat of international war helped solve the problem of the domestic consolidation of power.130 The need to fund warfare only highlighted the connection between taxation and state survival. As Tillly makes clear, the history of Europe is in many ways a series of structured bargains where the state is only allowed to tax more if it makes certain concessions to those being taxed, or when the populations understand that their survival is dependent on paying more to the state. Thus, a World Bank study of firms worldwide found that private companies in Africa rated corruption the single greatest obstacle to doing business, the only region other than Latin America where corruption featured so prominently. State formation in Chile and Peru Postcolonial institutional development in Chile and Peru has proceeded along trajectories that were quite unexpected given the colonial-era foundations on which they were built. It was Chile that launched a trajectory of effective, long-run institutional development, while Peru suffered persistent, almost irremediable stagnation. But it was Peru that was the colonial center and began with substantial advantages – it was a viceroyalty in the Spanish colonial administrative system, and Lima was home to an important Audiencia (a superior court that also had some legislative functions). And it was Peru that experienced extensive colonialera immigration, allowing Spain to establish “numerous and deep footholds” This not only entailed a much stronger governing bureaucracy and its associated coercive apparatus but also a much higher level of basic human capital – the literate, educated individuals on which a postcolonial state would have to rely. Not only were colonial institutions well developed in Peru, they had been undergoing a process of successful administrative reforms since the 1750s, abolishing venal office and imposing meritocratic norms on governmental bureaucracies, inter alia Chile, by contrast, was a colonial periphery. Not only was it nearly the most geographically remote part of the Spanish Empire but it was also thinly populated by Spanish immigrants, including the arrival of very few women. their basic political economies, both postindependence states were overwhelmingly dependent on mineral exports (of, especially, silver, nitrates, and copper) and, secondarily, on agro-exports (sugar and cotton in Peru and wheat in Chile). In geostrategic terms, both were, in the nineteenth century, surrounded by hostile military competitors, including not only their geographic neighbors (and each other) but also their former Spanish colonial rulers. Yet these similarities on several of the dimensions thought to be critical to state building do not at first blush lead us far in explaining the divergent postcolonial institutional trajectories that emerged. Why did Chile – with its inauspicious colonial-era institutional legacy – ultimately develop a state with comparatively high levels of infrastructural power, while Peru, with a more favorable legacy and similar resource base and strategic profile, was trapped in a cycle of persistent institutional calamity? the initial trajectories of political development that emerged in postcolonial Chile and Peru hinges on two critical features of the state-building era: the character of prevailing social relations in agriculture (and mining) and the ability of elites of different factions to cooperate, while at the same time maintaining the exclusion of nonelite groups from political power. taxation capacity is a commonly accepted indicator of the efficacy and penetration of national institutions – indeed, domestic revenue extraction is the key indicator of state strength in bellicist and ecological accounts of political development The Peruvian state simply would not or could not impose even a modest level of domestic taxation. Chilean data are in constant pounds sterling of 1833, and thus Chile’s long-run increase in revenue – roughly a real quadrupling on a per capita basis between the 1850s and 1910s – reflects sharp actual increases in the ability of the state to tax its citizens. It is thus clear that postindependence-era Peru and Chile were on decidedly different trajectories of political development. It is also the case that they were ultimately taxed at vastly different levels. Peruvian tax receipts per 1,000 residents amounted to roughly £392, while the equivalent number for Chile in that year was £2,327. Peru after independence was among the Latin American countries most consistently threatened by international military conflict, alternatively with Chile, Colombia, Spain, and Ecuador. This conflict could and did implicate the lives and fortunes of its elites, yet it did not impel their cooperation around the formation of either an effective state or even basic military preparedness or modernization. to join the continent-wide move to independence was founded on the fears that the revolutionary movement utilized indigenous images, symbols, and even soldiers. The participation of armed Indians – and the consequent possibility of postindependence rebellion against local repressive structures – was sufficient to drive many Peruvian elites to the royalist cause the servile political economy of postindependence Peru was the inevitable consequence of a logically prior factor: the presence of a large indigenous population available for this form of exploitation. There was at the time of conquest also a sizable indigenous population in Chile. It is quite true that the Inca Empire and its subject peoples were more concentrated and vastly more politically organized than their nomadic counterparts in Chile. The consequences of this difference in social relations were profound, and they helped to keep postindependence Peru deeply fragmented by race and class – distinctions that were at the very heart of the system of taxation and social organization. It had political implications as well, for even the omnipresent threat of indigenous insurrection was insufficient to promote cooperation among members of different factions of the Creole elite, which was profoundly divided along regional and sectoral lines. The resultant conflict and instability was so severe that Peru was unable to form any kind of lasting national administrative infrastructure until the mid-nineteenth century, which in turn reinforced the importance of local control over coercive institutions for elites’ physical and economic security. Peruvian political stability and limited administrative development, however, had been mortared with the proceeds from guano exports, and when these declined in the early 1870s, so did the reach of the central state A bellicist perspective on this conflict would suggest that faced with the threat of war with Chile, the Peruvian elite might accept some centralization of authority or increase in taxation to pay the substantial costs associated with building a military effective enough to repel or deter the Chileans. Even the threat of war, however, was not enough to make possible the creation of an effective revenue system for the Peruvian state; the loss of guano revenues was not compensated for by the imposition of effective domestic direct or indirect taxation.8 Importantly, the issue was not just the ability to collect taxes but rather the explicit unwillingness of elites in the Peruvian legislature to levy new taxes, even for the national defense. Far from provoking political modernization, the War of the Pacific (1879– 83) fought between a Bolivian and Peruvian alliance against the Chilean invaders produced an institutional collapse. Instead of unifying Peruvians around the defense of the nation, the war “generated not only... confrontation between the ruling class and the subordinate classes as a whole, but also ethnic confrontation” : the continued reliance on an enormous, and rebellious, semiservile labor force – the indigenous population of the Sierra and indentured Chinese laborers on the coastal plantations. Indeed, class and racial politics very quickly overwhelmed “national” loyalty as the Chilean invasion arrived. That is, elites were generally far more concerned that peasants remain under control than they were with contributing to the national defense against the Chilean invaders. The mayor of Lima himself openly hoped for a prompt Chilean occupation of the city out of fear that subalterns might rise in rebellion The Chilean rural economy was by all accounts also extremely inefficient and clearly run along precapitalist lines. But Chilean peasants were free to abandon their estates should they so choose, and agrarian elites could thus support the construction of mass armies without risking social unrest, personal security, or economic catastrophe. The difference is that a labor-repressive agrarian structure like Peru’s is an unsuitable social basis on which to recruit a mass army. defeat in the War of the Pacific, which brought with it a critical territorial loss for Peru – the nitrate fields of the Atacama Desert – as Chile seized the southern Peruvian provinces of Arica and Tacna as well as Iquique from Bolivia. These nitrates had replaced guano as the world’s principal source of fertilizer and nitrate inputs for munitions and were thus exceedingly valuable. Some have contended that the response of Peruvian elites to defeat by the Chileans should be an effort to reconstitute the state and professionalize the public administration. But national unity and political modernization were the last things on the mind of the Peruvian elite after the departure of Chilean troops in 1884. , the Chilean state, even in the nineteenth century, was able to levy serious domestic taxes, field effective armies at great distances from its capital and sources of supply, provide critical public goods and infrastructure, and achieve both territorial unification and administrative control down to the local level. By contrast, Peru squandered the immense resources it acquired as the monopoly supplier of artificial fertilizers; was unable to gain the cooperation of its own upper classes either in support of national self-defense or for the construction of an effective bureaucracy that could provide essential public goods; achieved administrative penetration into local areas only very late; and to this day has developed a very limited capacity for economic governance, taxation, or the promotion of development. , at least in the nineteenth century, Chile was involved in strategic conflicts with Spain, Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina – that might have spurred its elite to cooperate in a modernizing effort driven by the need for collective survival Week 3 Sept 19 Lec Notes Decolonisation and State Formation Recall from European modern state formation Process of modern state came from: Monopolising violence (means of waging war) Consolidating armies Contorlling territory and boundaries Creating apparatus of officials to collect resources and to maintain this structure (development of modern type of bureaucracy/administration) logic of colonial expansion that brings these structure in europe to many other parts of the world Many parts were an outgrowth of the european state, ended up with colonial structures and became modern through decolonisation What about the rest of the world? The Colonial World: 19th and early 20th century Latin America was a combo of spanish colonies and portuguese colonies Most of southeast asia was under the rule of one european nations or the other; many european powers that have fought over the area; Philippines and Spain then war with US and takes on colony of the Phillipines, Indonesia and the Dutch (dutch east indies), British and India and expanded into Burma and Malaya, French come in later as a colonial power and control Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam etc. For Africa, France and UK were many colonists and there are some Germany and Belgium Varieties of colonialism Direct and Indiriect Rule - Colonial administration or use of local leader Eradicate the power existing in the colonized area and replace with the colonist structure (direct rule) Calculation that the colonial power had with the ability to govern territory or training the local people to be colonial administrators or to co opt the local power structure and use them for colonial purposes (indirect rule) what was the relationship between them and the colonial administrators - Internal boundaries and administrative layers. Important way of thinking about what happened at the point where the colonial adminsitiration leaves and leaves behind an existing structure, colonial officials or a number of chiefs, local rulers and that impact it had Economic Structures Social Hierarchies Colonialism was mainly an economic structure; gaining resources abroad and the enrichment of european countries Rather through extractive mining, slavery, etc, colonial powers transformed the economies and societies that have long term implications How did they govern people and how did they think about the people they were governing? Example Vietnam direct rule: Ruled by French (expanded after 1668 but seized controla after 1883, replaces local rulers systematically) By 1925, colonial bureaucracy dominated by 5000 french administrators and educated/trained lots of vietnamese as colonial administrators which spread to what was Indo-China (Cambodia/Laos) Kept Laos as a monarch at times French came late so it was very state led for colonial expansion. The french had a specific way of colonising Figurehead emperor Prior to colonial rule, the idea of territorial boundary was not that significant and the boundaries fluctuated all the time In Africa, much more British, the colonisers here started witha trading company lots of treaties and alliances to expand their interest As state became involved, much less interested in state control and missionisation → indirect rule seen commonly for the british Why choose one over the other? ➔ Presence or absence of larger numbers of European settlers ➔ Geopoloitcal importance of the colony ➔ Economic potential: attracted settlers and made resources possible to sustain administration ➔ Disease environment for european settlers Private trading companies, economics venturers that essentially given rights to establish relations and gain cointorl over terriroty that was given by european monarchies/states that varied - deeper reasons for colonial expansion Example: Indirect Rule in Nigeria How indirect rule affects different areas of Nigeria. Colonisers perspective What are the consequences How and why British used indirect rule in Nigeria introduced by Lord Frederick Lugard Around the year 1906 The british governance So people saw them less as intruders They did this with chiefs who welcomes them with open arms, others were killed Success from the british perspective, the submissiveness of the people Well organised system of taxation as money from taxes was used to the british governance In thenorthern provinces Southern nigeria was dived into west and east and was more complicated No centralised system, every man was a king They didnt see a reason to have a rule The aba womens revolt in 1929 Obas didnt understand english language and education, thus british used this against them by making them sign treaties they did not even understand Indirect rule → language barriers Easier to rule these people through the traditional institutions Indirect rule was way cheaper than direct rule Economic Structures Plantation economies - Large haciendas (Spanish America) - Sugar Plantation (Brazil) And plantations in the philippines, large concentration of land and few number of hands Resource Production, extraction, and trade - Development mostly of primart commodities for export (spices were very important colonial dutch resource whereas the production of sugar in brazil was different) the kinds of labour needed was different Local people were forced to give part of their production to the tax collectors which was a way colonists would extract local resources Slavery Intensification of production through forced labour (i.e Brazil) 4.9 million slaves came to brazil (Sugar, Gold, Agricultural “revival”) Gets in to social consequences as well (massive changes in demographic makeup) Social Hierarchies European dominance and made an ideology of dominance (seen oday with racism and its social consequences and long term) Restructuring of group hierarchies - Linguistic groups, other group identities (Zambia) - New group hierarchies (Rwanda) The Decolinisation Movement The fall of European Empires (WW1 and WW2) Crumbling empires in europe Principle of Self Determination of People and creation of the League of Nations (give some sort of international principle that would support the new states but the consequence of this was that it elevated to an intl level to the idea that people would have their own states) Already movements of liberation and this gave more ammunition toward independence If europeans can have why cant colonies have the same independence Ideologies of emancipation: Franz Fanon Independence and State Building Post colonial states emerged from mobolisation with little else than thin templates Two paths: Collapse of Imperial power, mobilisation or sudden withdrawal - Balkans )collapse of Austro-Hungarian empire) - India Gradual Decolonisation - Malaysia - The Philippines Once these nations gain independence their constitutions still emulate their prior colonisers The long term affects and the ways in which the state builds it self and the structures solidification in colonised states Result: Dozens of new states between 1947-1960 Slower decolonisation after 1960, some as recent as 1980s All engaged in process of “state building” - unification of various peoples - securing and maintaining borders - Building effective security forces and bureaucracy - establishing representative and governance institutions Patrice Lumumba Independence Day Speech Video Struggle for freedom (glorious fight for freedom) Republic of Congo: Struggle for peace and propsperity (social justice) Effects of racial discrimination (and differentiated law); white and Black Consequences of colonial rule for independent states: Governance structures: several inherited from colonial past Their limitations Constitutions and structures of government sometimes developed in other contexts have different consequences in postcolonial states Example 1: the philippines and the US style institutions Example 2 Economies: formerly directed to conloinal sector, requiring redirection and massive change Social hierarchies: groups divided along hierarchies created by colonial power Consequences of direct and indirect rule Direct rule in French Africa: chiefs were integrated into colonial administration and yielded great power Undermined central administration and contributing to patrimonial post independent structure (e.g comparison of cote d’ivoire and ghana: chiefs greater control over land in cote divoire and fewer check on their power) But some argue that there were some benefits (Lange) Indirect rule: typically created these strong local sources of power; ineffective central administration and decentralised despotism Preserving laws from colonial times: impact on LGBTQ community Section 377, reason why being gay is still illegal in many british colonies Building states from territorial boundaries Boundaries remained remarkably stable after independence Leaders inherited people who essentially shared colonial experience Inherit state boundaried on the logic of colonial administration Some recognised homelands in Africa of groups that see themsevles that belong to same identity/ethnic group Transforming Economies and Governing Economic activities largely centred on colonial era economic activity - Retained large foreign presence and interest - Land concentration created by landowning class that had largely been beneficial to colonial economies (plantations) Colonial Hierarchies Ethnic hierarchies Burma Malaysia (good example where indians and chinese were not present in precolonial time but came as a result of economic opportunities in the colonial era) Malaise inherit the more power in the independent state and attempt to preserve a kind of state that it was their state first and the indians and chinese have migrated which become s a real problem for the post colonial state to manage the result of the social hierarchies Rwanda → one of the most dramatic examples of the impact of hierarchies created in colonial ruel where it was the colonisers that created the hierarchies between tutsis and hutus - Tutsis being dominant and maintained their dominance in early days and then a reversal of hierarchy that is attempted which creates the foundations of the genocidal history Conclusion Many countries inherited sattes and their boundaries State building came after: Inherited reps structures or constructing new ones in haste Governance structures remained tainted by colonial past Challenges emerged on: How to establish legitimacy Governance over diverse people often grouped together by colonial boundaries Week 4 readings Rival state formations in china The republican and maoist states This tendency has compartmentalized modern Chinese history into “the abortive revolution” led by the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang, or GMD) and the communist revolution under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Esherick 1995). The history of modern China became the history of (first nationalist, then communist) revolutionary movements: their leaderships, organizations, and strategies preoccupied scholarship, obscuring all other important topics. The Maoist state has suffered the same neglect as its rival, even though as a revolutionary movement the CCP has attracted greater attention from scholars than the GMD. Yet Mao Zedong and his comrades did not just lead a radical revolution; they built a powerful state to realize their ambitions. Moreover, this state has outlived those wild revolutionary dreams and is now a rising global power. Despite recent attempts to place the Maoist state in historical and comparative perspective (e.g., Shue 1988; Wong 1997), the processes by which this state was formed have not been systematically addressed in the literature. the Maoist developmental state was created through the confrontation path characterized by relentless elite polarization and by elites’ controlled mobilization of the masses. This state was thus born out of conditions conducive to structural cohesion similar to the Korean case h the Maoist state in principle adopted a Soviet model, it in fact drew on traditional as well as Republican and Japanese practices. These practices included strong state intervention in the economy, the drive to create comparable economic activities across China’s vast territory, efforts to promote agricultural production and regulate the grain trade, and emphasis on industrialization for military purposes.pg 73 Regarding state ideology, Confucianism and communism have comparable goals for regulating people’s livelihood and comparable expectations for the elites to serve the government. Both are “fractal ideologies” that espouse a similar vision of proper order on any spatial level. The notion that state-making traditions impose broad limits on modern practices is a valuable insight. We have seen that similar arguments have been advanced in the Korean and Indonesian cases with regard to colonial legacies. The Republican state on mainland China was formed in 1912 following the collapse of the Qing Empire During the last decades of the Qing Dynasty, the power of the central state was eroded gradually by massive domestic revolts, military defeats, and efforts at reform. Two main trends led to its eventual collapse: the politicization of the military and the devolution of authority to the provinces.. The result was the so-called New Armies placed under provincial control rather than a unified national military pg 75 At the same time, Soviet military aid and successful military campaigns of mass suppression (especially the “Northern Expedition” to subdue local warlords) strengthened a particular faction in the GMD led by Chiang Kai-shek 78 The Soviet Union trained and armed a new GMD army that would later form a key pillar of the GMD state 79 many party veterans resented being scorned by Soviet advisers and being marginalized when the GMD was reorganized (Wang 1985, 13). Internal conflicts intensified after Sun Yat-sen’s death from cancer in January 1925. Bitter disputes among key GMD leaders over the roles of Soviet advisers and their communist proteg´ es now in the GMD contributed to the assassination of Liao ´ Zhongkai, a top GMD leader, by conservative military officers in August 1925 While earlier scholarship dismissed the Republican state as a complete failure, according to current consensus it was a viable developmental state with ambitious visions, many of which were put into practice (Kirby 2000a). These visions included the creation of a centralized, militarized state in the mold of Nazi Germany (Kirby 1984); the acceleration of economic growth under state leadership (Kirby 1984; 2000b); and cultural reforms to make China a more unified nation (Fitzgerald 1996; Bodenhorn 2002). From building a modern merit-based bureaucracy to organizing elite agitprop groups for mass mobilization and surveillance purposes (Strauss 1998; Eastman 1974, 31–84; Wakeman 2000; Chung 2000), from developing a modern military with great fighting capacity to organizing police in large cities 82 The relationship between the GMD and the CCP went through many phases from 1923, when they began to collaborate, to 1949, when the GMD was defeated in the civil war. The relationship experienced limited collaboration under Comintern direction from 1923 to 1927, brutal conflict from 1927 to 1937, and a temporary truce from 1937 to 1940, ostensibly under a “united front” against the Japanese. This truce effectively ended in 1940. From then until the end of World War II in 1945, the relationship between the two parties could be described as medium-intensity conflict. This conflict exploded into a massive civil war from 1946 to 1949. Out of this war emerged two separate states that confronted each other across the Taiwan Strait: the Maoist state on the mainland and the GMD state on Taiwan. Despite brief diversions, elite polarization was the predominant pattern that formed the Maoist state. This long and brutal process of elite polarization, augmented by the way the CCP engaged the masses through controlled mobilization, changed the party from a feeble urban group of intellectuals to a powerful organization with a cohesive structure pg 85. As in Korea, elite polarization in China ended with a civil war and the permanent separation of two states. Ruralization was accompanied by militarization. Having painstakingly organized peasants and workers only to see their organizations crushed by GMD troops in 1927, CCP leaders now understood that mass mobilization without military backup was folly 88 At the village level, peasants were organized into militias linked together by guerrilla detachments. Militarization had become formalized and institutionalized. A political program that contributed considerably to the structure of the emerging communist party-state was the “party rectification” campaign (Cheng Feng) from 1942 to 1944. In this campaign, all cadres were forced to undergo intense study sessions, read and demonstrate their understanding of theoretical and policy issues, and criticize themselves and others for mistakes. The campaign used the threat of physical and psychological violence to make cadres submit fully to the party and to Mao in particular (Apter and Saich 1994). Many cadres were arrested, tortured, and even killed after they had confessed their mistakes. 90 The Cheng Feng campaign enshrined Mao’s version of history and his supremacy in the party. The ruralization, militarization, and centralization of the CCP left critical legacies for the structure of the Chinese communist state established in 1949. ad decades of experience in mass mobilization in the countryside. With the hard work dedicated to organizing governments in base areas and with the massive victory in the civil war, by 1949 the CCP could form a state in which it monopolized power. The party had sufficient cadres under its command to implement its agenda in all policy areas and throughout the government bureaucracy and did not have to rely on any other groups.22 Comparison with Vietnam in this aspect is instructive. Clear evidence of a cohesive state structure can be found in the domestic campaigns and in the Korean War. The security challenges facing the Chinese socialist state, after having taken over most GMD territories in a quick victory, were daunting. These domestic problems were further compounded by external threats. Less than a year after the birth of the People’s Republic, the Korean War broke out, bringing China to face the most advanced armies on earth. As it mobilized for the war, the Chinese state launched a series of vicious campaigns that lasted for three years: the “anti-counterrevolutionary,” “three-anti” (waste, bureaucratism, and commandism), “five-anti” (bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts, and stealing state economic secrets), and thought reform campaigns.24 These campaigns sought to suppress domestic opposition while transforming society according to the socialist blueprint. Rampant violence was directed against former GMD members, secret society leaders, and other potential class enemies pg 93-94 At least half a million executions and millions of sentences of hard labor, not to mention thousands of suicides, may have resulted from these campaigns (Teiwes 1993, 37–8). Capitalists and intellectuals had to go through mass denunciation sessions and mass trials. These campaigns also organized residents into groups, recruited loyal local cadres, and established local organizations Concurrent with the massive violence directed against urban elites was the “land reform” that targeted rural elites in former GMD territories.26 “Land reform” had been implemented during the civil war in areas under communist control, followed by a radical campaign for the rest of the country in late 1950 pg 94 The Invention of a Modern Theocracy: An Unfinished Revolution How did the fusion of state and religion affect the structure of the state itself? The Islamic Republic combines a theocratic regime—the first of its kinds in the history of Shi’ism—with a republic—the first of its kind in Iran. To initiate, organize, and consolidate this regime and adapt to the challenges of everyday rule, the theocratic elites and their lay allies—their political orientations and affiliations constantly in flux—have modified their understanding of both Islam and politics. The Iranian Revolution—a dominantly secular modern mass rebellion led by a messianic theologian on the margin of the religious establishment—eventually produced a modern militant, theocratic, and messianic Republic, as the balance of power shifted. Drawing from the concept of a “national security state,” usually defined as an extended state using political, economic, diplomatic, and military resources to sustain, assert, and empower itself in the face of real or perceived threat, I call the evolving Islamic Republic a “theological security state.” In this case, a group of midlevel theologians, armed with the theory of velayat faqih, working with a network of intelligence officers, leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and a layer of the intermediary Islamic business class to control all levels of political and military power and many of the religious institutions and economic resources, despite internal discontent, regional instability, and international pressure. Week 4 Lec Notes Sept 26 Revolution and State Formation Origins of the modern state: - War makes states, states make war (tilly) Decolonisation: Tried to build states from previously colonial boundaries - Inherited borders - State building - Colonial impact Revolutions: - New beginnings What are Revolutions? (in the scope fo political change) Revolution is the forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilisation (whether military or civilian or both) in the name of social justice, to create new political institutions. liberating , new direction for the people Its character: Is this revolution? (anti gov protests by region) Graph showing mass mobilisation and institutional change - Occupy wall street - Ukrainian revolution - Anti trump protests - Mass protests; 37 countries Mass protests dont necessarily lead to institutional change Important distinction: driving ideology carrying a vision of social justice; sense of trying to create something new What was the new vision put into place? What kinds of changes in terms of state institutions that came afterwards? French revolution - Led to birth of the modern state - Overthrew monarchical rule Representing everyone in the modern sense and a sense of equality sets it Idea of gov by people for the people takes root in france Commercial class emergence, professionals, early manufacturing, American revolution - Birth of settler states - New constitutional bases of rule The british crown was trying to tax british colonies or settlers who started to create independent states and settlers were resentful of them – eventually go to war 1775-83 American War of Independence 1787 constitution was drafted Early revolutions Part of emergence of the modern state Created principles of representation, equality fo citizens Overthrew monarchical principles and rule by the nobility By some accounts, gave rise to prominence of the bourgeoisie Social revolutions Most prominent theorist: Karl Marx Not an activist for the most part, becomes one later Marxist their of revolution Theory historical change based on: Mode of production (capitalist) Class conflict Revolution Emphasis on the industrial revolution - societal changes, classes come from economic production (wealth etc) Seeing impoverishment etc Bourgeousie are owners or capital and create capital system, new form of producing wealth Marxs Russian Revolution- the boloshevik revolution Lenin and the bolsheviks in russia Added in important dimension to classical marxism: Role of party organisation (vanguard) Dominance of communist party Chinese revolution Revolution through armed struggle Role of the peasantry - Education of masses and party cadres Legitimation of dyanstic rule 19th century qinq dynasty facing pressure No ability to centralise power Try replace government with republican form of government Mao defeated in first attempt in overthrowing the gov Many colonised societies were higyhly agrarian where there is now a model where it becomes a source of inspiration for revolutionary movements That revolution has to occur through armed struggle (the creation of the red army) Classes being exploited by capital, active agent oriented movement with role of the army in the role of revoltuion and mechanism in place to spread ideology and movement to form party cadres to go out to rural areas and educatge the peasants their need to emancipate themselves from old ideas and toward the revolution Irans islamic revolution structural weakness of the authoritarian regime: broad discontent, economic grievances Ideology of change: islam as symbol and inspiration for governance strcutures Mass movement and its momentum Nationalise oil industry Ideology of change Summary Revolutionary Paths Economic decay, deep resentment toward the regime are precursors Mass mobilisation is key, but ideological leadership shapes the direction Outcomes remained modern states, but with different structures Summary: Modern States European Modern States - Modern militaries - Fixed boundaries - revenue collecting institutions (rational admin structures) - Representative institutions Post colonial paths: - Colonial structures and economies - Required state building and redirection - Left weaknesses: weak capacity, often poor representation Revolutionary Paths: - Ideological legitimation - Institutions crafted for revolutionary aims - States designed to implement social reform, deep transformation - Ideology dictate sources of power and structures Modern States and their Structure Common Structures: Legislature Executives Judiciary Some forms are different Legal rational states Patrimonial states Revolutionary states Philippines: Class patrimonial state - US style political institutions - Dyadic relations of resources to client in exchange for political support for the patron (political) Chinas Political Structure - Recognisable institutions, however these institutions can only be understood by understanding the structure/ formalities of the communist party - understanding which positions the most important positions have in the state is essential to understanding the state itself - Mode of legitimacy: must always rule, occupies the institutions of the state as well (communism) Irans Islamin Republic: Implement the islamic revolution = supreme leader has more power than the president Conclusion Modern state is now the main unit of political organisation It is defined by: territorial boundaries Has monopoly over violence Its purpose for the common interest Some variance of structureand capacity relates to the path toward establishing the modern state Week 5 Oct 3 Lec notes Democracy What is a political regime? They are ensemble of patterns within the state determining forms and strategies of access to the process of decision making, the actors (groups, individuals) who have admitted forms such access, and the rules that determine how decisions may ‘legitimately’ be made Institutional aparatus, regularity with rules and forms 3 important elements Forms and strategies of access to the process of decision making Actors who are admitted (or excluded) from such access Rules that determine how decisions may legitimately be made 2 types of regimes: Democratic– political system in which citizens enjoy a number of basic civil and political rights (freedom of speech, expression etc.) and in which their most important political leaders are elected in free and fair elections and accountable under a rule of law Authoritarian– rule by a particular group in which citizens and non ruling groups are restricted in their political activities Democracy and regime characteristics Forms and strategies of access to the process of decision makin - Free and fair elections (although fallacy of elections, quality of democracy) (do voters have enough political education, but still have the right to vote which is important) no tampering, no obstruction in ability to be on ballot, lot about election process Actors who are admitted (or excluded( from such access) - Basic civil rights and political rights - Ability to organise for elections Rules that determine how decision may legitimately be made - Rule of law there has to be respect for rules that are there and a mechanism for those transgressing those rules have consequences so a certian degrees of judiciary economy (gets tricky when courts are always in favour of the government) What is democracy? Procedural definition entails: - Basic civil and political rights - Free and fair election - Accountable under a rule of law Substantive democracy: - Political equality; ability to influece decisions that affect oneself (how doe more citizens become involved and have their voice heard) - Cultural espousal of democratic values - Broader set of rights How to recognise democracy? Elections: are they free and fair? (basic criteria) Voting rights, rights of association, freedom of speech, freedom of the press Turn-over of governments Freedom House Simplifying– crude in terms of classification of countries and world but useful report annually Freedom House Scoring Even when simplifying, it is close enough to some democratic definitions but little different criteria Comparing countries Some cases Is Russia a democracy? Is Singapore a democracy? Is the US a democracy? (are some more democratic than others) How to assess democracy? Procedural measures: are minimum requirements met? Representation: who is represented, how well are people represented Effectiveness of government: does democracy deliver? Procedural measures Free and fair election, basic civil and political rights Issues: - Grey zones of rules surrounding formation of political parties, their ability to comepte - Gerrymandering (manipulating boundaries of electoral constituency) - Voter access to polling stations - Governance after elections Representation: One person one vote? Choice of electoral systems and their impact - Proportional representation - First past the post system - Majoritarian vs consensual principles (lijphart) Federal and unitary states - When have ethnic minorities in particualr territory, how to represent? - Should regions be represented, to reflect their particularities? Limitations? - Marginalised, under represented groups - Minorities with little institutional voice Effectiveness: does democracy deliver? Some dminesions of governance dilemmas: - Fiscal management - Hiring and firing on the basis of merit - Good public services - Control of corruption - Low level of poverty Are there trade-offs? Majoritarian systems: Some reduction of representation but more effective at implementing legislation Can increase corruption (pork barreling) Consensual systems: Might be paralysed when coalitions are fragile But better at representing marginalised groups Two vignettes Austria 1. Proportional representation 2. Coalitions are key Canada 1. District system: fewer parties 2. No coalitions 3. With majorities, law easily passed Some problem…. - France 2024 elections In sum: While we can assess democracy through minimal criteria, there are alsoa number of deeper considerations in assessing democratic quality, including degree and quality of representation as well as the ability of democracy to respond to popular demands and needs Problems in advanced democracies Current challenges to advances democracies Rise of populism Rise of inequality Rise of Populism: “Political movement or party emphasizing a “us vs them” worldview in which the “us” refers to the “people”, defined often in ethnic or communcal terms and seen as engaged in a zero-sum battle with “them”. Context: looking at rise of right wing movements oftentimes opposed to the “them”, most often liberal elites Its manifestations Trumpism in the US: Discourse of “nativism” reifying what are seen as the “real” Americans vs the others (and their defenders) Rise of far-right parties in Europe: How to Explain it? A few explanations: Cultural framing of economic anxiety: the “losers” of globalization Empirical data? In fact, usually when economy is doing well (Relative deprivation) Cultural Backlash: Shift in elite discourse toward inclusion Shift in population demographics through immigration Implications Threat to democratic institutions? See them as defending the “people” against a “corrupt” elite (usually including state leaders and representatives) Tend to contest idea of minority rights, independence of judiciary, role of the media Mistrust of parliament, ”elites”, and democracy Rise of Inequality Increasing income and wealth inequality since the 1980s How to explain it? Complex set of factors but a few include: Deregulation since 1980s One of the consequences of globalization, mostly by reducing incomes at lower levels Changes in corporate compensation practices, financial instruments (stocks, options) Implications Rise of resentment at wealth gap, feeds populism Oligarchic power of the wealthy Increasing concentration of power of large private firms (esp. technology) Current governance seems unable to reverse this trend Conclusion Democracy has often been called the “least bad” of political regimes Its various forms offer different ways of representing people, often times with some trade-offs and limitations in terms of governability While advanced democracies are strong, require adaptation when facing new challenges, such as the rise of populism and inequality Week 6 Readings – for essay 2 The end of the Cold War posed a fundamental challenge to authoritarian regimes Single-party and military dictatorships collapsed throughout Africa, post-communist Eurasia, and much of Asia and Latin America in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, the formal architecture of democracy – particularly multiparty elections – diffused across the globe. new regimes combined electoral competition with varying degrees of authoritarianism Electoral manipulation, unfair media access, abuse of state resources, and varying degrees of harassment and violence skewed the playing field in favor of incumbents. Competitive authoritarian regimes proliferated after the Cold War. By our count, 33 regimes were competitive authoritarian in 1995 – a figure that exceeded the number of full democracies in the developing and post-communist world. hybrid regimes were frequently categorized as flawed, incomplete, or “transitional” democracies. Cambodia was described as a “nascent democracy” that was “on the road to democratic consolidation Haiti was said to be undergoing a “long,”12 “ongoing,”13 and even “unending” transition. Where state and governing party structures were well organized and cohesive, regimes remained stable and authoritarian; where they were underdeveloped or lacked cohesion, regimes were unstable, although they rarely democratized. In hegemonic regimes, elections are so marred by repression, candidate restrictions, and/or fraud that there is no uncertainty about their outcome. Much of the opposition is forced underground and leading critics are often imprisoned or exiled. Thus, in post–Cold War Egypt, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, elections served functions (e.g., a means of enhancing regime legitimacy, generating information, or distributing patronage) other than determining who governed. In these cases, unequal access to finance and the media as well as incumbent abuse of state institutions make elections unfair even in the absence of violence or fraud.34 Thus, even though Mexico’s 1994 election was technically clean, skewed access to resources and media led one scholar to compare it to a “soccer match where the goalposts were of different heights and breadths and where one team included 11 players plus the umpire and the other a mere six or seven players.. In fully authoritarian regimes, basic civil liberties are often violated so systematically that opposition parties, civic groups, and the media are not even minimally protected (e.g., Egypt and Uzbekistan) More frequently, assaults on civil liberties take more subtle forms, including “legal repression,” or the discretionary use of legal instruments – such as tax, libel, or defamation laws – to punish opponents In some regimes, overt repression – including the arrest of opposition leaders, the killing of opposition activists, and the violent repression of protest – is widespread, pushing regimes to the brink of full authoritarianism. On a more modest scale, the Fujimori government in Peru “perfected the technique of ‘using the law to trample the law,’”38 transforming judicial and tax agencies into “a shield for friends of the regime and a weapon against its enemies.”. In Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad used corruption and sodomy charges to imprison his chief rival, Anwar Ibrahim; in Malawi, President Bingu wa Mutharika had his chief rival, ex-President Bakili Muluzi, arrested on corruption charges; and in Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma used corruption charges to derail Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko’s presidential candidacy most widespread form of “legal” repression is the use of libel or defamation laws against journalists, editors, and media outlets. Thus, in Malaysia, the Mahathir government entered into a “suing craze” in the wake of the 1998– 1999 political crisis, making widespread use of defamation suits to silence critical reporting We consider the playing field uneven when (1) state institutions are widely abused for partisan ends, (2) incumbents are systematically favored at the expense of the opposition, and (3) the opposition’s ability to organize and compete in elections is seriously handicapped. Three aspects of an uneven playing field are of particular importance: access to resources, media, and the law.. In Mexico, for example, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) reportedly drew $1 billion in illicit state finance during the early 1990s In underdeveloped countries with weak private sectors, such abuse can create vast resource advantages Incumbents also may use the state to monopolize access to private-sector finance. private media is widespread but major media outlets are linked to the governing party – via proxy ownership, patronage, and other illicit means. In Ukraine, for example, President Kuchma controlled television coverage through an informal network of private media entities In many competitive authoritarian regimes, incumbents pack judiciaries, electoral commissions, and other nominally independent arbiters and manipulate them via blackmail, bribery, and/or intimidation. As a result, legal and other state agencies that are designed to act as referees rule systematically in favor of incumbents. This allows incumbents to engage in illicit acts – including violations of democratic procedure – with impunity Thus, in Malaysia, a packed judiciary ensured that a schism in the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO) was resolved in Prime Minister Mahathir’s favor in 1988; a decade later, it allowed Mahathir to imprison his main rival, Anwar Ibrahim, on dubious charges As Collier and Levitsky warned, such an “excessive proliferation of new terms and concepts” is likely to result in “conceptual confusion We contend that competitive authoritarianism is a new phenomenon and that no existing term adequately captures it Fujimori’s Peru was said to be a “new kind of hybrid authoritarian regime”68; and the PRI regime in Mexico was labeled a “hybrid, part-free, part authoritarian system” that does “not conform to classical typologies. Latvia the main nondemocratic feature was the denial of citizenship rights to people of Russian descent, in El Salvador it was the military’s tutelary power and human-rights violations. Yet were both labeled as partly free by Freedom House Juan Linz argued that although scholars “might positively value some aspects” of hybrid regimes, they “should be clear that they are not democracies (even using minimum standards).” To avoid confusion, Linz proposed “the addition of adjectives to ‘authoritarianism’ rather than to ‘democracy. Viewing competitive authoritarianism as a product of the contemporary world – Competitive authoritarianism is a post–Cold War phenomenon We limit the category to regimes in which opposition forces use democratic institutions to contest seriously for executive power. Beginning in the late 1980s, major changes in the international environment undermined the stability of many closed regimes and encouraged the rise of electoral ones. First, the end of the Cold War led to a withdrawal of external support for many superpower-sponsored dictatorships. Soviet-backed Leninist regimes and U.S.-backed anti-communist regimes faced a precipitous decline in external military and economic assistance. the elimination of Cold War subsidies coincided with mounting economic crises, which undermined the stability of many autocracies. States became bankrupt, patronage resources disappeared, and – in many cases – coercive apparatuses began to disintegrate, leaving autocrats with little choice but to liberalize or abandon power. The collapse of the Soviet Union also led to a marked shift in the global balance of power, in which the West – particularly the United States – emerged as the dominant center of economic and military power. In the post–Cold War era, as in interwar Eastern Europe,89 the disappearance of a military, economic, and ideological alternative to the liberal West had a major impact on peripheral states. For example, it created an “almost universal wish to imitate a way of life associated with the liberal capitalist democracies of the core regimes,”90 which encouraged the diffusion of Western democratic models. With the disappearance of the Soviet threat, the United States and other Western powers stepped up efforts to encourage and defend democracy through a combination of external assistance, military and diplomatic pressure, and unprecedented political conditionality.94 In 1990, the United States, United Kingdom, and France announced that they would link future economic assistance to democratization and human rights. Western governments and multilateral institutions began to condition loans and assistance on the holding of elections and respect for human rights.95 Although it was never applied consistently, the “new political conditionality” induced many autocrats to hold multiparty elections Finally, the post–Cold War period saw the emergence of a transnational infrastructure of organizations – including international party foundations, electionmonitoring agencies, and a plethora of international organizations (IOs) and nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) – that were committed to the promotion of human rights and democracy.101 Strengthened by new information technologies such as the Internet, transnational human-rights and democracy networks drew international attention to human-rights abuses, lobbied Western governments to take action against abusive governments, and helped protect and empower domestic opposition groups. At the same time, the growing number and sophistication of international election-observer missions helped call international attention to fraudulent elections, which deterred an increasing number of governments from attempting fraud. These changes in the international environment raised the external cost of authoritarianism and created incentives for elites in developing and postcommunist countries to adopt the formal architecture of Western-style democracy, which – at a minimum – entailed multiparty elections. striking in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of de jure single-party regimes fell from 29 in 1989 to zero in 1994, However the diffusion of multiparty elections did not always bring about democracy External democratizing pressure was limited in several ways. First, it was applied selectively and inconsistently, with important countries and regions (e.g., China and the Middle East) largely escaping pressure.106 Second, external pressure was often superficial. In much of the world, Western democracy promotion was “electoralist” in that it focused almost exclusively on multiparty elections while often ignoring dimensions such as civil liberties and a level playing field. the post–Cold War international environment raised the minimum standard for regime acceptability, but the new standard was multiparty elections, not democracy. transitions were more likely to result in regimes that combined multiparty elections with some form of authoritarian rule.112 In other words, they were likely to result in competitive authoritarianism Thus, although the end of the Cold War triggered a wave of democratization, it also triggered a wave of hybridization. The “fourth wave” was at least as competitive authoritarian as it was democratic. , if incumbents allow democratic procedures to run their course, they risk losing power. In effect, such challenges force incumbents to choose between egregiously violating democratic rules, at the cost of international isolation and domestic conflict, and allowing the challenge to proceed, at the cost of possible defeat. The result is often a regime crisis, as occurred in Cambodia and Russia in 1993, the Dominican Republic in 1994. First, where linkage to the West was extensive, as in Eastern Europe and the Americas, competitive authoritarian regimes democratized during the post–Cold War period.. High linkage created powerful incentives for authoritarian rulers to abandon power, rather than crack down, in the face of opposition challenges. It also created incentives for successor governments to rule democratically. Among high-linkage cases, not a single authoritarian government remained in power through 2008 and nearly every transition resulted in democracy. This outcome occurred even where domestic conditions for democracy were unfavorable (e.g., Guyana, Macedonia, and Romania). Where state and governing-party structures were underdeveloped and lacked cohesion, regimes were less stable. Because incumbents lacked the organizational and coercive tools to prevent elite defection, steal elections, or crack down on protest, they were vulnerable to even relatively weak opposition challenges. – states’ vulnerability to Western democratizing pressure (which we call Western leverage) – was often decisive. Like all theories of regime change, ours cannot explain all cases. Regime outcomes are influenced by a variety of factors – including economic performance, the strength and strategies of opposition movements, leadership, and historical contingency Nevertheless, linkage, leverage, and organizational power explain a striking number of cases. Framed in terms of Dahl’s cost of toleration versus cost of suppression,many leading theories expect stable democracy to emerge when either (1) increased societal wealth or equality reduces the cost of toleration; or (2) a strengthening of civil society or opposition forces – often a product of socioeconomic modernization – increases the cost of repression. Changes in the post–Cold War international environment heightened the cost of suppression in much of the developing world. Thus, it was an externally driven shift in the cost of suppression, not changes in domestic conditions, that contributed most centrally to the demise of authoritarianism in the 1980s and 1990s. democratizing impact of conditionality is far greater in countries with extensive linkage to the West. highlights the role of incumbent organizational power in shaping regime outcomes. Recent studies of democratization have given considerable attention to the role of societal or opposition-centered factors, including civil society,129 organized labor,130 mass protest,131 and opposition cohesion,132 in undermining authoritarianism and/or installing democracy. However, in much of post-Cold War Africa, Asia, and post-communist Eurasia, civil societies and opposition parties were weak and fragmented; as a result, the societal push for democratization was meager.133 In many of these cases, regime outcomes were rooted less in the character or behavior of opposition movements than in incumbents’ capacity to thwart them. Where incumbents possessed a powerful coercive apparatus and/or party organization, even well-organized and cohesive opposition challenges often failed. successful opposition movements were often rooted in state and party weakness. Much of the financial and organizational muscle behind successful opposition challenges in Zambia (1990–1991), Kenya (2002), Georgia (2003), and Ukraine (2004) was provided by ex-government officials who had defected only weeks or months before the transition. the assumption that hybrid regimes were “in transition” to democracy biased analyses in important ways. Scholars gave disproportionate attention to factors that shaped the performance and stability of democracy, such as constitutional design, executive–legislative relations, electoral and party systems, and voting behavior. As a result, the factors that contribute to building and sustaining contemporary nondemocracies, as well as the internal dynamics of these regimes, were left underexplored. Another informal institution found in many competitive authoritarian regimes is organized corruption. In Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Senegal, Russia, and Taiwan, institutionalized corruption and patronage and proxy-ownership networks bound key economic, media, and civil-society actors to governing parties.. In countries characterized by extreme underdevelopment (e.g., Cambodia and Malawi) or extensive state control of the economy (e.g., Belarus and Gabon), civil society and the private sector are generally small and impoverished, leaving the opposition with limited access to resources. Unless parties have a generous external patron (e.g., Nicaragua and Slovakia) or established organizations, identities, and core constituencies (e.g., Albania, Guyana, and Malaysia), joining the government may be the only viable means of securing the resources and media access necessary to remain a viable political force. We exclude from the analysis other types of hybrid (or “partly free”) regimes, including a variety of regimes in which political competition exists but nonelected officials retain considerable power, such as (1) those in which the most important executive office is not elected (e.g., Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, and Morocco) 2. regimes in which top executive positions are filled via elections but the authority of elected governments is seriously constrained by the military or other nonelected bodies (e.g., Guatemala, Pakistan, Thailand, and Turkey in the early 1990s)168; and (3) competitive regimes under foreign occupation (e.g., Lebanon in the early 1990s) We also exclude cases in which competitive authoritarianism collapses before the completion of a single presidential or parliamentary term,169 as well as cases in which state collapse makes it difficult to identify any kind of organized political regime.170 Finally, we limit our study to regimes that were competitive authoritarian prior to 1995 in order to evaluate the impact of our variables over a significant period (at least 13 years). Thus, cases that became competitive authoritarian after 1995 (e.g., Nigeria and Venezuela) are excluded from the sample Regimes “cross the line” from democratic to competitive authoritarian if we find evidence of centrally coordinated or tolerated electoral manipulation, systematic civil-liberties violations (i.e., abuse is a repeated rather than an exceptional event and is orchestrated or approved by the national government), or an uneven playing field (i.e., opposition parties are denied significant access to finance or mass media or state institutions are systematically deployed against the opposition). During the initial period (1990–1995), we scored Botswana as competitive authoritarian due to extreme inequalities in access to media and finance; the Dominican Republic as competitive authoritarian due to the Balaguer government’s packing of the electoral commission and large-scale manipulation of voter rolls; and Slovakia as competitive authoritarian due to Meciar’s abuse of media and harassment of ˇ parliamentary opposition. On the other side of the line, Brazil and the Philippines suffered serious problems of democratic governance – including extensive clientelism, corruption, and/or a weak rule of law – in the early 1990s, but we found no evidence of systematic electoral abuse, civil-liberties violations against political opposition, or skewed access to media or finance. Hence, these cases were scored as democratic and excluded from the analysis. With respect to the line between competitive and full authoritarianism, our main criterion is whether opposition parties can use democratic institutions to compete seriously for power First, it is bounded by regime type. The fact that our sample includes only competitive authoritarian regimes – and thus is not representative of the broader universe of regimes – limits our ability to make general claims about the effects of linkage and organizational power. We do not, therefore, offer a general theory of regime change. Second, our study is bounded historically. Our theory of linkage’s democratizing effects is relevant only for periods of Western liberal hegemony. We do not expect ties to the West to have had similar effects during the Cold War period. Where states and governing parties were strong, competitive authoritarian regimes remained stable; where they were weak, regimes were more likely to break down. Reading 2 Harkness Military loyalty and the failure of democratization in Africa: how ethnic armies shape the capacity of presidents to defy term limits The military plays a crucial role in furthering or hindering democratization in Africa. 82% of presidents backed by ethnic armies attempt to defy their constitutions and extend their hold on power, as opposed to 31% of other leaders. Freedom House rates only 12% of Africa today as “free”. the role of the military in democratization processes Abdoulaye Wade was Senegal’s first democratically elected president, following four decades of single-party, authoritarian rule. Wade soon began reversing these trends and retrenching past autocratic practices, culminating in his bid to defy the constitution’s two-term limit and cling to power. Facing military defection by a diverse army not personally loyal to him, mass demonstrations and protests, and defeat at the polls, Wade peacefully handed power over to his elected successor, ultimately furthering Senegal’s democratization. Economic crisis in the 1980s led to structural adjustment programmes, mandating deep cuts in agricultural funding that undermined these patron-client networks. His 2007 re-election bid was marred by manipulations and irregularities. He also began exhibiting worrying authoritarian tendencies, increasingly concentrating power in the presidency. Wade packed state institutions, including the

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