Theories of non-Western states focus to a large extent on what they are not—not “Weberian,” not “empirical,” or not the product of war making. With increasingly evident variation in postcolonial or postcommunist states, this approach has become deeply unsatisfying. In States in the Developing World, Miguel Centeno, his coeditors, and their contributors have, in one outstanding volume, corrected course. They do so by providing a unified framework through which to study variation in state capacity and state performance, coupled with a selection of empirically and theoretically innovative contributions that bring the framework to life. Even more impressive is that they manage to do this without abandoning many of the most important advances in state theory since the “bringing-the-state-back-in” movement began some 30 years ago.
Unlike many edited volumes that comprise a collection of chapters on a varied set of questions united only by a central theme, this one revolves around a clear and concise organizing question: What determines variation in state performance throughout the developing world? The introductory chapter, authored by Centeno, Atul Kohli and Deborah J. Yashar, develops a coherent set of concepts and theoretical problems through which the contributors (mostly) pursue this question. The central concept is that of state performance, or “what, for good or for ill, the state is able to accomplish” (p. 3). The authors theorize two main determinants of state performance: state capacity and politics. State capacity is defined as implementation capability, which, they further explain, should be seen primarily as “the quality of [the] bureaucracy, independent of whether it is deployed and to what extent” (p. 5). The “politics” ingredient of state performance speaks to the conditions under which the organizational capacity of the state is deployed, and the inputs—namely, political coalitions and the balance of social forces—that are required to make that deployment productive. This framework is applied to three main spheres of state performance: 1) order and reach, 2) economic development, and 3) inclusion and equity.
The remainder of the volume is divided into three sections corresponding to these three dimensions of state performance. The first section addresses the classic Hobbesian imperative of maintaining order throughout the territory. The chapters in this section by Maya Tudor, Diane E. Davis, and Agustina Giraudy and Juan Pablo Luna convey the varied and complex dynamics surrounding the maintenance of order across South Asian and Latin American countries. A chapter by Erik Martinez Kuhonta looks at order in East and Southeast Asia through a slightly different lens, focusing on the extent to which institutions constrain autocrats’ responses to security threats, which, he argues, helps us to understand the origins of the “benevolent” dictators under which the East Asian miracles occurred. Taken together, the historical, political, and institutional approaches in this section mount a serious challenge to the traditional bellicose model of state formation.
Five subsequent chapters focus on state performance as it relates to economic development. The chapters cover the determinants of both bureaucratic structures that support or impede development, as well as developmental policy decisions to deploy those structures. Two chapters, one by Katherine Bersch, Sérgio Praça and Matthew Taylor, and another by Yuen Yuen Ang, examine variation in subnational bureaucratic structures in Brazil and China, respectively. Ang’s evolutionary approach to understanding the relationship between bureaucracy and growth is particularly striking as it challenges the conventional view of the growth-enhancing effects of Weberian bureaucratic structures. Two chapters on Africa by Thandika Mkandawire and Antoinette Handley remind us of the importance of resource endowments for understanding both the capacity and performance of state structures, both because of their relevance for understanding patterns of political contestation (Mkandawire) and because of the timing of resource discoveries relative to state formation (Handley). Comparing the Indian states of Gujarat and Punjab, Kanta Murali focuses on why some governments adopt policies that help to attract investment. Her argument, based on coalitional dynamics, leads to an unexpected finding—that the prevalence of identity politics can lead to the formation of narrow pro-business coalitions that, in turn, support pro-investment policies.
The chapters in the third section grapple with the state’s role in promoting inclusion and equity. They challenge, among other things, the idea that inclusion and equity are merely by-products of the processes through which states manage other functions, such as order and development. A chapter by Patrick Heller on “urban regimes” in India, South Africa, and Brazil shows how varying constellations of capacity and autonomy at the city level produce more or less inclusive patterns of urban growth. Both Julia Strauss and Jeremy Seekings present novel perspectives on the processes through which states advance inclusion and equity. In particular, Strauss emphasizes actors’ perceptions and performances in the political mobilization of capacity to implement land reform in China, while Seekings reminds that there have been many impressive advances in pro-poor welfare policies across the Global South, but that these advances are incremental in nature and therefore easy to miss. The final chapter by Peter Evans, Evelyne Huber, and John D. Stephens marries contemporary development theory, notably Amartya Sen’s “capability expansion” approach, with the volume’s organizing framework of state performance in order to identify three distinct modalities of state-led inclusion. These modalities will no doubt serve as a departure point for future research studying the state’s role in expanding social capabilities in inclusive and equitable ways.
Among the countless contributions the volume has to offer, several stand out. First, the editors and contributors pay vigorous attention to variation both across and within states, as well as changes over time. While the many different approaches to state variation and levels of analysis throughout the work are, at times, overwhelming for the reader, they also help to convey the extent to which the adoption of Western models of states and state making has diverted our attention away from the rich diversity of states in the developing world. Moreover, the volume is extremely effective in conveying the deep historical and political roots underlying the observed variations in contemporary states. This message is critical for countering long-standing misperceptions of capacity building as a technical problem, or the idea that simple behavioral fixes such as monitoring or performance incentives for state agents can, alone, generate better state institutional performance.
Second, the volume does not shy away from some of the messy problems that often plague the study of contemporary states. The editors are clear in their convictions that, for example, state capacity can be conceptualized independently of the political and social forces shaping its deployment, and that state capacity may not be fungible across functional domains. The clarity with which Centeno, Kohli, and Yashar articulate these parameters not only provides coherence to the volume as a whole but also facilitates a productive dialogue throughout the work around these conceptual issues.
There are, however, trade-offs that come with this analytical precision. There was a nagging disconnect between the volume’s framework and the chapters emphasizing the importance of resource endowments, economic legacies, and other material influences. Both building and deploying state capacity require capital accumulation and investment. As the chapters by Davis, Mkandawire, Handley, and Murali reveal, governments confront different internal and external challenges in accessing capital. How, if at all, these economic factors fit into the main framework was unclear. This omission is particularly troubling given the centrality of fiscal concerns like raising revenue in much contemporary state theory.
Another concern is that the editors’ robust attention to the historical and coalitional dynamics underpinning state capacity tends to drown out one of the volume’s main theoretical assertions: that organizational capacity exerts independent influence on state performance. Inattention to this critical link in the theorized causal chain of state performance impairs the volume’s ability to address interesting and important questions about the fungibility of state capacity, whether capacity influences performance similarly across all three functional domains of the state, and the trade-offs that exist when state leaders prioritize one domain over another.
These issues hardly detract from the impact this work is likely to have across the fields of comparative politics, development, and peace and conflict studies. The chapters highlighting subnational variation show that there is much to be gained from finer-grained data collection about subnational governments and populations, while the qualitative case analyses generate numerous interesting hypotheses for further exploration and testing. There is little doubt that States in the Developing World springs us into a new era of studying the fascinating array of states throughout the world for what they are, rather than for what they are not.
