Neo-statism in Third World studies: A critique

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 20, Issue 6, 1999, Pages 1089-1107

  Chowdhury, Supriya Roy ^a  

^a INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE   (India)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AUTONOMY; DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE; STATE-LOCAL RELATIONS;

EID: 0033380073     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436599913307     Document Type: Article

References (40)

1. For theoretically informed and empirically orientated discussions of the neo-statist position, see particularly Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; Nordlinger, 'Taking the state seriously', in Myron Weiner & Samuel Huntington (eds), Understanding Political Development, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1987; and Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. For a particularly telling critique of the statist approach, see Timothy Mitchell, 'The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics', American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77-96. For an interesting debate, see the contributions of John Bendix, Barthlomew Sparrow, Bertell Ollman & Timothy Mitchell, 'Going beyond the stale', American Political Science Review, 86 (4), 1992, pp 1007-1021.
2. For theoretically informed and empirically orientated discussions of the neo-statist position, see particularly Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; Nordlinger, 'Taking the state seriously', in Myron Weiner & Samuel Huntington (eds), Understanding Political Development, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1987; and Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. For a particularly telling critique of the statist approach, see Timothy Mitchell, 'The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics', American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77-96. For an interesting debate, see the contributions of John Bendix, Barthlomew Sparrow, Bertell Ollman & Timothy Mitchell, 'Going beyond the stale', American Political Science Review, 86 (4), 1992, pp 1007-1021.
3. For theoretically informed and empirically orientated discussions of the neo-statist position, see particularly Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; Nordlinger, 'Taking the state seriously', in Myron Weiner & Samuel Huntington (eds), Understanding Political Development, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1987; and Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. For a particularly telling critique of the statist approach, see Timothy Mitchell, 'The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics', American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77-96. For an interesting debate, see the contributions of John Bendix, Barthlomew Sparrow, Bertell Ollman & Timothy Mitchell, 'Going beyond the stale', American Political Science Review, 86 (4), 1992, pp 1007-1021.
4. For theoretically informed and empirically orientated discussions of the neo-statist position, see particularly Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; Nordlinger, 'Taking the state seriously', in Myron Weiner & Samuel Huntington (eds), Understanding Political Development, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1987; and Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. For a particularly telling critique of the statist approach, see Timothy Mitchell, 'The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics', American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77-96. For an interesting debate, see the contributions of John Bendix, Barthlomew Sparrow, Bertell Ollman & Timothy Mitchell, 'Going beyond the stale', American Political Science Review, 86 (4), 1992, pp 1007-1021.
5. For theoretically informed and empirically orientated discussions of the neo-statist position, see particularly Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981; Nordlinger, 'Taking the state seriously', in Myron Weiner & Samuel Huntington (eds), Understanding Political Development, Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1987; and Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer & Theda Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. For a particularly telling critique of the statist approach, see Timothy Mitchell, 'The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics', American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77-96. For an interesting debate, see the contributions of John Bendix, Barthlomew Sparrow, Bertell Ollman & Timothy Mitchell, 'Going beyond the stale', American Political Science Review, 86 (4), 1992, pp 1007-1021.
6. Talcott Parsons & Edward Shils, Towards a General Theory of Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951.
7. Classics of the modernisation school would be Gabrielle Almond & James Coleman, Politics of Developing Areas, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, II: Free Press, 1958.
8. Classics of the modernisation school would be Gabrielle Almond & James Coleman, Politics of Developing Areas, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960; Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society, Glencoe, II: Free Press, 1958.
9. This was the critique adopted by those who took up a state-centred approach. For a broad, theoretically orientated introduction to the statist perspective, see Atul Kohli's 'Introduction' in Kohli (ed), The State and Development in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
10. For an early critique from within the modernisation school itself, see Godrielle Almond's 'Introduction' in Almond & Coleman, Politics of Developing Areas; Lloyd Rudolph & Susanne Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967.
11. For an early critique from within the modernisation school itself, see Godrielle Almond's 'Introduction' in Almond & Coleman, Politics of Developing Areas; Lloyd Rudolph & Susanne Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition: Political Development in India, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967.
12. For a review and detailed bibliographical information on the neo-statist perspective, see Kohli, The State and Development in the Third World
13. Neil Smelser, 'Mechanisms of change and adjustment to change', in Bert F Hoselitz & Wilbert E Moore, (eds) Industrialization and Society, Paris: UNESCO, 1963.
14. Samuel P Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.
15. The quotes above are from ibid, pp 141, 145, 142.
16. Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, p xiii.
17. Atul Kohli, State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p 2.
18. Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p 10.
19. Lloyd Rudolph & Susanne Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: the Political Economy of the Indian State, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987, p 6 (emphasis added).
20. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak states, pp 252, 255.
21. Kohli, State and Poverty in India, pp 46-50.
22. Rudolph & Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, p 212 (emphasis added).
23. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, pp 250-51.
24. Ibid, pp 253, 256-57, 262.
25. In a later work, Migdal attempts to delineate a more nuanced state-society relationship. He states here that the relationship, instead of being conflictual, may be mutually empowering. The emphasis is on the need to look at both states and societies as disaggragated (instead of as single points of power), such that the struggle for domination appears dispersed and varied. However, even in this work, the predominant tendency is to look at states in so far as they have been facilitated, or obstructed, by social forces in the pursuit of certain goals. Migdal 'The state in society: an approach to struggles for domination', in Joel Migdal, Atul Kohli & Vivien Shue (eds), State Power and Social Forces, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
26. Amrita Basu & Atul Kohli (eds), Community Conflicts and the State in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p 4.
27. Ibid, pp 7-8 (emphasis added).
28. For the material on Dalit politics in Tamil Nadu, I have drawn heavily on MSS Pandian, 'Stepping outside history: new Dalit writings from Tamil Nadu', in Partha Chatterjee et al (eds), Wages of Freedom, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998; and T A Kannan, 'Replication of hierarchy: a subaltern understanding', paper presented at the Third All India Cultural Studies Workshop, Bhopal, January 1998, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (mimeo).
29. For the material on Dalit politics in Tamil Nadu, I have drawn heavily on MSS Pandian, 'Stepping outside history: new Dalit writings from Tamil Nadu', in Partha Chatterjee et al (eds), Wages of Freedom, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998; and T A Kannan, 'Replication of hierarchy: a subaltern understanding', paper presented at the Third All India Cultural Studies Workshop, Bhopal, January 1998, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (mimeo).
30. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995, p 6.
31. Ibid, p 11.
32. Ibid.
33. Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p 254.
34. Ibid, pp 256-257.
35. Ibid, p 257.
36. Elinor Ostrom, 'Institutional arrangements and the commons dilemma', in Vincent Ostrom, David Feeny & Hartmut Picht (eds), Rethinking Institutional Analysis and Development Issues: Alternatives and Choices, San Francisco: International Center for Economic Growth, 1988.
37. Ronald Oakerson, 'Reciprocity: a bottom-up view of political development', in Ostrom et at, Rethinking Institutional Analysis and Development Issues,
38. Vincent Ostrom, 'Cryptoimperialism, predatory states and safe governance', in Ostrom et al, Rethinking institutional Analysis and Development Issues, pp 65-66.
39. For critiques of the communitarian literature on India, see Pranab Bardhan, 'The state against society: the great divide in Indian social science discourse', in Sugata Bose & Ayesha Jalal (eds), Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997; and Sara Joseph, 'Politics of contemporary Indian communitarianism', Economic and Political Weekly, 4 October 1997.
40. For critiques of the communitarian literature on India, see Pranab Bardhan, 'The state against society: the great divide in Indian social science discourse', in Sugata Bose & Ayesha Jalal (eds), Nationalism, Democracy and Development: State and Politics in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997; and Sara Joseph, 'Politics of contemporary Indian communitarianism', Economic and Political Weekly, 4 October 1997.