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The social origins of state capacity : civil society, political order and public goods in France (1789-1970) and Mexico (1810-1970)

University of British Columbia

States are expected to raise revenue through taxation, provide security, enforce rights, deliver public services, and build infrastructure. However, contemporary states vary in their ability to perform these tasks. In order to explain variation, I conceptualize state capacity as the ability of the state to coordinate large-scale collective action. I then argue that variation in state capacity is the result of alternative, multi-level and path-dependent solutions that societies adopt to establish political order. At the micro-level, the strategies that individuals use to collectively make demands on political authorities define the ways in which rulers try to remain in power and maintain stability. This in turn determines, at the macro-level, the ability of those authorities to perform other complex coordination tasks associated with collecting taxes, providing security, and delivering public goods and services. The dissertation tests this theory of political development through a comparative historical analysis of France (1789-1970) and Mexico (1810-1970). During the 1920s and 1930s, the political incorporation of the popular classes—workers, peasants, and lower middle classes—meant that the state had to obtain the support of a greater percentage of the people to maintain order. As a result, these states had to expand the size and scope of their activities and thus to coordinate collective action at a much larger scale than before. Their success or failure in facing those challenges can be traced back to the types of organizations that the popular classes adopted to interact with the state before and during the period of incorporation. In France, these groups mobilized through autonomous, impersonal and internally democratic organizations that demanded public goods, monitored authorities, and resisted the capture of the state by private interests. In Mexico, the popular classes were incorporated through personalistic and hierarchical organizations that interacted with the state as subordinate clients demanding rents and privileges. Even though both patterns of incorporation were effective in maintaining order during the 20th century, they had opposite effects on the long-term ability of these states to coordinate other forms of large-scale collective action, such as those posed by the requirements of taxation and public goods provision.

Text

2015-08-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54574

Political Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/