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  1. Home
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  3. State Power and Social Forces
  • Cited by 280
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
1994
Online ISBN:
9781139174268
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139174268
Subjects:
Social Theory, Politics and International Relations, Comparative Politics, Sociology
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
Information

Book description

This eminently readable 1994 collection of high-quality, country-specific essays on Third World politics provides, through a variety of well-integrated themes and approaches, an examination of 'state theory' as it has been practised in the past, and how it must be refined for the future. The contributors go beyond the previously articulated 'bringing the state back in' model to offer their own 'state-in-society' approach. They argue that states, which should be disaggregated for meaningful comparative study, are best analysed as parts of societies. States may help mould, but are also continually moulded by, the societies within which they are embedded. States' capacities, further, will vary depending on their ties to other social forces. And other social forces will be capable of being mobilised into political contention only under certain conditions. Political contention pitting states against other social forces may sometimes be mutually enfeebling, but at other times, mutually empowering.

Reviews

"For anyone interested in knowing where the comparative theory of the state might be heading at the present time, this volume provides some excellent signposts. The case studies are particularly rewarding and enlightening for the many excellent insights and reflections they contain on the cases addressed....represents the best work published in the field to date." Robert H. Jackson, American Political Science Review

"...fascinating and innovative volume....It is a fine achievement, and as sure to provoke many to rethink their own research as it is to challenge others to probe and puzzle over the possibilities or potential pitfalls of its approach." Dorothy J. Solinger, Journal of Politics

"...a fresh, readable volume that is essential reading for anyone interested in civil society and the state in developing countries. The nine chapters that make the body of the book are carefully, but imaginatively, crafted and thoroughly grounded in specific historical knowledge of the cases. Their collective range is as impressive as their individual quality and they are nicely 'bookended' with introductory and concluding essays by the editors....[T]his volume opens up new debates in the process of superseding older ones, which is exactly what a good collection should do. Students of state-society relations are indebted to the authors and the editors for a series of crisp arguments that are theoretically provocative precisely because they are so nicely grounded in particular cases. They have pushed forward immeasurably our understanding of how states and societies interact." Peter Evans, Studies in Comparative International Development

"In this seminal book, scholars working in the Weberian tradition of political sociology suggest a more balanced state-in-society perspective to replace the old state-versus-society framework that rests on a view of power as a zero-sum conflict between state and society." Xu Wang, Comparative Politics

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