Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 77 views

    Joel Migdal - Strong Societies Weak States - A Summary

    Uploaded by

    Marinella Dimaano
    This book examines state strength and social control in developing countries. It argues that a state can only become strong if it achieves a high level of social control over society. A state struggles for social control against other social organizations that apply different rules. The level of social control determined if a state is strong or weak. Strong states only emerged after catastrophic events undermined existing social controls and allowed new ones to take hold. Achieving social control and a strong state is difficult as creating powerful state agencies risks empowering organizations that challenge state control. Fragmented social control and this "ruler's dilemma" have led to weak states focused on political survival rather than social mobilization and consolidation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Joel Migdal - Strong Societies Weak States - A Summary

    Uploaded by

    Marinella Dimaano
    77 views2 pages
    This book examines state strength and social control in developing countries. It argues that a state can only become strong if it achieves a high level of social control over society. A state struggles for social control against other social organizations that apply different rules. The level of social control determined if a state is strong or weak. Strong states only emerged after catastrophic events undermined existing social controls and allowed new ones to take hold. Achieving social control and a strong state is difficult as creating powerful state agencies risks empowering organizations that challenge state control. Fragmented social control and this "ruler's dilemma" have led to weak states focused on political survival rather than social mobilization and consolidation.

    Original Title

    Joel Migdal - Strong Societies Weak States - A Summary - Copy

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This book examines state strength and social control in developing countries. It argues that a state can only become strong if it achieves a high level of social control over society. A state struggles for social control against other social organizations that apply different rules. The level of social control determined if a state is strong or weak. Strong states only emerged after catastrophic events undermined existing social controls and allowed new ones to take hold. Achieving social control and a strong state is difficult as creating powerful state agencies risks empowering organizations that challenge state control. Fragmented social control and this "ruler's dilemma" have led to weak states focused on political survival rather than social mobilization and consolidation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    77 views2 pages

    Joel Migdal - Strong Societies Weak States - A Summary

    Uploaded by

    Marinella Dimaano
    This book examines state strength and social control in developing countries. It argues that a state can only become strong if it achieves a high level of social control over society. A state struggles for social control against other social organizations that apply different rules. The level of social control determined if a state is strong or weak. Strong states only emerged after catastrophic events undermined existing social controls and allowed new ones to take hold. Achieving social control and a strong state is difficult as creating powerful state agencies risks empowering organizations that challenge state control. Fragmented social control and this "ruler's dilemma" have led to weak states focused on political survival rather than social mobilization and consolidation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    Joel Migdal’s Strong Societies, Weak States: A Summary

    Why have some states struggled to fashion state-society relations, neutralize opposition, gain predominance,
    and achieve social control, whereas others have been strong in this regard? This book presents a model for
    understanding state capabilities in the Third World based on state-society relations. Its central premises are
    that: i) the nature of the state cannot be separated from the nature of societies; and ii) the emergence
    of a strong, capable state can occur only with a tremendous concentration of social control (to the
    state).

    The state’s struggle for social control is characterized by conflict between state leaders, who seek to mobilize
    people and resources and impose a single set of rules, and other social organizations applying different rules
    in parts of the society. The distribution of social control in society that emerges as a result of this conflict
    (between societies and states) is the main determinant of whether states become strong or weak.

     Probably the most important factor in the state’s ability to survive is its ability to mobilize society.
    Governments acquire the tools of political influence through the mobilization of human and material
    resources for state action. States in Europe acquired a triad of ‘essential tentacles’ for this purpose: a
    standing army, a vastly improved tax-collecting mechanism, and an expanded set of judicial courts.

     The state’s capacity to mobilize society rests on social control, defined as the ability to make the
    operative rules of the game for people in society. The major struggles in many societies are over who
    has the right and ability to make the rules that guide people’s social behavior (the state or other
    organizations).

     Social control requires the state to become a real and symbolic aspect of people’s daily survival
    strategies. Informal and formal organizations all have a variety of sanctions and rewards (systems of
    rules) – both material and symbolic. Strategies for social control need to include both material
    incentives and coercion, and the manipulation of symbols of how social life should be ordered.

     Lack of state social control means understanding resistance to social control. Societies are often
    characterized by conflict among organizations offering different rules. Strong societies can be either
    highly centralized (in state power) or fragmented (across several social organizations). Such conditions
    can enfeeble the state.

     Where societies have been web-like and where social control has been fragmented among numerous
    organizations, states have faced formidable barriers in seeing their policies through.

    Levels of (state) social control are reflected in three indicators: compliance, participation and legitimation.
    These are used by state and non-state organizations alike to seek social control.

     Strong states emerged only in the wake of severe social disruption. Social control cannot occur without
    exogenous factors first creating catastrophic conditions that rapidly and deeply undermine existing
    strategies of survival; the bases of social control. The two key exogenous factors are 1) spread of the
    world economy and 2) colonial rule. War and revolution, closely related to mass migration, are 20th
    century examples of dislocations that have weakened old forms of social control and allowed new ones
    to emerge.

     The need to achieve social mobilization and at the same time a strong central state constitutes ‘the
    rulers’ dilemma’: State leaders can only achieve political mobilization when they have proffered viable
    strategies of survival to the populace. This requires an elaborate set of institutions, but creating strong
    state agencies risks creating powerful sub-organizations which within the state itself can become an
    oligopoly of mobilization capacity. State leaders therefore risk creating potential power centers they
    cannot control.

     Fragmented social control, the rulers’ dilemma, and the difficulties of political mobilization have led to a
    pathological style at the apex of the state – the ‘politics of survival’: State leaders have been concerned
    with preventing leading officials in important agencies from using their own mobilization capacities
    against the central state leadership, which has pulverized the very arms of the state that could achieve
    their goal of mobilization.

     In situations of fragmented social control, the state has become an arena of accommodations: The local
    social control of strongmen has led to a ‘triangle of accommodation’ between implementers, politicians
    and strongmen.

     The legacy of fragmented social control continues to constrain states, and the prospects for the
    consolidation of the state in parts of society which are fragmented are slim. The politics of survival at
    the top and the triangle of accommodation at the bottom reinforce social fragmentation.

    You might also like