Strong Democracy Weak State

What are the political and institutional prerequisites for pursuing policies that contribute to structural transformation? This paper addresses this question by focusing on Ghana, which has achieved sustained economic growth in recent decades and is broadly lauded for its environment of political pluralism, respect for human rights, free and fair elections, and vocal civil society. Yet, despite these virtues, Ghana remains unable to achieve substantial structural transformation as identified as changes in economic productivity driven by value-added within sectors and shifts in the allocation of labor between sectors. This paper argues that Ghana is strongly democratic but plagued by weak state capacity, and these politico-institutional characteristics have shaped the economic policies pursued, including in the agricultural sector, and the resultant development trajectory. Specifically, three political economy factors have undermined Ghana’s ability to achieve substantive structural transformation since then. First, democracy has enabled a broader range of interest groups to permeate policymaking decisions, often resulting in policy backtracking and volatility as well as fiscal deficits around elections that, among other things, stifle credit access for domestic business through high interest rates. Secondly, public sector reforms were not pursued with the same vigor as macroeconomic reforms, meaning that the state has lacked the capacity typically necessary to identify winning industries or to actively facilitate the transition to higher value-added sectors. Thirdly, successive governments, regardless of party, have failed to actively invest in building strong, productive relationships with the private sector, which is a historical legacy of the strong distrust and alienation of the private sector that characterized previous government administrations.

Why do many Asian, African, and Latin American states have such difficulty in directing the behavior of their populations--in spite of the resources at their disposal? And why do a small number of other states succeed in such control? What effect do failing laws and social policies have on the state itself? In answering these questions, Joel Migdal takes a new look at the role of the state in the third world. Strong Societies and Weak States offers a fresh approach to the study of state-society relations and to the possibilities for economic and political reforms in the third world. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, state institutions have established a permanent presence among the populations of even the most remote villages. A close look at the performance of these agencies, however, reveals that often they operate on principles radically different from those conceived by their founders and creators in the capital city. Migdal proposes an answer to this paradox: a model of state-society relations that highlights the state's struggle with other social organizations and a theory that explains the differing abilities of states to predominate in those struggles.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the previously well-established organisation of world politics has been thrown into disarray. While during the Cold War, the bipolarity of the world gave other powers a defined structure within which to vie for power, influence and material wealth, the current global political landscape has been transformed by a diffusion of power. As a result, the world has seen the rise of sub-national or quasi-/non-state actors, such as Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the movement that calls itself Islamic State, or ISIS. These dramatic geopolitical shifts have heavily impacted state-society relationships, power and authority in the international system. Weak States, Strong Societies analyses the effect of these developments on the new world order, arguing that the framework of 'weak state, strong society' appears even more applicable to the contemporary global landscape than it did during the Cold War. Focusing on a range of regional contexts, the book explores what constitutes a weak or strong state. It will be essential reading for specialists in politics and international relations, whether students or academic researchers.

"One of the chosen few: an enduring contribution to democratic thought."—Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science, Yale University

Bold and unconventional, this book advocates for an institutional turn-about in the relationship between democracy and constitutionalism.

The Evolution of Modern States, first published in 2010, is a significant contribution to the literatures on political economy, globalization, historical institutionalism, and social science methodology. The book begins with a simple question: why do rich capitalist democracies respond so differently to the common pressures they face in the early twenty-first century? Drawing on insights from evolutionary theory, Sven Steinmo challenges the common equilibrium view of politics and economics and argues that modern political economies are best understood as complex adaptive systems. The book examines the political, social, and economic history of three different nations - Sweden, Japan, and the United States - and explains how and why these countries have evolved along such different trajectories over the past century. Bringing together social and economic history, institutionalism, and evolutionary theory, Steinmo thus provides a comprehensive explanation for differing responses to globalization as well as a new way of analyzing institutional and social change.

This paper presents the Index of State Weakness in the Developing World, which ranks all 141 developing countries according to their relative performance in four critical spheres: economic, political, security, and social welfare.

A new theoretical analysis of the rise of Donald Trump, Marine le Pen, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, Silvio Berlusconi, and Viktor Orbán.