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The State-Society Relationship in Peripheral Countries: Critical Notes on the Dominant Paradigms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

S. N. Sang-Mpam
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Abstract

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.”

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Fall 1986 , pp. 596 - 619
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1986

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References

Notes

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

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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

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18 Natural disasters are not considered here.

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21 See Shils, Edward, Center and Periphery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975).Google Scholar

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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

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30 Collier, D. and Collier, R., “Who Does What, to Whom, and How,”Google Scholaribid., p. 493.

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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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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

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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