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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Conceptualizing the state-society relationship in order to explain its byproduct underdevelopment in all peripheral countries presupposes agreement on the definition of underdevelopment. Such agreement is possible only by making the concept less abstract. Dominant paradigms which have conceptualized the state-society relationship and attempted to explain underdevelopment have not generally been successful because of their failure to make operational the concept of underdevelopment and the corollary of their excessive reliance on “regional or local differences.”
1 Quoted by N'krumah, Kwame, Challenge of the Congo (New York: International Publishers, 1970), p. 5.Google Scholar
2 See Nordlinger, Eric, Soldiers in Politics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1977).Google Scholar
3 Jackson, Robert and Rosberg, Carl, Personal Rule in Black Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 74–84.Google Scholar
4 Chalmers, Douglas, “The Politicized State in Latin America,” in Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America, ed. Malloy, James (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), pp. 30–31, emphasis added.Google Scholar
5 Data are from Overseas Development Council, Washington, D. C., 1985. They are quite consistent with those provided by U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstracts of the United States 1985, pp. 846 and 847 (tables 1481 and 1482).Google Scholar
6 Ibid., p. 844 (table 11478, my calculation).
7 Calculated from UN Demographic Yearbook 1983 (New York, 1985), tables 156, 157, 158, 159.Google Scholar
8 Calculated from Statistical Abstracts of U.S. 1985, p. 845 (table 1480).Google Scholar
9 This is an estimate on the basis of old sources. There is no recent data on this category, since even the World Bank has discontinued its calculations of average indicators of poverty levels for the third world as a whole. My estimate is based on 1977/78 data: see, Todara, Michael, Economic Development in the Third World (New York: Longman, 1977), p. 27Google Scholar (table 2.2) and Fischlow, A. et al. , Rich and Poor Nations in the World's Economy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), pp. 177–78Google Scholar. This percentage is more than eighty percent if one uses the income scale for the U.S. where, in 1982, fifteen percent of the population was below the poverty line. See Statistical Abstracts of U.S. 1985, p. 455 (table 759).Google Scholar
10 Political crisis in this sense is different from political crisis in parliamentary systems of advanced capitalist countries. In the latter, “political crisis” is often associated with the majority party's fall from the government or the uncertainty surrounding the formation of a new government.
11 I have calculated these figures from Huntington, S., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 4, 40.Google Scholar
12 Thompson, W. Scott, ed., The Third World: Premises of U.S. Policy (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1983), p. 80Google Scholar. The exact figure is 112 coups for the period 1968–83; I have estimated the number to be about 18 for the 1983–85 period.
13 Calculated from Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures 1982 (Leesburgh, Va: World Priorities, 1982), p. 15Google Scholar. Note that the 0.06 percent took place in a vulnerable (Northern Ireland) and a marginal (Turkey) zones of Europe.
14 This definition of the state refers to the “modern state”; one understands why to Poulantzas's relational nature of the state — to which I subscribe — I have added the Weberian definitional element of the monopoly of “legitimate” force. The fact that these relationships are sustained by “political power” is recognized by most, if not all, studies on the state even by those who, like D. Easton or G. Almond, use “political system” rather than “state” in their analyses. See, Easton, David, The Political System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971)Google Scholar and A Framework for Political Analysis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Almond, Gabriel and Powell, Bingham, Comparative Politics (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966)Google Scholar; Poulatzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes (London: Verso Editions, 1978)Google Scholar and State, Power, Socialism (London: Verso Editions, 1980).Google Scholar
15 Society is defined here as the totality of classes and groups as they are organized and structured according to their relations of production and division of labor within one or several modes of production; this implies a set of cultural and ideological bonds. As such, society in principle maintains its autonomous sphere of action. The modality of the state's intervention in society, or vice versa, is a function of the mode of production and changes in the relations of production.
16 My definition of authoritarianism is consistent with that proposed by writers such as Juan Linz, Guillermo O'Donnell, James Malloy and other proponents of the authoritarian model — even though, as this essay reveals, I dissent from them at the explanatory level. By authoritarianism I mean a political mode of organization characterized by strong and autonomous governmental structures that seek to impose on the society a system of interest representation based on enforced limited (political) pluralism. In this mode of organization spontaneous interest articulations are eliminated and a limited number of authoritatively recognized groups that interact with the governmental apparatus is established. See Malloy, , Authoritarianism and Corporatism, p. 4.Google Scholar
17 Chalmers, , “Politicized State in Latin America,” pp. 25, 30, 31.Google Scholar
18 Natural disasters are not considered here.
19 See Bendix, Reinhard et al. , State and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 7Google Scholar; Lindblom, Charles, Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 21–22Google Scholar; see also Easton, Almond and Powell, and Poulantzas in note 14.
20 On modernization theory, see Smith, Anthony D., State and Nation in the Third World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Offiong, Daniel, Imperialism and Dependency (Washington, D.C.Howard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Szentes, Tamas, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Budapest: Academia Kiado, 1976), esp., pt. 1Google Scholar; Tipps, Dean, “Modernization Theory and the Comparative Study of Societies,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 15 (1973), 199–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On imperialism-inspired theories, see Bodenheimer, Suzanne, “Dependency and Imperialism: The Roots of Latin American Underdevelopment,” in Readings in US Imperialism, ed. Fann, and Hodges, (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1971)Google Scholar; Warren, Bill, Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso Editions, 1980)Google Scholar; Zolberg, Aristide, “Origins of the Modern World System: A Missing Link,” World Politics, 33 (1981), 253–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 See Shils, Edward, Center and Periphery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975).Google Scholar
22 See Huntington, , Political OrderGoogle Scholar; Meier, G. and Baldwin, R., Economic Development: Theory, History, Policy (New York, 1957).Google Scholar
22 This is the case of E. Wallerstein, who explicitly rejects the state as an analytical category; see his The Modern World-System, vol. 1 (text edition) (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 7.Google Scholar
24 This holds true even for writers such as Peter Evans, in spite of the title of his book, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar
25 Cardoso, F. and Faletto, E., Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), p. 201Google Scholar; Leys, C., Underdevelopment in Kenya (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).Google Scholar
26 See O'Donnell, G., Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, 1973)Google Scholar: Collier, D., ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Malloy, , Authoritarianism and Corporatism.Google Scholar
27 Collier, , New Authoritarianism, pp. 24, 368.Google Scholar
28 O'Donnell, G., “Corporatism and the Question of the State,”Google Scholar in Malloy, , Authoritarianism and Corporatism, p. 68.Google Scholar
29 Ibid., p. 71.
30 Collier, D. and Collier, R., “Who Does What, to Whom, and How,”Google Scholaribid., p. 493.
31 O'Donnell, , ModernizationGoogle Scholar; Collier, , New Authoritarianism.Google Scholar
32 Cardoso, and Faletto, , Dependency and Development, pp. 201ff.Google Scholar
33 See Shaw, Timothy, “Beyond Neo-colonialism: Varieties of Corporatism in Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 20 (1982), 239–42, 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collier, , New Authoritarianism, esp. chap. 9, pp. 395–97.Google Scholar
34 See Williame, Jean Claude, Patrimonialism and Political Change in the Congo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), esp. chap. 7.Google Scholar
35 Stephan, Alfred, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 80.Google Scholar
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37 Shaw, T. and Munton, D., “Africa's Futures: A Comparison of Forecasts,” in Alternative Futures for Africa, ed. Shaw, T. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1982), p. 75.Google Scholar
38 See Crouch, Colin, “The State, Capital and Liberal Democracy,” in State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism, ed. Crouch, C. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979).Google Scholar
39 See Schmitter, P., “Modes of Interest Intermediation and Models of Societal Change in Western Europe,”Google Scholar in Corporatism and Policy-Making in Contemporary Western Europe, ed. P. Schmitter, special issue of Comparative Political Studies, 10, no. 1 (1977).Google Scholar
40 Crouch, , “The State, Capital and Liberal Democracy,” p. 19.Google Scholar
41 Ibid., p. 22.
42 This misleading character of corporatism is even acknowledged by such authors as E. Cardoso (in Collier, , New Authoritarianism, pp. 36–37Google Scholar) and D. Chalmers (in Malloy, , Authoritarianism and Corporatism, pp. 34–35Google Scholar), who share many of the propositions of the bureaucratic-authoritarian model.
43 Collier, , New Authoritarianism, p. 371.Google Scholar
44 Ibid., p. 392.
45 Ibid., pp. 396–97, emphasis added.
46 Warren, , Imperialism, p. 167.Google Scholar
47 See Cardoso, and Faletto, , Dependency and DevelopmentGoogle Scholar; Caporaso, James and Zare, Behrouz, “An Interpretation and Evaluation of Dependency Theory,” in From Dependency to Development: Strategies to Overcome Underdevelopment and Inequality, ed. Munoz, Heraldo (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 43–56.Google Scholar
48 Alavi, Hamza, “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh,” New Left Review (07–08 1972), pp. 61ff.Google Scholar
49 Saul, John, “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Tanzania,” Socialist Register (1974), pp. 349–72.Google Scholar
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51 Saul, , “State in Post-Colonial Societies,” p. 351.Google Scholar
52 See Smith, , State and Nation in the Third WorldGoogle Scholar; Amin, Samir, Unequal Development, Monthly Review (1976), 202–203.Google Scholar
53 Despite some views to the contrary, independence in Latin America cannot be disassociated from liberation wars; see Dozer, Donald, Latin America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), esp. chap. 10.Google Scholar
54 See Hiro, Dilip, Inside the Middle East (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), esp. pt. 1.Google Scholar
55 Professor O'Donnell makes this remark in his review of this essay.
56 See Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1968).Google Scholar
57 See Huntington, , Political Order.Google Scholar
