State Power and Social Forces Domination and Transformation in the Third World

This eminently readable collection of high-quality, country-specific essays on Third World politics provides, through a variety of well-integrated themes and approaches, an examination of 'state theory' as it has been practiced in the past, and how it must be refined for the future.

This eminently readable 1994 collection of high-quality, country-specific essays on Third World politics provides, through a variety of well-integrated themes and approaches, an examination of 'state theory' as it has been practised in the past, and how it must be refined for the future. The contributors go beyond the previously articulated 'bringing the state back in' model to offer their own 'state-in-society' approach. They argue that states, which should be disaggregated for meaningful comparative study, are best analysed as parts of societies. States may help mould, but are also continually moulded by, the societies within which they are embedded. States' capacities, further, will vary depending on their ties to other social forces. And other social forces will be capable of being mobilised into political contention only under certain conditions. Political contention pitting states against other social forces may sometimes be mutually enfeebling, but at other times, mutually empowering.

Preface; List of contributors; Introduction: developing a state-in-society perspective; Part I. Theoretical and Methodological Considerations: 1. The state in society: an approach to struggles for domination Joel S. Migdal; Part II. States: Embedded in Society: 2. Traditional politics against state transformation in Brazil Frances Hagopian; 3. State power and social organization in China Vivienne Shue; 4. Centralization and powerlessness: India's democracy in a comparative perspective Atul Kohli; 5. States and ruling classes in postcolonial Africa: the enduring contradictions of power Catherine Boone; Part III. Social Forces: Engaged with State Power: 6. Labor divided: sources of state formation in modern China Elizabeth J. Perry; 7. Business conflict, collaboration and privilege in interwar Egypt Robert Vitalis; 8. A time and a place for the non-state: social change in the Ottoman empire during the 'long nineteenth century' Resat Kasaba; 9. Peasant-state relations in postcolonial Africa: patterns of engagement and disengagement Michael Bratton; 10. Engaging the state: associational life in sub-Saharan Africa Naomi Chazan; Part IV. Conclusion: 11. State power and social forces: on political contention and accommodation in the Third World Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue; Index.

This is a 1994 collection of scholarly essays on state, society and politics in the Third World. The book is relevant to the growing 'state theory' literature in the social sciences and it puts forward a 'state-in-society approach' to the study of political development.