Over-all, the wars helped make Chile, not by a combination of blood and iron,but by allowing a fiscal improvisation fueled by duties on exports of com-modities (Bethell 1987a, p. 610

The wars occurredtoo soon after independence and were fought by countries not capable ofresponding in the pattern described by Tilly and others

The easy availability of external financing allowed the state the luxury ofnot coming into conflict with those social sectors who possessed the re-quired resources.

What were the effects of the wars of 19th-century Latin America on thefiscal capacity of the state? Instead of a state built on “blood and iron,”they constructed a constantly bankrupt beggar made of blood and debt.

The government also asked foran internal loan of 10 million soles. This request generated 1 million soles,largely from the “popular classes,” as the rich did not want to risk theirmoney (Bonilla 1978, p. 99).23 During the same war, the Chilean legislaturewas repeatedly unable to impose a wealth or an income tax (

Moreover, there is no discernible difference in the fiscal response to anyparticular category of war in Latin America.21 It might be more accurateto say that the “right kind” of war came too soon. The Spanish conquestof the 16th century had already subjugated the most powerful enemy tothe criollos, the Indians. Given the important role of the “frontier” in thedevelopment of the European state (Bartlett 1993) and the United States,as well as the experience of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, the presenceof an easily defined ethnic enemy outside the borders of a state could alsohave played an important role in Latin American political development.2

Taxes do not collect themselves, but require a considerable ad-ministrative apparatus. Following the distinction made by Michael Mann(1986), we can say that even if the Latin American states were despotic,they were infrastructurally ineffectual.

The War ofthe Pacific may be the best example of the consequences of the externalorientation of these states and the lack of domestic domination. It was “atheart a bald struggle over exports among jealous Chile, Bolivia, and Peru”(Gootenberg 1993, p. 182). “All three countries were hard up, and run byoligarchies which disliked paying taxes and looked to revenue from thesefertilizers [nitrate] as a substitute” (Kiernan 1955, p. 14).

The fiscal use of trade thus contradicted anypossibility of protectionist economic policy

If they could not borrow on international markets (as was the case fromroughly 1830 to 1870), Latin American states could sell access to a com-modity. Guano allowed Peru to become what Shane Hunt (1973) hascalled a “rentier state.”

In and of itself, however, relying on debt and the printing press doesnot explain why the Latin American countries did not impose domestictaxes after the wars. Many European countries initially used debt to payfor wars and later taxed in order to meet their obligations. What distin-guishes Latin America is that the fiscal reckoning never came. Moreover,government debt did not encourage the creation of a stable domestic fi-nancial market, a critical contribution of war in the cases of Britain andthe Netherlands. Rather, government paper fueled unproductive cycles ofspeculation and ruin. Because of the risk involved, interest rates remainedusurious, further hampering domestic development and increasing exter-nal dependence.The availability of external resources freed the state from having toexploit the domestic economy. The relationship between the state and theglobal economy had three legs: foreign debt, the sale of commodities, andcustoms

The Argentine government also borrowed: by 1840,the debt stood at 36 million pesos while the total income for that year was1,710,491 pesos (Halperı ́n-Donghi 1982, p. 213). The response to later warswas no different. Between 1865 and 1876, Argentina acquired almost £19million of debt (Pomer [1968] 1987, p. 238). By 1885, the figure was £26million (Randall 1977, 2:215).

Thus Latin America was de-prived of both a political and a social anchor on which to base institutionaldevelopment. Finally, the Latin American state was never able to imposean internal unity required for the extraction process, even in the face ofmilitary threats. As strange as it might appear given the oppression soendemic to the continent, the Latin American state may have sufferedfrom an incomplete process of internal domination

The relevant point, however, remains the same: Unlike other LatinAmerican countries, Paraguay autofinanced its war.

In no case do we see anyrelationship between war (either internal or external) and the expansion ofthe fiscal penetration of the state

Even if the state grew (and this was not universally true), it did notdevelop the fiscal musculature associated with the warring state.11 Thestimulus of war did not produce the dramatic increase in the institutionalcomplexity of extraction associated with the theoretical model.

Wars only make states when there already exists someform of union between a politically or militarily dominant institution anda social class that sees it as the best means with which to defend andreproduce its privilege.

There is a causal ambiguity in Tilly’s famous aphorism:Which came first, states or wars?

The Latin American cases suggest that there are three critical prerequi-sites for institutional development aided by war. First, the relevant statesmust be forced to turn inward in order to meet the financial challengesof war. Second, adequate administrative mechanisms must be in place tomanage the explosion in both revenues and expenditures. Third, the cen-tral state must have already established sovereignty over its territory andmust be supported by enough local actors as to make domestic extractionprofitable

Only some wars built states, only some states were built by wars.The European experience indicates that warfare in and of itself does notnecessarily lead to state making. Several centuries of prior warfare hadnot produced states in Europe before the 16th century. Rather, as Tilly(1990) has emphasized, particular circumstances found in parts of Europebetween 1600 and 1800 promoted conflict-led state development.

The key to the relationship between war and state making in WesternEurope is what Finer (1975) calls the “extraction-coercion” cycle. We beginwith the obvious fact that wars require capital: By the 16th century, warbecame so expensive as to require the mobilization of an entire country.Professional armies clearly outperformed any rivals, but these required“ample and continuous amounts of money” (Howard 1976, p. 37). Thesechanges causally linked military and political development.

Charles Tilly has best summarized this processwith his statement that “war made the state, and the state made war”

Using data from 11 Latin American countries, this article challengesthe universality of the positive relationship between war and statemaking. Availability of external resources, state organizational ca-pacity, and alliances with social actors are shown to help determinethe political response to armed conflict. Overall, the article empha-sizes the importance of causal sequence in determining the effect ofwar. War did not make states in Latin America because it occurredunder very different historical circumstances than during the Euro-pean “military revolution.” Without the prior establishment of politi-cal authority and without a link between such an organization andsocial actors, war will not contribute to institutional development

In regions of cap italized coercion, an intermediate situation prevailed: however uneasily, rulers relied on acquiescence fr om both landlords and merchants, drew revenues fr om both land and trade, and thus created dual state structures in which nobles confronted - but also finally collaborated with -financiers

Both the character and the weight of state activity varied systematically as a fu nction of the economy that prevailed within a state's boundaries. In CfJercion­intensive regions, rulers commonly drew resources fo r warmaking and other activities in kind, through direct requisition and conscription. Customs and excise yielded small returns in relatively uncommercialized economies, but the institution of head taxes and land taxes created ponderous fiscal machines, and put extensive power into the hands of landlords, village heads, and others who exercised intermediate control over essential resources. In capital-intensive regions, the presence of capitalists, commercial exchange, and substantial municipal organizations set serious limits on the state's direct exertion of control over individuals and households, but fa cilitated the use of relatively efficient and painless taxes on commerce as sources of state revenue

Warmaking frequently involved European states in the production of arms, and extraction in the production of goods (e.g. salt, matches, and tobacco) whose monopolies fed state coffers

The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis ( 1 5 5 9), fo r example, created the kingdom of Savoy-Piedmont, and placed Emmanuel-Philibert on its throne. Soon the quest fo r fu nds drove the new king to innovate: first a profitable fo rced sale of salt, second a census to determine who was taxable, then a tax based on each community's productive area. The tax fo rced adjacent communities to delineate their boundaries precisely, which drew them into preparing cadasters and creating officials to administer them (Rambaud and Vincienne 1 9 6.r I I). Everywhere extractive efforts not only withdrew valuable resources fr om their customary uses but also created new fo rms of political organization

adjudicatio,, : authoritative settlement of disputes among members of the subject population; distribution: intervention in the allocation of goods among members of the subject population; produdion: control of the creation and transformation of goods and services by members of the subject population.

statemaking: attacking and checking competitors and challengers within the territory claimed by the state; warmaking: attacking rivals outside the territory already claimed by the state; protection: attacking and checking rivals of the rulers' principal allies, whether inside or outside the state's claimed territory.

Over the last thousand years, European states have undergone a peculiar evolution: from wasps to locomotives. Long they concentrated on war, leaving most activities to other organizations, just so long as those organizations yielded tribute at appropriate intervals. Tribute-taking states remained fierce but light in weight by comparison with their bulky successors; they stung, but they didn't suck dry. As time went on, states - even the capital-intensive varieties - took on activities, powers and commitments whose very support constrained them. These locomotives ran on the rails of sustenance from the civilian population and maintenance by a civilian staff. Off the rails, the warlike engines could not run at all.

T.l!s point is not to give a "complete" account (w hatever that might be), but to get the main connections right.

Such arrangements at the level of ��QW, vill�! or reiign dearly atIectPjtJbe viability of diflerent kinds of taxation, con�cription, and surveillance

Fr nd En land eventuall fo llowed the capitalized coercion I]ode which produced fu ll-fledged national states earlier tfian tfie coer on­intensive and capital-intensive mode�id.

states having the st coercive means tended 0 win wars; efficiency (the ratio·o output to mput) came second to e ectlve s total OutPut)

he or anization of major social classes within a state's territory, and their relations to the state, sigm cant y a ecte the strategies rulers employed to extract resources, the resistance they met, the st e te le UTa e orgamzation extraction and stru Ie laid down, and therefore t e e cICncy 0 resource extraction.

No one designed the principal components of national states - treasuries, courts, central a�llJ.inistrations, and so on. T.!t�y usually fo rmed as more or less i�ertent by-prod��ts oLeffgrts to carry Ollt more immediate tasks, especjally the creation and rt of rce

In the nature of the case. national states alwa)'s appear in compet.i.tjg!L with each other, and gain their identities by contrast with ilia! �; they bclong to �)Istems of states.

National states unite substantial milita , extractive ·ve and sometimes even istributive and productive organizations in a relatively coordinated central structure. The long survival and coexistence of all three types tells against any notion of European state formation as a single, unilinear process, or of the national state - which did, indeed, eventually prevail - as an inherently superior form of government

Coercive means and ca ital merge where the same objects (e.g. workhouses) serve Oltabon omination. For the most part, however, they remain.. sufficient�stirW0 �llow us to analyze them separately.

What of coercion? Coercion includes all concerted application, threatened or actual, of action that conunonly causes loss or damage to the persons or possessions of individuals or groups who are aware of both the action and the potential damage. (The cumbersome definition excludes inadvertent, indirect, and secret damage.)

Although states strongly reflect the organization of coercion, they actually show the effects of capital as well; as the rest of this book will demonstrate, various combinations of capital and coercion produced very different kinds of states.

Lewis M�mford made a less obvious contribution. Implicitly, he fa shioned a threshold-and-balance theory of urbanism. For Mumford, two great fo rces drive the growth of cities: the concentration of political power, and the expansion of productive means. Below a threshold combining minimum levels of power and production, only villages and bands exist.

We continued, more or less unthinkingly, to assume that European states fo llowed one main path, the one marked by Britain, France, and Brandenburg-Prussia, and that the experiences of other states constituted attenuated or fa iled versions of the same proce� That was wrong. This book attempts to repair the errors of the previous 0 r

In this promising analysis, the state figures chiefly as an instrument of the national [!l..!!I!� class, an instrument that serves the interest of that class in the world economy. However, world system analyses have so far failed to produce a well­articulated theory linking the actual organizational structures of states to their positions within the world system

The s . . ___ I im lic.ated in the generation and distribution Ius value a . eeks to Its own ower an wea

eopolitical analyses of state form­ation attach great impOrtance- to thc--international system as the shaper of states within it. lieopohncal arguments ordlOardY claim that lOterstate relations have a logic and influence of their own, and that state formatio� t1lerefOre responds stron Iy to the current s stem of relations among states. In a characteristic e ort, ames osenau distinguishes fo ur 'latterns of national adaptation" to international politics: acquiescent, intransige'iit, promotiv!L��9 meser-vativ

f most students of state formation have adopted a statist perspective, consfaering the transformation of any particular state to result chiefly from noneconomIC events withInTtS-6wri tcrrito , eacnof the oti-iCr ulree er: s�ctives as had in uentla a vocates.

"If, however, too large a proportion of the state's resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the long term" (Kennedy 1 9 87: xvi). Meanwhile, other states are amassing wealth, reinvesting in the creation of new wealth, and benefiting from their lesser obligation to pay for military force.

@at accounts jilr the great variation (IVer time and sp ace in the kinds of states that have prevailed in Europe since AD 990, and why did European states eventually co nverge on di(fere1lt lJariants (if the national statd'

States form systems to the extent that they interact, and to the degree that their interaction significantly affects each party's fate. Since states always grow out of competition for control of territory and population, they invariably appear in clusters, and usually f01'll((SYStcifi) . The system of states that now prevails almost everywhere on earth �ape in Europe after AD 990, then began extending its control far outside the continent five centuries later.

may soon lose their incredible hegemony

If all the peoples on behalf of whom someone has recently made a claim to separate statehood were actually to acquire their own territories, the world would splinter from its present I6o-odd recognized states to thousands of statelike entities, most of them tiny and economically unviabl

natwnal states - states governing multiple contiguous regions and their cities by means of centralized, differentiated, and autonomous structures - have appeared only rarely.

Over the eight or ten millennia since the couple first appeared, cities and states have oscillated between love and hate. Armed conquerors have often razed cities and slaughtered their inhabitants, only to raise new capitals in their place. City people have bolstered their independence and railed against royal interference in urban affairs, only to seek their king's protection against bandits, pirates, and rival groups of merchants. Over the long run and at a distance, cities and states have proved indispensable to each other.

States have been the world's largest and most powerful organizations for more than five thousand years. Let us define states as coer�ion-wielding o!Kllnizations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and·exercise clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories.

Radically simplified designs for social organization seem to court the same risks of failure courted by radically simplified designs for natural environments. The failures and vulnerability of monocrop commercial forests and genetically engineered, mechanized mono- cropping mimic the failures of collective farms and planned cities. At this level, I am making a case for the resilience of both social and nat- ural diversity and a strong case about the limits, in principle, of what we are likely to know about complex, functioning order.

In sum, the legibility of a society provides the capacity for large- scale social engineering, high-modernist ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that de- sire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social ter- rain on which to build.

ar, revolution, and economic collapse often radically weaken civil society as well as make the populace more receptive to a new dispensation.

I shall argue that the most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering originate in a pernicious combination of four elements. All four are necessary for a full-fledged disaster

But it is harder to grasp why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry. I aim, in what follows, to provide a convincing account of the logic behind the failure of some of the great utopian social engi- neering schemes of the twentieth century.

I do not wish to push the analogy further than it will go, but much of early modern European statecraft seemed similarly devoted to ra- tionalizing and standardizing what was a social hieroglyph into a leg- ible and administratively more convenient format. The social sim- plifications thus introduced not only permitted a more finely tuned system of taxation and conscription but also greatly enhanced state ca- pacity. They made possible quite discriminating interventions of every kind, such as public-health measures, political surveillance, and relief for the poor.

I came to see them as a state's attempt to make a society legible, to ar- range the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion

word about the road not taken. Originally, I set out to understand why the state has always seemed to be the enemy of "people who move around," to put it crudely. In the context of Southeast Asia, this prom- ised to be a fruitful way of addressing the perennial tensions between mobile, slash-and-burn hill peoples on one hand and wet-rice, valley kingdoms on the other. The question, however, transcended regional geography. Nomads and pastoralists (such as Berbers and Bedouins), hunter-gatherers, Gypsies, vagrants, homeless people, itinerants, run- away slaves, and serfs have always been a thorn in the side of states. Efforts to permanently settle these mobile peoples (sedentarization) seemed to be a perennial state project-perennial, in part, because it

The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants.

Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

or other elites. States are central to our understanding of what a society is. Where states are strong, societies are relatively territorialised and centralised. That is the most general statement we can make about the autonomous power of the state.

Thus when states did increase their 'private' resources, these were soon carried off into civil society by their own agents. Hence resulted the oscillation between imperial/patrimonial and feudal regimes first analysed by

utonomy. Therefore, autonomous state power is the product of the usefulness of enhanced territorial-centralis ation to social life i

In this essay I have argued that the state is essentially an arena, a place—just as reductionist theories have argued—and yet this is precise ly the origin and mechanism of its autonomous powers. The state, unlike the principal power actors of civil society, is territorially bounded and centralised. Societies need some of their activities to be regulated over a centralised territory. So do dominant econom ic classes, Churches and other ideological power movements, and military elites. They, therefore, entrust power resources to state elites which they are incapable of fully recovering, precisely because their own socio-spatial basis of organisation is not

In the long-run, despite attempts at absolutism, states failed to acquire despotic powers through this because it also enhanced the infrastruc tural capacities of civil society groups, especially of capitalist property holders. This was most marked in Western Europe and as the balance of geo-political power tilted Westwards—and especially to Britain—the despotically weak state proved the general model for the modern

e set up. Hence, there are two phases in the development of despotism : the growth of territorial-centralization, and the loss of control over it. First function, then exploitation— let us take them in order.

points. First, not all warfare is most efficiently organized territorially-centrally—guerillas, military feudalism and warrior bands are all examples of relatively decentred military orga nisations effective at many historical periods. Second, the effective scope of military power does not cover a single, unitary territory. In fact, it has two rather different territorial radii of effective control. Militaristic control of everyday behaviour requires such a high level of organised coercion, logistical back-up and surplus extrac tion that it is practical only within close communications to the armed forces in areas of high surplus availability. It does not spread evenly over entire state territories. It remains concentrated in pockets and along communications routes. It is relatively ineffective at penetrating peasant agriculture,

tes'. Thus states cannot be the simple instrument of classes, for they have a different territo

These four tasks are necessary, either to society as a whole or to interest groups within it. They are undertaken most efficiently by the personnel of a central state who become indispensable. And they bring the state into functional relations with diverse, sometimes cross-cutting groups between whom there is room to manœuvre. The room can be exploited. Any state involved in a multiplicity of power relations can play off interest groups agai

ut necessity is the mother o

Where stateless societies conquer ones with states, they either them selves develop a state or they induce social regress in the conquered society. There are good sociological reasons for this. Only three alternative bases for order exist, force, exchange and custom, and none of these are sufficient in the long-run. At some point new exigencies arise for which custom is inadequate ; at some point to bargain about everything in exchange relations is inefficient and disintegrating ; while force alone, as Parsons emphasized, will soon 'deflate'. In the long-run normally taken for granted, but enforce able, rules are necessary to bind together strangers or semi-strang er

Two conclusions emerge. First, in the whole history of the development of the infrastructure of power there is virtually no technique which belongs necessarily to the state, or conversely to civil society. Second, there is some kind of oscillation between the role of the two in social development. I hope to show later that it is not merely oscillation, but

s. What had started by bolstering despotism continued by undermining it when the techniques spread beyond state confines. The states could not keep control over their own logistical inventions. And this is generally the case of all such inventions, whatever period of history we consider. In our time we have instances such as 'sta tistics' : originally things which apptrtain to the state, later a useful method of systematic information-gathering for any power organi zation, especially large capitalist corporations. However, converse examples are not difficult to find either, where states appropriate infrastructural techniques pioneered by civil society gr

liar to itself. The varied techniques of power are of three main types : military, economic and ideological. They are characteristic of all social relationships. The state uses them all, adding no fourth means peculiar to itself. This has made reductionist theories of the state more plausible because the state seems dependent on resources also found more generally in civil society. If they are all wrong, it is not because the state manipulates means of power denied to other groups. The state is not autono mous in this sense.

ong. They are 'despotically weak' but 'infra structurally strong'. Let us clearly distinguish these two types of state power. The first sense denotes power by the state elite itself over civil society. The second denotes the power of the state to penetrate and centrally co-ordinate the activities of civil society through its own infrastructure. The second type of power still allows the possibility that the state itself is a mere instrument of forces within civil society, i.e. that it has no despotic power at all. The two are analytically autonomous dimensions

. All infrastructurally powerful states, including the capitalist democracies, are strong in relation to individuals and to the weaker groups in civil society, but the capitalist democratic states are feeble in relation to dominant groups—at least in comparison to most historical states

society. Perhaps I should qualify this, for the secret decisions of politicians and bureaucrats penetrate our everyday lives in an often infuriating way, deciding we are not eligible for this or that benefit, including, for some persons, citizenship itself. But their power to change the fundamental rules and overturn the distribution of power within civil society is feeble—without the backing of a formidable social

But there is a second sense in which people talk of 'the power of the state', especially in today's capitalist democracies. We might term this infrastructural power, the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political deci sions throughout the realm. This was comparatively weak in the historical societies just mentioned—once you were out of sight of the Red Queen, she had difficulty in getting at you. But it is power fully developed in all industrial societies. W

with reductionism. I will argue in this paper that the state is merely and essentially an arena, a place, and yet this is the very source o

ctionist. The state is still nothing in itself : it is merely the embodiment of physical force in society. The state is not an arena where domestic economic/ideological issues are resolved, rather it is an arena in which military force is mobilized domestically and used domestically and, above all,

discuss two essential parts of the definition, centrality and terri toriality, in relation to two types of state power, termed here despotic and infrastructural power. I argue that state autonomy, of both despotic and infrastructural forms, flows principally from the state's unique ability to provide a territori

bsent, Des‑potic, and Shackled Leviathan

These are all possibilities, and this diversity, rather than convergence to one of these outcomes, is the norm. Neverthe‑less, there is also a glimmer of hope, because humans are capable of constructing a Shackled Leviathan, which can resolve conf licts, refrain from despotism, and pro‑mote liberty by loosening the cage of norms. Indeed, a lot of human progress de‑pends on societies’ ability to build such a state. But building and defending— and controlling— a Shackled Leviathan takes effort, and is always a work in progress, often fraught with danger and instability.

Wyoming’s customs and norms favored women compared to other parts of the world. Rather, the state’s legislature granted them voting rights, partly to make it more attractive for women to move to this new state, partly to ensure that there would be enough voters to meet the population requirement for state‑hood, and partly because once African Americans began gaining full citizenship and voting rights, it seemed less acceptable to leave women out of this process. We’ll see in the next chapter that there are many reasons why the cage of norms often starts breaking down once a state capable of shackling the hoodlums and enforcing laws is in place.

We don’t have information about homicide rates in Cheyenne in the 1890s, though data for the mining town of Benton, California, suggests that it may have reached an incredible high of 24,000 per 100,000! More likely it was closer to the 83 per 100,000, the death rate during the California gold rush, or the 100 per 100,000 in Dodge City in the days of Wyatt Earp

We need a state that has the capac‑ity to enforce laws, control violence, resolve conf licts, and provide public services but is still tamed and controlled by an assertive, well‑ organized society

Akan society consented to norms restricting freedoms and the unequal power relations they implied because they reduced people’s vulnerability to Warre. If you were a ward or pawn of an important person, the hawks were less likely to mess with you, and maybe less likely to capture you and enslave you. Another Asante proverb Rattray wrote down summarized their situation even more suc‑cinctly: “If you have not a master, a beast will catch you.”

The threat from slavers and the cage of norms conspired to create a spectrum of unfreedom. At one end of the spectrum was the extreme of slavery experienced by Goi. At the other end were obligations and duties you had to accept in order to avoid the hawks. This meant that belonging to a kinship group or society protected you, but didn’t make you free from dominance.

The community listened and used its norms to decide who was guilty. The same norms then ensured that the guilty desisted, paid up, or undertook another form of restitution. Though Hobbes saw the all‑ powerful Leviathan as the foun‑tainhead of justice, most societies aren’t that different from the Akan. Norms de‑termine what is right and wrong in the eyes of others, what types of behaviors are shunned and discouraged, and when individuals and families will be ostracized and cut off from the support of others.

How did the Akan people exercise justice? They used (social) norms— customs, traditions, rituals, and patterns of acceptable and expected behavior— that had evolved over generations.

The first crack in Hobbes’s thesis is the idea that the Leviathan has a single face. But in reality, the state is Janus‑ faced. One face resembles what Hobbes imagined: it prevents Warre, it protects its subjects, it resolves conf licts fairly, it provides public services, amenities, and economic opportunities; it lays the foundations for economic prosperity. The other is despotic and fearsome: it silences its citizens, it is impervious to their wishes. It dominates them, it imprisons them, maims them, and murders them. It steals the fruits of their labor or helps others do so.

The Chinese lived through a nightmare in this period. But, just as in the Third Reich, it was not brought on the people by the absence of a Leviathan. It was planned and executed by the state. Zhang Fuhong was beaten to death by his comrades in the Communist Party, and Ma Longshan was the county party sec‑retary. Zhang’s alleged crime was “right deviationism” and being a “degenerate element.” That meant he attempted to instigate some solutions to the mounting famine. Even mentioning the famine in China could cause you to be labeled “a negator of the Great Harvest” and to be subjected to “struggle,” a euphemism for being beaten to death.

Here was a powerful, capable state at work, a bureaucratic Leviathan. But it was using this capacity not for solving conf licts or stopping Warre, but for harass‑ing and dispossessing and then murdering Jews. The German Third Reich, build‑ing on the tradition of Prussian bureaucracy and its professional military, certainly counts as a Leviathan by Hobbes’s definition.

The capacity of a state is its ability to achieve its objectives. These objectives often include enforcing laws, resolving conf licts, regulating and taxing economic activity, and providing infrastructure or other public services. They may also in‑clude waging wars. The capacity of the state depends partly on how its institutions are organized, but even more critically, it depends on its bureaucracy. You need bureaucrats and state employees to be present so that they can implement the state’s plans, and you need these bureaucrats to have the means and motivation to carry out their mission

In essence, Hobbes maintained that any state would have the objective of the “conservation of Peace and Justice,” and that this was “the end for which all Common‑ wealths are Instituted.” So might, or at any rate sufficiently overwhelming might, makes right, however it came about.

because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth

So the prospect of Warre also had huge consequences for people’s lives. For example, “when taking a journey, he arms himself, and seeks to go well accompa‑nied; when going to sleep, he locks his dores; when even in his house he locks his chests.” All of this was familiar to Wole Soyinka, who never moved anywhere in Lagos without a Glock pistol strapped to his side for protection.

Steven Pinker, building on research by Lawrence Keeley, compiled evidence from 27 stateless societies studied by anthropologists over the past 200 years, and estimated a death rate caused by violence of over 500 per 100,000 people— over 100 times the current homicide rate in the United States, 5 per 100,000, or over 1,000 times that in Norway, about 0.5 per 100,000. Archaeological evidence from premodern societies is consistent with this level of violence

emancipation from any such subordination, liberation from any such dependency. It requires the capacity to stand eye to eye with your fellow citizens, in a shared awareness that none of you has a power of arbitrary interference with another

But dominance doesn’t just originate from brute force or threats of violence. Any relation of unequal power, whether enforced by threats or by other social means,

In his book Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Pettit argues that the fundamental tenet of a fulfilling, decent life is non‑ dominance— freedom from dominance, fear, and extreme insecurity. It is unacceptable, according to Pettit, when one has to

While the Nigerian military looted the country, Lagosians had to do a lot of fending for themselves. The city was crime ridden and the international airport was so dysfunctional that foreign countries banned their airlines from f lying there. Gangs called “area boys” preyed on businessmen, shaking them down for money and even murdering them. The area boys weren’t the only hazard people had to avoid. In addition to the odd corpse, the streets were covered in trash and rats. A BBC reporter commented in 1999 that “the city is . . . disappearing under a mountain of rubbish.” There was no publicly provided electricity or running water. To get light you had to buy your own generator. Or candles

In 1994, as Kaplan wrote, Nigeria was under the control of the military with General Sani Abacha as president. Abacha did not think that his job was to impar‑tially resolve conf licts or protect Nigerians. He focused on killing his opponents and expropriating the country’s natural wealth. Estimates of how much he stole start at around $3.5 billion and go higher.

Article 15 fulfills his dictum. It is short and obscure; it says simply Débrouillez- vous (Fend for yourself ).

The story of women’s liberation isn’t unique or exceptional. Liberty almost always depends on society’s mobilization and ability to strike a balance of power with the state and its elites.

What makes this a corridor, not a door, is that achieving liberty is a process; you have to travel a long way in the corridor before violence is brought under con‑trol

he awards for 2018, given out by Shaikh Maktoum himself, all have one thing in common— every one went to a man! The problem with the United Arab Emirates’ solution was that it was engineered by Shaikh Maktoum and imposed on society, without society’s participation

This struggle brings benefits. In the corridor the state and society do not just compete, they also cooperate. This cooperation engenders greater capacity for the state to deliver the things that society wants and foments greater societal mobilization to monitor this capacity

Liberty needs a mobi‑lized society that can participate in politics, protest when it’s necessary, and vote the government out of power when it can. Liberty originates from a delicate bal‑ance of power between state and societ

controlling the authority and the power of a state so that you get the good things and not the bad. Anu’s was the doppelgänger solution, similar to what people today call “checks and balances.” Gilgamesh’s double Enkidu would contain him.

have long maintained that you need a state to re‑solve conf licts, enforce laws, and contain violence.

It’s been so long since I heard that someone died from natural causes. In the beginning, one or two people would get killed. Then twenty. Then fifty. Then it became normal. If we lost fifty people, we thought, “Thank God, it’s only fifty!” I can’t sleep without the sound of bombs or bullets. It’s like something is missing.

free choices

liberty must start with people being free from violence, intimidation, and other demeaning acts.

no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit . . . without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man

The forms of power that have appeared act not so much by repression but by normalization; not by ignorance but by controlled knowledge; not by hu- manitarian concern but by the bureaucratization of social action. As the con- ditions that gave rise to development became more pressing, it could only increase its hold, refine its methods, and extend its reach even further.

The impact of development representations is thus profound at the local level. At this level, the concepts of development and modernity are resisted, hybridized with local forms, transformed, or what have you; they have, in short, a cultural productivity that needs to be better understood.

Today, prestige foods like packaged white rice and Nescafé top the list as signs of development. As in Nepal, lack of development is iden- tified with features such as the persistence of traditional ways and carrying heavy loads. Children now go to school to learn about white people and their ways.

as been successful to the extent that it has been able to integrate, manage, and control countries and populations in increasingly detailed and encom- passing ways. If it has failed to solve the basic problems of underdevelop- ment, it can be said—perhaps with greater pertinence—that it has suc- ceeded well in creating a type of underdevelopment that has been, for the most part, politically and technically manageable.

Development was—and continues to be for the most part—a top-down, eth- nocentric, and technocratic approach, which treated people and cultures as abstract concepts, statistical figures to be moved up and down in the charts of “progress. Development was conceived not as a cultural process (culture was a residual variable, to disappear with the advance of modernization) but instead as a system of more or less universally applicable technical interven- tions intended to deliver some “badly needed” goods to a “target” popula- tion. It comes as no surprise that development became a force so destructive to Third World cultures, ironically in the name of people's interests

n a similar vein, patriarchy and ethnocentrism influenced the form de- velopment took. Indigenous populations had to be “modernized, where modernization meant the adoption of the “right” values, namely, those held by the white minority or a mestizo majority and, in general, those embodied in the ideal of the cultivated European; programs for industrialization and agricultural development, however, not only have made women invisible in their role as producers but also have tended to perpetuate their subordina- tion (see chapter 5).

The develop- ment discourse defined a perceptual field structured by grids of observation, modes of inquiry and registration of problems, and forms of intervention; in short, it brought into existence a space defined not so much by the ensemble of objects with which it dealt but by a set of relations and a discursive prac- tice that systematically produced interrelated objects, concepts, theories, strategies, and the like

Development proceeded by creating “abnormalities” (such as the “illiterate,” the “underdeveloped,” the “malnourished,” “small farmers,” or “landless peasants ), which it would later treat and reform.

These elements emerged from a multiplicity of points: the newly formed international organizations, government offices in distant capitals, old and new institutions, universities and research centers in developed countries, and, increasingly with the passing of time, institutions in the Third World. Everything was subjected to the eye of the new experts: the poor dwellings of the rural masses, the vast agricultural fields, cities, households, factories, hospitals, schools, public of- fices, towns and regions, and, in the last instance, the world as a whole.

In sum, the system of relations establishes a discursive practice that sets the rules of the game: who can speak, from what points of view, with what authority, and according to what criteria of expertise; it sets the rules that must be followed for this or that problem, theory, or object to emerge and be named, analyzed, and eventually transformed into a policy or a plan.

Development was not merely the result of the combination, study, or gradual elaboration of these elements (some of these topics had existed for some time); nor the product of the introduction of new ideas (some of which were already appearing or perhaps were bound to appear); nor the effect of the new international organizations or financial institutions (which had some predecessors, such as the League of Nations). It was rather the result of the establishment of a set of relations among these elements, institutions, and practices and of the systematization of these relations to form a whole.

Industrialization and urbanization were seen as the inevitable and necessarily progressive routes to modernization.

Economic growth presupposed the existence of a continuum stretching from poor to rich countries, which would allow for the replication in the poor countries of those conditions characteristic of mature capitalist ones (includ- ing industrialization, urbanization, agricultural modernization, infrastruc- ture, increased provision of social services, and high levels of literacy). De- velopment was seen as the process of transition from one situation to the other.

asadre’s was a progressive call for social change as well, even if it became captive to the development mode. The earlier model for the generation of knowledge, organized around the classical professions according to nine- teenth-century usage, was replaced by the North American model. Sociol- ogy and economics were the disciplines most affected by this change, which involved most natural and social sciences. Development had to rely on the production of knowledge that could provide a scientific picture of a coun- try s social and economic problems and resources. This entailed the estab- lishment of institutions capable of generating such a knowledge. The “tree of research” of the North was transplanted to the South, and Latin America thus became part of a transnational system of research.

cience and technology had been the markers of civilization par excel- lence since the nineteenth century, when machines became the index of civilization, “the measure of men’ (Adas 1989). This modern trait was rekin- dled with the advent of the development age. By 1949, the Marshall Plan was showing great success in the restoration of the European economy, and in- creasingly attention was shifted to the longer-range problems of assistance for economic development in underdeveloped areas.

The Third World was in- structed to look at private capital, both domestic and foreign, which meant that the “right climate” had to be created, including a commitment to capi- talist development; the curbing of nationalism; and the control of the Left, the working class, and the peasantry. The creation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (most commonly known as the World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund did not represent a departure from this law. To this extent, “the inadequacy of the International Bank and the Monetary Fund presented a negative version of the Marshall Plan's pos- itive initiative’

The first step in this direction was the establish- ment of the Inter-American Development Commission, set up in January 1940 to encourage Latin American production geared toward the U.S. mar- ket. Although financial assistance to Latin America was relatively modest during the war period, nevertheless it was of some significance. The two main sources of assistance, the Export-Import Bank and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, funded programs for the production and procurement of strategic materials. These activities often involved large-scale technical aid and the mobilization of capital resources to Latin America. The character of these relations also served to focus attention on the need to help the Latin American economies in a more systematic manner.”

Like Currie’s image of “salvation,” the representation of the Third World as a child in need of adult guidance was not an uncommon metaphor and lent itself perfectly to the development discourse. The infantilization of the Third World was integral to development as a “secular theory of salvation” (Nandy 1987

As the terrain for the cold war was being fertilized, however, these conferences made evi- dent the serious divergence of interests between Latin America and the United States, marking the demise of the good neighboor policy. For while the United States insisted on its military and security objectives, Latin American countries emphasized more than ever economic and social goals

Root, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912, played a very active role in the separation of Colom- bia from Panama. “With or without the consent of Colombia,’ he wrote on that occasion, “we will dig the canal, not for selfish reasons, not for greed or gain, but for the world’s commerce, benefiting Colombia most of all... . We shall unite our Atlantic and Pacific coasts, we shall render inestima- ble service to mankind, and we shall grow in greatness and honor and in the strength that comes from difficult tasks accomplished and from the exer- cise of the power that strives in the nature of a great constructive people” (Root 1916, 190).

ts invention signaled a significant shift in the historical relations between Europe and the United States, on the one hand, and most countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, on the other. It also brought into existence a new regime of representation of these latter parts of the world in Euramerican culture. But “the birth” of the discourse must be briefly qualified; there were, indeed, important precursors that presaged its appearance in full regalia after World War II.

The 1949 World Bank mission to Co- lombia was one of the first concrete expressions of this new state of affairs.

he country must thus awaken from its lethargic past and follow the one way to salvation, which is, undoubtedly, “an opportunity unique in its long history’ (of darkness, one might add).

that there is one right way, namely, development;

messianic

ll that is needed to usher a period of rapid and wide- spread development is a determined effort by the Colombian people them- selves. In making such an effort, Colombia would not only accomplish its own salvation but would at the same time furnish an inspiring example to all other underdeveloped areas of the world.

Piecemeal and sporadic efforts are apt to make little impression on the general picture. Only through a generalized attack throughout the whole economy on education, health, housing, food and productivity can the vicious circle of poverty, igno- rance, ill health and low productivity be decisively broken.

Thus poverty became an organizing concept and the object of a new problematization. As in the case of any problematization (Foucault 1986), that of poverty brought into existence new discourses and practices that shaped the reality to which they referred.

was nothing more than the result of a comparative statistical operation, the first of which was carried out only in 1940” (Sachs 1990, 9). Almost by fiat, two-thirds of the world’s peoples were transformed into poor

Rahnema: the globalization of poverty entailed by the construction of two-thirds of the world as poor after 1945. If within market societies the poor were defined as lacking what the rich had in terms of money and material possessions, poor countries came to be simi- larly defined in relation to the standards of wealth of the more economically advantaged nations. This economic conception of poverty found an ideal yardstick in the annual per capita income.

Yet the most significant aspect of this phenomenon was the setting into place of apparatuses of knowledge and power that took it upon themselves to optimize life by producing it under modern, “scientific” conditions. The history of modernity, in this way, is not only the history of knowledge and the economy, it is also, more revealingly, the history of the social.!

Not only poverty but health, education, hygiene, employment, and the poor quality of life in towns and cities were constructed as social problems, requiring extensive knowledge about the population and appropriate modes of social planning

The treatment of poverty allowed society to conquer new domains. More perhaps than on industrial and technological might, the nascent order of capitalism and modernity relied on a politics of poverty the aim of which was not only to create consumers but to transform society by turning the poor into objects of knowledge and management.

s Sachs (1990) and Rahnema (1991) have maintained, the conceptions and treatment of poverty were quite different before 1940. In colonial times the concern with poverty was conditioned by the belief that even if the “natives could be somewhat enlightened by the presence of the colonizer, not much could be done about their poverty because their economic devel- opment was pointless.

The destinies of the rich and poor parts of the world were seen to be closely linked. “Genuine world prosperity is indivisible,’ stated a panel of experts in 1948. “It cannot last in one part of the world if the other parts live under conditions of poverty and ill health” (Milbank Memorial Fund 1948, 7; see also Lasswell 1945)

Eloquent facts were adduced to justify this new war: “Over 1,500,000 million people, something like two-thirds of the world population, are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease. This hunger is at the same time the cause and effect of poverty, squalor, and misery in which they live” (Wilson 1953, 11).

XIOM 3. The more the costs of suppression exceed the costs of toleration, the greater the chance for a com- petitive regime.

XIOM 2. The likelihood that a government will toler- ate an opposition increases as the expected costs of sup- pression increase.

AxIOM 1. The likelihood that a government will toler- ate an opposition increases as the expected costs of toleration decrease.

hus the greater the conflict between government and op- position, the more likely that each will seek to deny oppor- tunities to the other to participate effectively in policy mak- ing. To put it another way, the greater the conflict perween a government and its opponents, the more costly it is for each to tolerate the other.

Poly- ; archies, then, may be thought of as relatively (but incom- /( Pletely) democratized regimes, or, to put it in another way, polyarchies are regimes that have been substantially popu- larized and liberalized, that is, highly inclusive and exten- sively open to public contestation.

igure 1.2 Liberalization, Inclusiveness, and Democratization

Suppose, then, that we think of democratization as made up of af Iéast two dimensions: public contestation and the right to participate.

Public contestation and inclusiveness vary somewhat in- dependently.

even the most repressive dictators usually pay some lip service today to the legitimate _Tight of the people to participate in the government, that is, to participate in “governing” though not in public contesta- _tion.

1. To formulate their preferences 2. To signify their preferences to their fellow citizens and the government by individual and collective action 3. To have their preferences weighed equally in the conduct of the government, that is, weighted with no discrimination because of the content or source of the preference

I should like to reserve the term “democracy” for a political system one of the characteristics of which is the quality of being completely or almost completely responsive to all its citizens.

opposition, rivalry, or competition between a government and its opponents is an important aspect of democratization,

he possibility of cycles that makes democracy me net t he act that there may be no best decision, that any choice we make ¢ me ways pe deemed inferior to other possible choices on the basis of critert a Society Collectively deems relevant and important, is precisely what cratic decision making challenging and significant.

Arrow’s Theorem tells us that, in the face of these resolvable cratic “lone cratic proceaures must do more than simply select a best outcome, as such an must legitimate then he in such cases, it follows, democratic procedures nroducr of popular wil. a basis other than being the unambiguous

imilar to Mackie, these authors take aim at Arrow’s condition of unrestricted domain. However, unlike Mackie, who argues that the condi- tion is prima facie incorrect in most situations, these authors argue that the deliberative process works to alter individuals’ preferences in such a way so as to induce “preference structuration,” or change. That is, as opposed to positing that preferences are initially restricted so as to yield an unambiguous “collective preference,” this line of thought suggests that deliberation gener- ates (or, “structures”) individual preferences so as produce such a collective preference.

Attempts to directly and meaningfully because, in general preferences into a collective choice will not necessarily fail exists an outcome ae leek erence cycles do not exist. In general, there an outcome exists, mane wenn e “majority will,” and moreover, when such Of cource the wean, Orin systems will be able to discover it.

f preferences are sufficiently homogenous, then Condorcet cycles may not exist, and the practical import of Arrow’s condition of unrestricted domain is negated.

Accordingly, Mackie argues, the absence of majority rule cycles implies that a coherent and meaningfully populist concep- tion of democracy is possible. Mackie’s principal “defense” of democracy, then, involves demonstrating that majority preference cycles do not occur in practice.

us, real-world voting outcomes cannot be regarded as accurate amalgamations of voters’ pref- erences because the voting systems themselves have no way of eliciting what those preferences actually are. Riker argues that because social amalgamations of individuals’ preferences are meaningless, a populist conception of democ- racy in which voters’ preferences are translated into social outcomes, such as through a direct vote, is “absurd.”*7 Rather, the best we can hope for is what Riker terms a liberal democracy, in which voters may not see their wishes translated into outcomes by their leaders but are free to vote their leaders out of office.

rrow is a fundamental. nn

Gibbard and Satterthwaite demonstrate that, if at least three different voting outcomes are possible, these choice functions are the only ones that are strategy proof. In other words, there is no nondictatorial procedure that is strategy proof.

tegy-prop bree te and Satterthwaite consider what is referred to as the entirely negates an a eoice function. A strategy-proof choice function two prefere y gains from insincere behavior by any single voter.

An aggregation rule is dictatorial if there is one particular voter whose individual preferences always determine the social preference ordering, irrespective of the preferences of the other voters. Formally, this condition says that there exists one voter i, so that every time x >; y, the aggregation rule f produces a strict ranking x > y. An aggregation rule f satisfies no dictator if it is not dictatorial.

cgeregation rule ne tasty, focuses on the ability of a preference if there is a tie. Ag viene wrambiguous winner, or collection of winners, rules and choice

a single individual may in some cases have the Opportunity to alter the ranking of two alternatives simply by misrepresenting his or her preferences about some other alternative.

In other words, if something alters people’s preferences only about alternatives other than x and y, the collective ranking of x and y should remain the same.

n aggregation rule f is Pareto efficient if whenever every individual i strictly prefers x to y, then our aggregation rule f generates a collective ranking of the alternatives that ranks x strictly higher than y.

Put another administrative. oe rca y rmocratic institution, be it electoral, legislative, We nowy deine ach of d caracter, violates at least one of these axioms. irrelevant alternatives waese (our axioms ~ Pareto efficiency, independence of a » transitivity, and no dictator — in turn.

A choice parison between each ‘e Nala: while an aggregation rule produces a com- the agerepati ; pair of alternatives,

Thus, given the p in Equation 2.1, x receives two total points (two from Voter 1 and zero from Voter 2), y receives three total points (one from Voter 1 and two from Voter 2), and z receives one total point (from Voter 2). It follows that Borda count ranks the alternatives y >p X >B %.

he Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem, on the other hand, roncerns the ability of a procedure to be immune from strategic manipulation by voters or ro not reward insincere voting behavior.

nam Riker s famous book, Liberalism Against argue that any notion of a “popular will” ‘anil ae hat peli salen is are ; a“p ar wi meaningless, that political decisions democragy hee Fran Oy csecuilibrium, and tat perhaps the only benefit of ‘ a row bad politicians out of office. This or the idea thar there Some have termed “democratic irrationalism,”®

Arrows impossibility theorem demonstrates that when voters have three or more options to choose from, then any voting sys- tem that meets certain minimal conditions of fairness and sensibility sill fail to produce “rational” outcomes in some situations.

Situations like this in which the majority preference relation is cyclic on a set of three alternatives is often referred to as a Condorcet cycle. Conversely, an alternative that is majority preferred to every other alternative is referred to as a Condorcet winner.

famous jury theorem, which says that if a group is choosing nw atives (e.g., acquit or convict) and if each individual member of the group is more likely than not to reach a correct decision, then the prob ability that a majority of the members of the group reach the correct decisi ; is higher than the probability that any individual reaches the correct decision and increases as the size of the group increases.

he question of how multiple, competing, goals can be reconciled is the found tion of a branch of political science termed “social choice theory” or “collecti re choice theory,”

But the wise analyst will remember that social memories of big collective experiences — like wars, depressions, plagues, revolutions, etc. — inevitably have strong and lingering effects on how those other qualities operate