State Infrastructural Power: Approaches to Conceptualization and Measurement

Michael Mann’s infrastructural power is a concept often applied but rarely rigorously conceptualized and precisely measured. Three distinct analytical lenses of infrastructural power can be derived from his definitions: infrastructural power as the capabilities of the central state, as the territorial reach of the state, and as the effects of the state on society. Exemplary texts applying each of these approaches are used to demonstrate their connection to Mann’s ideas, the relationships between these dimensions, and the boundaries between this and other aspects of the state’s strength. Moving from conceptualization to measurement, the paper shows the costs of common errors in the measurement of infrastructural power, and develops guidelines for its proper empirical application.     

State Infrastructural Power and Nationalism: Comparative Lessons from Mexico and Argentina

This article focuses on the nexus between state infrastructural power and legitimacy. A comparative case study of nationalism in mid-twentieth-century Mexico and Argentina provides the basis for theorizing the impact of state infrastructural power on transformations of official understandings of nationhood. Both countries experienced a transition from liberal to popular nationalism. The extent to which popular nationalism became a regular product of state organizations varied between the two cases, depending on the timing of state development. The temporal congruence between the expansion of state infrastructural power and ideological change, as exemplified by Mexico under Cárdenas, facilitated the full institutionalization of the new official ideology, whereas a disjuncture between state development and ideological change, as exemplified by Argentina under Perón, inhibited such a comprehensive transformation of nationalism.     

The tension between despotic and infrastructural power: The military and the political class in Nigeria, 1985–1993

In his extended study,The Sources of Social Power, Michael Mann suggests a distinction between despotic and infrastuctural power. Despotic power refers to the repressive capacities of a state, while infrastructural power refers to its ability to penetrate society and actually implement its decisions. This article uses the example of relations between the military and politicians in Nigeria from 1985 to 1993 to argue that weak states experience a conflict between despotic and infrastructural power. Whereas leaders cultivate alliances with powerful social groups to realize their infrastructural power, the exercise of despotic power can undermine such patterns of collaboration. In Nigeria, the military relied on a number of despotic strategies to extend their control over the political class as part of a promised transition to democracy: a large number of politicians were banned, two government created political parties were imposed, and elections that yielded outcomes threatening to military interests were annulled. While the military was successful in repressing the politicians, they were unable to restructure them in ways that would further the institutional power of the state. This persistent reliance on despotic strategies led to a long-term decline in the integrity and infrastructural capacity of the state. John Lucas is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bucknell University. John Peeler and Mark Jendrysik provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Nigerian Periodicals Cited Sentinel Newswatch Citizen     

Containing Conflict or Instigating Unrest? A Test of the Effects of State Infrastructural Power on Civil Violence

Several scholars argue that state infrastructural power affects the likelihood of civil violence yet make competing claims. Some propose that states with high levels of infrastructural power instigate violence by reducing local autonomy, while others suggest infrastructural power endows states with the capacity to contain civil violence. We test these claims using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through a pooled time-series analysis of 32 former British colonies, we find that infrastructural power is not significantly related to civil violence, suggesting either that infrastructural power has no effect or no net effect. Then, through case studies of Burma and Botswana, we investigate the impact of infrastructural power on civil violence, focusing on mechanisms and causal conditions. The case studies provide evidence that infrastructural power produces competing mechanisms that negate any net effect and that different conditions and policies affect whether a state’s level of infrastructural power contains conflict or instigates unrest.     

A DETHRONED KING? THE LIMITS OF STATE INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER IN FRANCE

Since the 1980s in Western Europe, centralized states' control over subnational territories has been deeply affected by processes of Europeanization and regionalization. These changes have raised the issue of state territorial restructuring in a particular fashion: what capacity have formerly centralized states retained to steer and control subnational territories? The article draws on Mann's concept of infrastructural power, which refers to the state's capacity to exercise control and implement political decisions over the national territory. The article applies the two main operationalizations of the concept, namely the capability of the state to exercise control and the weight of the state in the subnational territories. Empirically, the article focuses on the French state in two policy sectors (education and housing). Although France is a most likely case, this article challenges this expectation, and shows the limits of the French state's infrastructural power over the subnational territories since the late 1980s.     

Economic development and the rise of market systems

Traditional views of dualistic development emphasize differences in behavior between the traditional and modern sectors. In this article it is argued that a better distinction concerns market networks. A traditional sector is characterized by a lack of market integration. Such market integration can be achieved only through dramatic growth of a domestic market for basic agricultural goods. This will most likely involve the simultaneous protection and taxation of the agricultural sector. Thus, protectionism was an appropriate strategy of development, but most nations protected the wrong sector (industry) at the wrong time in the process of long-run development. Richard Grabowski is a professor of economics at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. His research interests include analyzing the role of the state in economic development. His work has appeared inWorld Development, Journal of Developing Areas, Economic Development and Cultural Change, and Studies in Comparative International Development.     

Why Some Cities Provide More Public Goods than Others: A Subnational Comparison of the Provision of Public Goods in German Cities in 1912

What determines a government’s level of public goods provision? Most scholarship tends to focus on the “demand side” of public goods provision, highlighting how varying patterns of social preferences shape the provision of public goods. In an analysis of municipal hospitals and infant health clinics in Germany’s 84 largest cities in 1912, this article uses an original dataset to test a variety of hypotheses to introduce an alternative logic centered around the institutional capability of local governments. The findings suggest a supply-side theory of public goods provision in which the fiscal resources of cities and the professionalism of local government officials are important determinants of the level of public goods. The implications of these findings are two-fold: first, in federal political systems, highly capable local governments—with resources, expertise and professionalism—might represent a “decentralized” or “bottom-up” path for achieving higher overall levels of state infrastructural power in a political system. Second, public health threats might serve as a crucial trigger for the development of local capacity and hence state infrastructural power more broadly.     

From Resources to Power: The State and Spatial Change in Post-apartheid Durban, South Africa

After apartheid, local government in Durban, South Africa, attempted to break down the barriers of the apartheid city through a massive program of public investment, intended to close the economic and infrastructure gaps between race groups. The results of this program varied widely. In core areas, growth coalitions were able to influence state infrastructure development, limiting its transformative impact. In peripheral areas, wide ranging infrastructural needs, coupled with pressure on the state to deliver services quickly, resulted in rushed, substandard construction. In buffer zones, previously undeveloped areas between the core and the periphery that under apartheid had separated race groups, the state was able to construct public housing for poor Africans near both economic activity and white and Indian residential areas, an outcome previously unseen in Durban’s history. I argue that the state’s infrastructural power, varying in different parts of the city relative to the power of other actors in society, explains these results. Geocoded census and municipal infrastructure data from 1996 and 2001, together with qualitative data from key informant interviews and workshops, form the empirical basis of this article.     

Economic rights and government in developing countries: Cross-national evidence on growth and development

Most analysts assume that economic rights (especially to property and to contracts) help foster economic development, but the relationship is rarely studied empirically. Using three recently developed indexes of economic freedom, this article explores this issue for the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. It finds that developing countries that score better in protecting economic rights also tend to grow, faster and to score higher in human development. In addition, economic rights are associated with democratic government and with higher levels of average national income. Arthur A. Goldsmith is professor of management at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. During the 1998 academic year he is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute for International Development. Professor Goldsmith has published widely on global economic and management issues, and has consulted for several international development agencies. His most recent articles have appeared inInternational Review of Administrative Sciences, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, andDevelopment and Change. Professor Goldsmith's latest bookBusiness, Government, Society: The Global Political Economy was published in 1996.     

Can Leviathan be Democratic? Competitive Elections, Robust Mass Politics, and State Infrastructural Power

Reconciling effective government with accountable government remains an enormous political challenge, especially in the postcolonial world. Can postcolonial states only gain infrastructural power when their rulers enjoy unencumbered despotic power? With their contradictory findings about the influence of democratic parliaments on state autonomy and capacity, the literatures on constitutional states in Western Europe and developmental states in Northeast Asia provide limited guidance on this normatively critical question. As an alternative approach, this essay proposes three causal mechanisms through which competitive national elections can incite the territorial extension of state institutions: (1) catalyzing the construction of mass ruling parties; (2) energizing state registration of marginal populations; and (3) fostering centralized intervention in local authoritarian enclaves. Evidence from Southeast Asia suggests that competitive elections will only have these infrastructural effects when accompanied by robust mass political mobilization. This has intriguing implications for how scholars understand historical patterns of state-building in the West, as well as how policymakers try to build more effective states in the most ungoverned corners of the contemporary world.     

The public costs of private blessings: Fundamentals of the economic role of government

The main thrust of this overview is to demonstrate how the shift of government authority over time—from a defense of the realm against foreign intruders to an adjudication of conflicting citizen claims—has created a new set of problems and challenges for the modern state in search of development. It is argued that the power of the state expands as traditional forms of economic rivalries and class claims weaken, and as recourse to legal decision-making becomes widely accepted by all social and economic sectors. Government has proven better able to satisfy existing claims than at initiating new forms of social relations. Experiences in a variety of economic structures thus argue for a continued interplay of public and private, federal and personal claims. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08933. Among his major works on development theory and practice areThree Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification (Oxford University Press, 1965, 1972), andBeyond Empire and Revolution: Militarization and Modernization in the Third World (Oxford University Press, 1982). He was founding editor ofStudies in Comparative International Development.     

Changing development models in small economies: The case of Jamaica from the 1950s to the 1990s

By examining in detail the successes and failures of different development models in one developing country over a four-decade period, this article sketches a development model for small economies in the 1990s as an alternative to the neoliberal model pushed by the International Monetary Fund. It reviews the experience of Jamaica with various development models from the 1950s to the 1990s, with special attention focused on the experience of the Seaga government of the 1980s. It also draws lessons from the successful development experience of small European countries and of the East Asian Newly Industrialized countries. In normative terms, the alternative development model attempts to combine growth with equity and democracy. In analytical terms, it takes account of the constellation of domestic forces and appropriate political strategies, as well as of international economic and political conditions. The main features are a strong role for the state in economic interactions with transnational corporations, in identification of export markets and promotion of export production, in selective protection of domestic industry with an export potential, in promotion of agriculture linked to industrial development, in improvement of human resources and promotion of regional economic integration. Within these parameters, a crucial role is assigned to the domestic private sector and a complementary one to foreign investment. Distribution is to be addressed primarily through distribution of productive assets and access to health care and education. Evelyne Huber is professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a coauthor ofDemocratic Socialism in Jamaica andCapitalist Development and Democracy. She is currently involved in research on the changing role of the state in Latin America and on comparative social policy. John D. Stephens is professor of political science and sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is a coauthor ofDemocratic Socialism in Jamaica andCapitalist Development and Democracy. His current research focuses on options for social democracy and comparative social policy.     

The New Commons vs. The Second Enclosure Movement: Comments on an Emerging Agenda for Development Research

The relationship between property rights and development has always been a central concern for both theorists and policy makers. The growing role of information and communications technology in the economies of both North and South intensifies the salience of this issue. This commentary extends the discussion of the two visions of property rights that are introduced by Weber and Bussell (2005). In one, property rights are restructured along the lines pioneered by the open-source software community to create a “new commons” of productive tools; in the other, Northern corporations successfully defend their politically protected monopoly rights over intangible assets and even extend them through a “second enclosure movement” to an ever larger set of ideas, information, and images. Currently, the second enclosure movement remains dominant, but which of these visions is likely to predominate in the longer run depends on the interests and potential power of key actors and on the possibilities for alliances among them—not just Northern corporations, but Southern states and private entrepreneurs, as well. Peter Evans is professor of sociology and Marjorie Meyer Eliaser Chair of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has focused on the comparative political economy of developing countries, particularly industrialization and the role of the state, as exemplified byEmbedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). He has also worked urban environmental issues, producing the edited volumeLivable Cities: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability (University of California Press, 2002). His current interest in the politics of globalization is reflected in his chapter, “Counter-hegemonic Globalization: Transnational Social Movements in the Contemporary Global Political Economy,” forthcoming in theHandbook of Political Sociology (Cambridge University Press).     

Pathologies of Development Practice: Higher Order Obstacles to Governance Reform in the Pakistani Electrical Power Sector

Development actors are regularly aware of the shortcomings of governance interventions before, during, and after development assistance is introduced, yet those programmes continue and are even revisited. Why? This paper uses the Pakistani experience with power sector reforms to illustrate how the donor-led reform agenda had readily apparent shortcomings. A new wave of development thinking responds to such failures by drawing on complexity theory and moving toward more local, iterative and experimental approaches. However, by highlighting how the awareness of problems with reforms isn’t sufficient to avoid them, this paper points to a higher order of obstacles which remain unaddressed.     

Health and human security: a wrinkle in time or a new paradigm?

Since it was first advanced in the 1994 Human development report of the United Nations Development Programme [United Nations Development Project. (1994). Human development report. New York: UN], the concept of ‘human security’ has evolved as a holistic development-oriented acuity [Nef, J. (1999). Human security and mutual vulnerability: The global political economy of development and underdevelopment (2nd ed.). Ottawa: International Development Research Centre]. The human security concept reinforces the right to health, drawing on both the role of states and the global community's commitment to human rights. Yet, health and human security, long the purview of state power and responsibility, increasingly include alliances of state and non-state actors. This paper proceeds in three parts. The first looks at health and human security linkages, charting the trajectory of the health and human security relationship. The second deals with policy and operational implications. It explores the health–human security link, paying particular attention to the allocation of responsibility and accountability, including through private–public partnerships and rising powers such as China. The third provides a theoretical and technical analysis of the status of health and human security since 1994, taking into account its evolution vis-à-vis human rights’ development and development more broadly, also asking whether it represents but a wrinkle in time or a new sustainable development paradigm.     

Institutions and Development in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis

We review the theoretical literature on the concept of institutions and its relationship to national development, propose a definition of the concept, and advance six hypotheses about institutional adequacy and contributions to national development. We then present results of a comparative empirical study of existing institutions in three Latin American countries and examine their organizational similarities and differences. Employing the qualitative comparative method (QCA) proposed by Ragin, we then test the six hypotheses. Results converge in showing the importance of meritocracy, immunity to corruption, absence of “islands of power,” and proactivity in producing effective institutions. Findings strongly support Peter Evans’ theory of developmental apparatuses.

Grassroots development where no grass grows: Small-scale development efforts on the peruvian coast

“Grassroots Development Where No Grass Grows: Small-Scale Development Efforts On The Peruvian Coast” reports site visits to several low-budget development projects: one in a squatter settlement on the outskirts of Lima, three in the agricultural area near Chiclayo, and one in the small provincial city of Ilo. The article describes a style of development assistance referred to as “accompaniment” and contrasts its requirements and potential benefits with those of more standard practices. In a philosophical vein, the article examines the advantages of emphasizing how development assistance is carried out as opposed to a focus on outcomes. It suggests that much is to be gained by supporting the small-scale activities of local Non-Governmental Development Organizations. Everything nced not be done at once, but something must be done… John Francis Kavanaugh, S.J. Richard L. Clinton is professor of political science at Oregon State University, where he teaches international relations, Americna foreign policy, alternative futures, and Latin American politics. His most recent book wasPoblación y desarrollo en el Perú (University of Lima, 1985).     

Development as institutional change: The pitfalls of monocropping and the potentials of deliberation

Development theory has moved from a single-minded focus on capital accumulation toward a more complex understanding of the institutions that make development possible. Yet, instead of expanding the range of institutional strategies explored, the most prominent policy consequence of this “institutional turn” has been the rise of “institutional monocropping”: the imposition of blueprints based on idealized versions of Anglo-American institutions, the applicability of which is presumed to transcend national circumstances and cultures. The disappointing results of monocropping suggest taking the institutional turn in a direction that would increase, rather than diminish, local input and experimentation. The examples of Porto Alegre, Brazil, and Kerala, India, reinforce Amartya Sen’s idea that “public discussion and exchange” should be at the heart of any trajectory of institutional change, and flag potential gains from strategies of “deliberative development” which rely on popular deliberation to set goals and allocate collective goods. Peter Evans teaches in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Marjorie Meyer Eliaser Chair of International Studies. He is currently exploring the role of labor as a transnational social movement. His earlier research has focused on the role of the state in industrial development, an interest reflected in his bookEmbedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton University Press 1995). He is also interested in urban environmental issues, as indicated by the recent edited volume,Livable Cities: Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability (University of California Press 2002). I would like to thank the editors, Atul Kohli, Dani Rodrik, and Anne Wetlerberg for their valuable comments and suggestions. Remaining analytical and empirical errors are, of course, my own. For an earlier effort (in Portugese) to make this argument, see Evans 2003.     

Vivir bien governance in Bolivia: chimera or attainable utopia?

The notion of vivir bien – a complex set of ideas, worldviews, and knowledge deriving from indigenous movements, activist groups, and scholars of indigeneity – has become an overarching principle for policy-making and state transformation processes in Andean countries. This article analyses the contradiction between the principle of vivir bien as an egalitarian utopian category and its bureaucratic application in Bolivia to state formation processes and power dynamics involving social movements. It argues that while discursively grounded on such egalitarian principles as reciprocity and rotating authority, its implementation entails bureaucratic propensities to centralise power and authority. Instead of decolonising the state, it is used to discipline the masses.