This session aims to identify what different political thinkers and governments have
meant by ‘development’ (industrialization, public services, state capacity, economic
growth, freedom). It also explores the question of why ‘third-world’ countries have
found development to be such an elusive goal (historical legacies, political
structures, global inequality, corrupt governments, misguided international
institutions, natural resources).
Discussion topics:
(a) Why has ‘development discourse’ proved such an attractive language for governments, political thinkers, and international institutions? Is it possible to identify in the literature a common understanding of what development is and how it can be achieved? What are the main factors preventing the ‘development’ of the ‘third-world’?
(b) Does successful ‘development’ require a certain type of state (democratic vs. developmental vs. authoritarian vs. neo-patrimonial)? Is there an inherent contradiction between the policies required to successfully promote economic growth and the priorities of political actors in underdeveloped countries?
Readings:
(a) Development and its discontents
· Allen, T and A Thomas (2000), Poverty and Development into the Twenty First Century, esp Chs 1, 2, 17
· Bates, R (2001), Prosperity and Violence: the political economy of development (a useful overview and critique of the development of the discipline)
· *Cardoso, Fernando, and F Enzo (1979), Development and Dependency in Latin America
· Collier, Paul (2007), The Bottom Billion, esp Parts 2 & 4
· Cowen, M. & R.W. Shenton (1996), Doctrines of development
· Escobar, Arturo (1995), Encountering Development: the making and unmaking of the Third World
· Ferguson, James (1994), The Anti-politics Machine
· Gwynne, Robert and Cristobal Kay (2004), Latin America Transformed: Globalization and Modernity
· *Leys, C (1996), The Rise and Fall of Development Theory
· *Sen, Amartya (1999), Development As Freedom
· Stiglitz, Joseph (2002), Globalization and its Discontents
(b) The economic consequences of political structures
· Bates, R (2005), Markets and States in Tropical Africa
· *Chabal, P. and J-P Daloz (1999), Africa works: disorder as political instrument, Chs 1, 8 & 9
· Evans, Peter (1992), ‘The State as Problem and Solution’, in Stephen Haggard and Robert Kaufman eds The Politics of Economic Adjustment
· Governance 7, no. 4 (1994), special issue on the Developmental State in Asia
· Kline, Harvey and Wiarda, Howard (2006), Latin American Politics and Development, Ch 1
· Leftwich, A. (1993), Governance, democracy and development in the Third World. Third World
Quarterly 14 (3)
· Mamdani, Mahmood. (1990), Uganda - contradictions of the IMF programme and perspective.
Development and Change 21
· Onis, Ziya (1991), ‘The Logic of the Developmental State’, Comparative Politics, 24 (1), (this is a very helpful review article – the four sources discussed are all worthy of consultation)
· *Polanyi, Karl (1944), The Great Transformation
· *Rueschemeyer, D et al (1992), Capitalist Development and Democracy, esp pp. 63-75.
· Scott, James (1998), Seeing Like a State
(more)
Monday, 30 November 2009
Migdal (1988) Strong societies and weak states
Migdal, Joel (1988), Strong Societies and Weak States,
Available: Hard copy
Reading list MT09 Week 5, Ch 1.
(4)
Post war view of state building was that states had the potential to mould their societies through virtuous planning and meticulously laid out policies.
The state organisation became the focal point for hopes of achieving broad goals of human dignity, prosperity and equity.
Capabilities include the capacities to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways.
(5)
Strong states have "high capabilities" to complete these tasks, where weak states are on the low end of the spectrum of capability.
Migdal takes Norlinger's definition of autonomy: states that can act on their own preferences and are not beholden to the most dominant social group
Strong state lit versus weak state lit, states almost totally impotent in the swirl of dizzying social changes
Krasner (1985): most developing countries have very weak domestic political institutions.
Constitutions and legislation often appear strong on paper but in practice the control is not actually exercised (Hammergren 1977)
(8)
Kohli (1987) India's state performance can be characterised overall by a failure to pursue the regime's own professed goals.
[carrying out some different goals might imply a strong/effective state that has been captured by a particular social group. similarly carrying out own goals ineffectively may imply weak but autonomous state]
(more)
Available: Hard copy
Reading list MT09 Week 5, Ch 1.
(4)
Post war view of state building was that states had the potential to mould their societies through virtuous planning and meticulously laid out policies.
The state organisation became the focal point for hopes of achieving broad goals of human dignity, prosperity and equity.
Capabilities include the capacities to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways.
(5)
Strong states have "high capabilities" to complete these tasks, where weak states are on the low end of the spectrum of capability.
Migdal takes Norlinger's definition of autonomy: states that can act on their own preferences and are not beholden to the most dominant social group
Strong state lit versus weak state lit, states almost totally impotent in the swirl of dizzying social changes
Krasner (1985): most developing countries have very weak domestic political institutions.
Constitutions and legislation often appear strong on paper but in practice the control is not actually exercised (Hammergren 1977)
(8)
Kohli (1987) India's state performance can be characterised overall by a failure to pursue the regime's own professed goals.
[carrying out some different goals might imply a strong/effective state that has been captured by a particular social group. similarly carrying out own goals ineffectively may imply weak but autonomous state]
(more)
Friday, 27 November 2009
Constitutional Reform Event
This special issue will be launched at a free event to be held at Portcullis House, Westminster on 9 December 2009 from 6pm. All are welcome to join special issue editor Dr. David Erdos (Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford), Unlock Democracy, and Oxford Journals for an evening of lively discussion and debate on the past, present, and future of UK constitutional reform. The event will be chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and confirmed speakers include Peter Facey, Director of Unlock Democracy, and Dr. Tony Wright MP, Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee. (Further speakers to be announced shortly.) The panel will address three overarching questions which are of as much interest now as twenty years ago when Charter 88 was first launched:
What have been the central strengths and achievements of the constitutional reform movement?
Where might it have taken a wrong turning, strategically and/or in terms of philosophy?
Where do we go from here in order to achieve democratic and constitutional renewal?
Those seeking further information are welcome to email David Erdos directly at david.erdos@csls.ox.ac.uk.
What have been the central strengths and achievements of the constitutional reform movement?
Where might it have taken a wrong turning, strategically and/or in terms of philosophy?
Where do we go from here in order to achieve democratic and constitutional renewal?
Those seeking further information are welcome to email David Erdos directly at david.erdos@csls.ox.ac.uk.
Parliamentary Affairs special Journal on constitutional reform (link)
(more)
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Skocpol and Finegold (1982) State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal
Skocpol, Theda and Kenneth Finegold (1982) ‘State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,’ Political Science Quarterly, 97 (2), 255-78
Available - PDF Link
(255)
The new deal was a major watershed in the development of an economically interventionist national state.
The NIRA and the Agricultural Adjustment Act were an extraordinary new departure for the US govt. due to the amount of economic intervention.
NIRA: pursuit of economic recovery through the united action of labour and management. Each code for each industry mandated minimum wages and maximum hours plus more union rights.
(256)
Agricultural Adj Act (AAA) aimed to raise prices for basic commodities.
These acts effectively mandated creation of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).
(257)
If both these acts had succeeded the US might have by the mid 30s emerged from recession as a centralised system of politically managed corporatist capitalism.
But... NRA became increasingly unwieldy, conflict ridden, uncertain about basic goals and preferred means for achieving them. AAA's programme was more successful.
(258)
Why was the new deal's initial effort to intervene in agriculture institutionalised so much more quickly than it's attempt to intervene in industry. Neither conventional pluralism nor conventional Marxism can answer it.
(259)
Both of these theoretical approaches attempt to explain political outcomes in socially determinist ways.
Pluralist theory: the best organised groups in society with the greatest political resources will use government to achieve their goals.
Marxist theory: capitalist class benefits most from politics in a capitalist society (regardless of whether capitalists control decision making).
Industrial capitalists were already highly organised by 1932 through trade associations.
(260)
Their strategy for recovery of American industry was based on the relaxation of antitrust laws, and government sponsorship for industry by industry cooperation to coordinate prices and regulate production levels and employment conditions. The industrialists got what they asked for in terms of the NIRA and even more so in the implementation than the legislation.
Farmers were not as highly organised as the industrialists in the early 30s. Competing farmers' associations were pressing for different responses to the depression.
Farmers still did well out of the AAA despite lack of unity over requests for assistance.
Argument: in neither case can the demands, the organisation, or the class economic power of social groups directly explain the results of the New Deal govt interventions affecting the interests of farmers or industrialists.
Explanatory approach focusses on issue of state capacity. Govts can not always successfully enact their own decisions.
(261)
Given the state capacities at hand, the NIRA promised the impossible whereas the AAA promised the attainable.
Weakness of the American state and the failure of the NRA
Schumpeter's 1939 book Business Cycles outlined a previously entrenched skilled civil service or experienced bureaucracy in America.
Skowronek (1982) during the nineteenth century the US national polity was "stateless" - a government of courts and parties, one that functioned remarkably well in a decentralised capitalist economy.
(263)
Herbert Hoover created the ideal of the "associative state" a form of "adhocracy" involving using government officials as facilitators between influential group, particularly business trade associations.
(264)
Roosevelt was mainly reliant on one man, General Hugh Johnson to put together the entire NRA apparatus necessary to implement Title I of the NIRA.
An entire NRA staff had to be instantly assembled. Blue Eagle campaign was launched to persuade employers to agree immediately to blanket wage and hours provisions - and Johnson prompted industries to draw up their own codes of fair competition.
Business leaders successfully formulated these codes so as to allow a number of loopholes in the prolabour provisions as well as production cutbacks and noncompetitive higher prices for most industries.
(266)
The lack of input from labour groups and consumer groups meant that the NIRA was a bargain between business leaders and business leaders in the guise of the government.
(267)
The virtual complete absence of autonomous capacity to administer industrial planning in the US polity in the early 1930s condemned the NRA to be at first a characteristic mobilisation effort, and then an arena of bitterly politicised and inconclusive conflicts.
(268)
The Federal Agricultural Complex and the Roots of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
(269)
The AAA's trajectory did not reflect the divisiveness and stalemate of the NRA's.
(270)
Important differences between agri production and industrial prodn. Annual cycle with fewer key decisions to be regulated over time.
The AAA was placed within an existing federal department. USDA. (NRA would not have gained from being placed within the Commerce dept - reason given earlier).
The Agri Dept was an island of strength in the ocean of weakness of Federal government.
(274)
The "personality factor" had been dissolved in the USDA because a corporate factor the influence of land grant college training and tradition has been overwhelmingly strong.
Conclusion
The agricultural experts, ideas and administrative means were products of a long process of institution building whose roots go back to the Civil War.
The institutions laid the basis for the administrative will to intervene in the national market economy.
Armstrong: a large measure of organisational unity and homogeneity in socialisation among elite administrators has been crucial for development of an interventionist role definition.
The US agricultural complex historically nurtured a process of political learning about what could effectively be done for farmers and society as a whole through public agricultural policy.
Heclo: politics finds its source not only in power but also in uncertainty
(278)
The reach of the New Deal's ambitious early venture into industrial planning simply exceeded the grasp that could be afforded by the public institutions and intelligence of the day.
(more)
Available - PDF Link
(255)
The new deal was a major watershed in the development of an economically interventionist national state.
The NIRA and the Agricultural Adjustment Act were an extraordinary new departure for the US govt. due to the amount of economic intervention.
NIRA: pursuit of economic recovery through the united action of labour and management. Each code for each industry mandated minimum wages and maximum hours plus more union rights.
(256)
Agricultural Adj Act (AAA) aimed to raise prices for basic commodities.
These acts effectively mandated creation of the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA).
(257)
If both these acts had succeeded the US might have by the mid 30s emerged from recession as a centralised system of politically managed corporatist capitalism.
But... NRA became increasingly unwieldy, conflict ridden, uncertain about basic goals and preferred means for achieving them. AAA's programme was more successful.
(258)
Why was the new deal's initial effort to intervene in agriculture institutionalised so much more quickly than it's attempt to intervene in industry. Neither conventional pluralism nor conventional Marxism can answer it.
(259)
Both of these theoretical approaches attempt to explain political outcomes in socially determinist ways.
Pluralist theory: the best organised groups in society with the greatest political resources will use government to achieve their goals.
Marxist theory: capitalist class benefits most from politics in a capitalist society (regardless of whether capitalists control decision making).
Industrial capitalists were already highly organised by 1932 through trade associations.
(260)
Their strategy for recovery of American industry was based on the relaxation of antitrust laws, and government sponsorship for industry by industry cooperation to coordinate prices and regulate production levels and employment conditions. The industrialists got what they asked for in terms of the NIRA and even more so in the implementation than the legislation.
Farmers were not as highly organised as the industrialists in the early 30s. Competing farmers' associations were pressing for different responses to the depression.
Farmers still did well out of the AAA despite lack of unity over requests for assistance.
Argument: in neither case can the demands, the organisation, or the class economic power of social groups directly explain the results of the New Deal govt interventions affecting the interests of farmers or industrialists.
Explanatory approach focusses on issue of state capacity. Govts can not always successfully enact their own decisions.
(261)
Given the state capacities at hand, the NIRA promised the impossible whereas the AAA promised the attainable.
Weakness of the American state and the failure of the NRA
Schumpeter's 1939 book Business Cycles outlined a previously entrenched skilled civil service or experienced bureaucracy in America.
Skowronek (1982) during the nineteenth century the US national polity was "stateless" - a government of courts and parties, one that functioned remarkably well in a decentralised capitalist economy.
(263)
Herbert Hoover created the ideal of the "associative state" a form of "adhocracy" involving using government officials as facilitators between influential group, particularly business trade associations.
(264)
Roosevelt was mainly reliant on one man, General Hugh Johnson to put together the entire NRA apparatus necessary to implement Title I of the NIRA.
An entire NRA staff had to be instantly assembled. Blue Eagle campaign was launched to persuade employers to agree immediately to blanket wage and hours provisions - and Johnson prompted industries to draw up their own codes of fair competition.
Business leaders successfully formulated these codes so as to allow a number of loopholes in the prolabour provisions as well as production cutbacks and noncompetitive higher prices for most industries.
(266)
The lack of input from labour groups and consumer groups meant that the NIRA was a bargain between business leaders and business leaders in the guise of the government.
(267)
The virtual complete absence of autonomous capacity to administer industrial planning in the US polity in the early 1930s condemned the NRA to be at first a characteristic mobilisation effort, and then an arena of bitterly politicised and inconclusive conflicts.
(268)
The Federal Agricultural Complex and the Roots of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
(269)
The AAA's trajectory did not reflect the divisiveness and stalemate of the NRA's.
(270)
Important differences between agri production and industrial prodn. Annual cycle with fewer key decisions to be regulated over time.
The AAA was placed within an existing federal department. USDA. (NRA would not have gained from being placed within the Commerce dept - reason given earlier).
The Agri Dept was an island of strength in the ocean of weakness of Federal government.
(274)
The "personality factor" had been dissolved in the USDA because a corporate factor the influence of land grant college training and tradition has been overwhelmingly strong.
Conclusion
The agricultural experts, ideas and administrative means were products of a long process of institution building whose roots go back to the Civil War.
The institutions laid the basis for the administrative will to intervene in the national market economy.
Armstrong: a large measure of organisational unity and homogeneity in socialisation among elite administrators has been crucial for development of an interventionist role definition.
The US agricultural complex historically nurtured a process of political learning about what could effectively be done for farmers and society as a whole through public agricultural policy.
Heclo: politics finds its source not only in power but also in uncertainty
(278)
The reach of the New Deal's ambitious early venture into industrial planning simply exceeded the grasp that could be afforded by the public institutions and intelligence of the day.
(more)
King (1999) The Racial Bureacracy....
King, Desmond (1999) ‘The Racial Bureaucracy: African Americans and the Federal Government in the Era of Segregated Race Relations’, Governance, 12 (4), 345-77
Available - PDF link
Racial bureaucracy in the civil service - one group of employees placed in a subordinate position to the others both formally and informally. Physical working conditions and daily routines were constructed around the segregation of one group of employees because of their race, and advancement and promotion was delimited by race. Between the 1890s and 1945 in the US.
(347) State theory and the racial bureaucracy
Neither version (theory) was satisfactory at explaining how segregation was introduced into Federal government.
The local racial state thesis: Rueschemeyer Stephens and Stephens (1992) - emphasis on the decentralised character of the state. This allowed the South to continue to exclude blacks totally. But - segregationist practices were followed in the North as well.
(348)
The weak state thesis: (e.g. Krasner 1978; Nettl 1968; Skocpol 1985; Skowronek 1982)
- but for African Americans, the state has often appeared as a strong institution whether a source of oppression, or as an institution willing to thwart local racism.
The dichotomy between strong and weak states may be overdrawn in the literature.
State capacities are often dynamic in nature - party political and electoral calculations are crucial in the role that the federal govt adopts.
(349)
Apparent weakness or strength of the state was not an immutable institutional feature.
In the mid-1950s after the Brown decision and findings from Truman's investigative committees - USDJ officials became instruments through which civil rights were realised (Graham 1990).
(350) Building the racial bureaucracy
(364) Discrimination Under Segregation
New Deal programmes were established in 1932 to provide public relief and employment for all Americans. Many of these programmes were segregated.
(368) Conclusion
Multiple traditions approach to the formation of American political values - e.g. contradiction of the "separate but equal" mantra with the Plessy judgement.
(more)
Available - PDF link
Racial bureaucracy in the civil service - one group of employees placed in a subordinate position to the others both formally and informally. Physical working conditions and daily routines were constructed around the segregation of one group of employees because of their race, and advancement and promotion was delimited by race. Between the 1890s and 1945 in the US.
(347) State theory and the racial bureaucracy
Neither version (theory) was satisfactory at explaining how segregation was introduced into Federal government.
The local racial state thesis: Rueschemeyer Stephens and Stephens (1992) - emphasis on the decentralised character of the state. This allowed the South to continue to exclude blacks totally. But - segregationist practices were followed in the North as well.
(348)
The weak state thesis: (e.g. Krasner 1978; Nettl 1968; Skocpol 1985; Skowronek 1982)
- but for African Americans, the state has often appeared as a strong institution whether a source of oppression, or as an institution willing to thwart local racism.
The dichotomy between strong and weak states may be overdrawn in the literature.
State capacities are often dynamic in nature - party political and electoral calculations are crucial in the role that the federal govt adopts.
(349)
Apparent weakness or strength of the state was not an immutable institutional feature.
In the mid-1950s after the Brown decision and findings from Truman's investigative committees - USDJ officials became instruments through which civil rights were realised (Graham 1990).
(350) Building the racial bureaucracy
(364) Discrimination Under Segregation
New Deal programmes were established in 1932 to provide public relief and employment for all Americans. Many of these programmes were segregated.
(368) Conclusion
Multiple traditions approach to the formation of American political values - e.g. contradiction of the "separate but equal" mantra with the Plessy judgement.
(more)
MT09 - Week 8 Tutorial - Strong and Weak States
Week 8: Do comparative theories of state capacity provide a sound basis for distinguishing between strong and weak states?
Consult the course reading list and
On the general theory you could look at Skocpol, Theda, ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In, 1985;
for an attempt to apply it see: King, Desmond (1999) ‘The Racial Bureaucracy: African Americans and the Federal Government in the Era of Segregated Race Relations’, Governance, 12 (4), 345-77;
Skocpol, Theda and Kenneth Finegold (1982) ‘State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,’ Political Science Quarterly, 97 (2), 255-78..
(more)
Consult the course reading list and
On the general theory you could look at Skocpol, Theda, ‘Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research’, in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In, 1985;
for an attempt to apply it see: King, Desmond (1999) ‘The Racial Bureaucracy: African Americans and the Federal Government in the Era of Segregated Race Relations’, Governance, 12 (4), 345-77;
Skocpol, Theda and Kenneth Finegold (1982) ‘State Capacity and Economic Intervention in the Early New Deal,’ Political Science Quarterly, 97 (2), 255-78..
(more)
Saturday, 21 November 2009
Party Politics No. 9 Issue 5 (2003)
Available SSL - Per P
Issues: v.1:no.1(1995)- Last rec'd: v.15:no.6(2009:NOV) on NOV 13, 2009
Link to full PDF of journal - http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/vol9/issue1/
Notes. (more)
Issues: v.1:no.1(1995)- Last rec'd: v.15:no.6(2009:NOV) on NOV 13, 2009
Link to full PDF of journal - http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/vol9/issue1/
Notes. (more)
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