scholarly journals Squeezing the State: Tariff Revenue, State Capacity and the WTO's Doha Round

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Scott
Keyword(s):  
State Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
Doha Round ◽  
Tariff Revenue

Suffering Spectators of Development

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjun Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
Civil Wars ◽  
Central Government ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Alternative View

This chapter offers an alternative view of the incidence and duration of insurgencies in the postcolonial world. Insurgencies and civil wars are seen as the primary symptom of state weakness, the inability of the central government to monopolize violence. Challenging extant explanations that identify poverty and low state capacity as the cause of insurgencies, the chapter shows that colonial insurgencies, also occurring in the context of poverty and state weakness, were shorter and ended in regime victories, while contemporary insurgencies are longer and states are less successful at subduing them. The reason for this is the development of exclusive identities—based on ethnicity, religion, tribe—in the colonial period. These identities serve as bases for mobilization to challenge state power and demand services from the state. Either way, such mobilization means that popular demands for services exceed the willingness to disarm and/or pay taxes, that is, to supply the state.

Explaining Peaceful Change in Central and Eastern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Tabachnik ◽  
Benjamin Miller
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Two Independent Variables

This chapter explains the process of peaceful change in Central and Eastern Europe following the demise of the Soviet system. It also explains the failure of peaceful change in the Balkans and some post-Soviet countries, such as the Ukrainian conflict in 2014. The chapter accounts for the conditions for peaceful change and for the variation between peaceful and violent change by the state-to-nation theory. The two independent variables suggested by the theory are the level of state capacity and congruence—namely the compatibility between state borders and the national identities of the countries at stake. Moreover, according to the theory, great-power engagement serves as an intervening variable and in some conditions, as explained in the chapter, may help with peaceful change.

scholarly journals Warfare, Taxation, and Political Change: Evidence from the Italian Risorgimento

2011 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 887-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK DINCECCO ◽  
GIOVANNI FEDERICO ◽  
ANDREA VINDIGNI
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Political Change ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Reform ◽  
The Political ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Analytic Narrative ◽  
Military Strength

We examine the relationships between warfare, taxation, and political change in the context of the political unification of the Italian peninsula. Using a comprehensive new database, we argue that external and internal threat environments had significant implications for the demand for military strength, which in turn had important ramifications for fiscal policy and the likelihood of constitutional reform and related improvements in the provision of nonmilitary public services. Our analytic narrative complements recent theoretical and econometric works about state capacity. By emphasizing public finances, we also uncover novel insights about the forces underlying state formation in Italy.“The budget is the skeleton of the state, stripped of any misleading ideologies.”Sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid, 19261

Ascending India–Its State-Capacity Problems and Prospects

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit Ganguly ◽  
William R. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
State Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Extraction Capacity ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Separatist Movements ◽  
Poor Infrastructure ◽  
Overall Effectiveness

This concluding chapter focuses on India's state-capacity problems and prospects. Its population may become the world's largest, its economy is becoming one of the world's largest, and its military power will probably move along at least a similar upward trajectory. Yet just about everything concerning India is characterized by developmental handicaps of one sort or another. Too many people are poor, infrastructure is lacking, and demands on the state for action to remedy these problems are multiplying. The Indian state, on the other hand, is characterized by a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. It scores high on its democratic attributes but much less so on its overall effectiveness. It has been and continues to be plagued by peripheral insurgencies and separatist movements. Moreover, its extraction capacity has improved but still has a long way to go, given the tasks the state needs to undertake.

Violence Monopoly

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit Ganguly ◽  
William R. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
The State ◽  
System A ◽  
Indian State

This chapter examines violence monopoly. Violence monopoly refers to whether the state is capable of establishing an order in which its claim to be the ultimate and principal employer of coercion goes largely unchallenged. The more often states are challenged, and the more intense the nature of the challengers, the less likely the state is to survive as the central institution of a political system. A poor showing in the violence monopoly category is one of the Indian state's greatest vulnerabilities in terms of state capacity. It will need to be improved upon simply to maintain order. Yet it is doubtful that the Indian state will improve in this area rapidly.

scholarly journals High capacity, low resilience: The ‘developmental’ state and military–bureaucratic authoritarianism in South Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olli Hellmann
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
High Capacity ◽  
Developmental State ◽  
The State ◽  
Sufficient Condition ◽  
International Context ◽  
The Military ◽  
Infrastructural Power

This article argues that high levels of state capacity are not a sufficient condition for consolidating autocratic rule. Rather, whether non-democratic rulers can harness the infrastructural power of the state to implement strategies of regime stabilization depends on three crucial factors: the state’s social embedding; the international context; and the extent of elite cohesion. The paper develops this argument through a case study of the military–bureaucratic regime in South Korea (1961–1987), which – despite a high-capacity ‘developmental’ state at its disposal – failed to maintain high levels of resilience.

scholarly journals State Capacity Redux: Integrating Classical and Experimental Contributions to an Enduring Debate

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elissa Berwick ◽  
Fotini Christia
Keyword(s):  
State Capacity ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The State ◽  
Interactive Process ◽  
Theoretical Structure ◽  
State Activity ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Mass Publics ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
The Subject

What state capacity is and how to strengthen it remain open questions, as the underlying incentives of the state, its citizens, and its agents align in some areas of state activity and diverge in others. This article lays out a framework that integrates classical and experimental approaches within a common theoretical structure based on the diverse capacity challenges states face with respect to extraction, coordination, and compliance. Addressing each in turn, we show that state capacity is an interactive process, the product of institutions governing relations between the state, mass publics, and bureaucrats. We argue that the institutions ensuring capacity and the processes that bring them into being vary. Our review highlights trends in recent research, as well as relevant differences in opportunities for and obstacles to empirical work on the subject.

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