State in Third World
State in Third World
State in Third World
William Graf
Theories of 'the' state, in particular 'the' Third World state, have fallen far
from their erstwhile theoretical pre-eminence. Caught up in the postulated
dual 'impasse' of development theory' on the one hand, and of the state in
international relations theory2 on the other, and eroded by a growing corpus
of sub-state, and indeed extra-state theories, the theory of the Third World
state has not fared well in the first half of the neo-classical nineties.
Nor has the discourse in which the Third World state has been framed.
If the mainstream development literature of the 1960s and 1970s presup-
posed a 'modernizing' or 'developmental' state and the Marxist
approaches of the same period invoked the 'strong,' 'overdeveloped' and
(relatively) 'autonomous' postcolonial state; and if the eighties produced
rather more ambiguous concepts such as the 'rentier state,' the 'peripheral
state' or the 'bureaucratic-authoritarian state;' then in the nineties the
imagery has turned relentlessly negative as expressed in such coinages as
'vassal state,' 'predator state,' 'vampire state,' 'receiver state,' 'prostrate
state,' and even 'fictitious state,' 'show of state' or 'collapsed state.'
The changing imagery of the Third World state reflects the new reality,
particularly for states in Africa and large parts of Latin and Central
American, Asia, and the Middle East as well as those Eastern European
states that have now been downgraded from the Second to the Third World.
Despite the formidable heterogeneity of this 'South' and the susceptibility
to charges of ethnocentrism and simplification to which one exposes
oneself in trying to deal with it as one undifferentiated whole, the states, or
most of them, do, I think, share a common reality in their subordinate
situation - their peripheralization or marginalization - within an increas-
ingly globalized and polarized world capitalist system. This justifies the
blanket term 'Third World;' and it is with this rapidly changing and
evolving entity that the present contribution is concerned.
*A first draft o f this contribution was presented to the December 1994 British International
Studies Association conference in York. The comments and criticisms there were most
helpful in preparing this version. John McMurtry, Jorge Nef, Craig Benjamin and Leo Panitch
have also contributed their thoughts and suggestions for which I am grateful
140
WILLIAM GRAF
capitalist powers and international agencies, thus ensuring that the same
social structures, income differentials and power distributions are carried
over into the civilianized regimes.
All this helps to explain why the main source of pressure for formal-
liberal democratization largely emanates from outside Third World
societie~.~' It is therefore not surprising to learn that recently democratized
regimes in Latin America 'are weak civilian regimes, with limited political
agendas, narrow support, significant exclusion of popular sectors from the
political arenas, [in which] external constituencies, both economic and
military, enjoy de facto veto power and hold the key to regime support.'"
Gills and Rocamora perhaps best capture what is at issue here with their
concept of 'low-intensity democracy,' which they see as a kind of 'half-
way house' between the earlier unstable democratic regimes and the more
recent 'counter-productive' military dictatorships. Low-intensity
democracy offers a 'stability that pre-empts more radical change by incor-
porating broad popular forces in electoral participation', because these
conservative civilian regimes 'can better pursue painful and regressive
policies' than can more authoritarian governments." Thus, the
'democracy' that neo-liberalism envisages is essentially a weak and
literally decontextualized replication of the structures of Western liberal
democracy, and political liberalization amounts to a complementary
strategy, along with recommodification, to maintain a hegemonic structure
of domination."
Two further concepts infuse and augment the neo-liberal democrati-
zation project, namely 'civil society' and 'good governance.' Although
both have intellectual pedigrees going back at least to Aristotle (in the
latter case) and Hegel (in the former), their 're-functioning' into compo-
nents of the globalization orthodoxy only became possible with the
collapse of state-socialist Communism. The demise of an anti-capitalist
alternative has enabled the West to impose expressly political conditions,
in addition to longstanding economic ones, on Third World aid and loan
recipients, while the implosive nature of Communism's collapse lent force
to the contention that all forms of socialism were inefficient, bureaucra-
tized and undemocratic. 'Good governance,' as a form of commodified
regime management, and a renewed 'civil society' as a countervailing
force of multiple extra-state groups thus link economic and political liber-
alism into an ideologically effective support for neo-classical globali~m.~
Seen in this way, civil society (which resembles the 'political culture'
approach of modernization theory), with its voluntarist ethos and emphasis
on groups and associations as the primary movers in social progress, is
both an alternative to the state, in particular in the economic sphere, and a
substitute for it, particularly in the decommodified spheres of welfare,
education and health. And good governance by analogy advocates
148 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1995
state elites are co-opted, and 'from below' where organized labour is
bypassed or declared irrelevant, and poor, marginal or oppositional groups
are fragmented and set into competition with each other. Third World states
so debilitated by competition and by surplus drainage are then less likely,
and less able, to unite or combine against the forces of neo-imperialism.
This, then, is the anti-state project of neo-liberalism. Examined in
context, it appears as remarkably simple, and in this simplicity lies much
of its operational as well as ideological effectiveness. For instance, 'neo-
liberal theory has no need for any knowledge about the demands and
aspirations of the particular social groups affected in order to offer its
solution. The medicine is supposed to work anywhere anytime. If not now,
later.'41 Neo-liberalism's reductionist certitude and assertive universality,
made possible and lent legitimacy now by the absence of any threat from a
competing anti-imperialist power bloc, lends it considerable force. To
realize it, no qualitative transition is needed, no fundamental social change,
but simply the 'abolition of as much state as possible.'42 Yet even as it
theorizes 'the' peripheral state away, the neo-liberal variant of global-
ization in reality makes it essential, if only to manage and execute its
agenda. Vis-i-vis the North it prescribes globalization and 'complex inter-
dependence' while for the South, having pre-empted (via
internationalization) the crucial state functions, it prescribes a kind of
internationalization that rests on state-level and inevitably state-centred
solutions of recommodification and democratization.
they have concentrated political power at the top to achieve stability and
continuity; are led by relatively uncompt and determined elites who rotate
freely between government, the bureaucracy, military and business and
remain relatively autonomous from special interests and groups whom they
coopt or marginalize; impose discipline while disregarding liberal and
human rights; and established their authority before foreign capital was
able to penetrate decisively. He concludes that:
The distinguishing characteristic of development states, then, has been that their institu-
tional structures (especially their economic bureaucracies) have been
developmentally-driven,while their developmental purposes have been politically driven.
In short, fundamentally political factors have shaped the thrust and pace of their devel-
opment strategies through the structures of the state.s5
Today, the Third World state is diminished, and more subordinate than
at any time since the colonial era. Its elites are more externalized and its
hold on national sovereignty more tenuous than ever. Even so, the state
remains by far the largest employer, at least in the 'formal' sectors of the
economy, the primary location of class formation and domination - and the
sole institution available with sufficient potential strength to negotiate, and
if necessary to grapple, with international capital.
'The' real state in the Third World thus remains the major, and perhaps
only, framework within which the important social and political issues can
be dealt with in the context of a world system permanently stacked against
peripheral societies and economies, while the theoretical state is probably
the only conceptual framework capable of developing a counter-hegemonic
project sufficiently comprehensive to challenge neo-liberal globalization.
Without the state, therefore, there can be no large-scale, long-term emanci-
patory project for the After all, 'insofar as there is any effective
democracy at all in relation to the power of capitalists and bureaucrats, it
is still embedded in political structures which are national or subnational in
cope.'^'
Only the state can offer a feasible agency capable of aggregating the
multifarious counter-hegemonic forces in the peripheral state. Only state-
economic power in the South has any prospects of standing up to,
negotiating with or countering the pervasive economic power of interna-
tional capital (and then only tenuously and probably necessarily in concert
with other state capitals in the South). No doubt too, only the state, in
combination with other states, can forge collective emancipatory projects
directed against the hegemonic powers. And certainly any strategy for
democratic or radical change, in a globalized world of states, must start
from the state.
Without a real state, and a real state theory, then, the South would appear
to have no way forward, out, or back. The question that needs to be posed,
therefore, is not: state or market? but: what kind of state, and whose state?
160 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1995
NOTES
1. See Frans J. Schuurman (ed.), Beyond the Impasse: New Directions in Development
Theory (London: Zed) 1993, esp. ch. 1.
2. See Fred Halliday, Rethinking International Relations (Vancouver: UBC Press) 1994, ch. 4.
3. See his Politics and Markets: The World's Political-Economic Systems (New York: Basic
Books) 1977, esp. chs. 2 and 3. Time has, I think, shown the relative insignificance of his
third category of social control, namely persuasion and preceptorial systems; in any case
'states' and 'markets' certainly constitute the perceived antinomy in which the global-
ization debate is at present conducted.
4. Peter Self, Government by the Market? The Politics of Public Choice (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press) 1993, p. 63.
5. On this, see Gerald Berthoud, 'Market' in Wolfgang Sachs (ed.), The Development
Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power (London: Zed) 1992.
6. See Philip G. Cerny, 'Globalization and the Changing Logic of Collective Action,' paper
presented to annual conference of British International Studies Association, University of
York, 19-21 December 1994, pp. 23-4 and pp. 19-20.
7. About 25%of such trade takes place within global companies, 25% is bilateral trade and
25% is barter trade; see Hans Glatz and Haas Moser, 'Der europaeische
Integrationsprozess und die Rolle Oesterreichs' in H. Glatz & H. Moser (eds.)
Herausforderung Binnenmarkc Kopficber in die EG? (Vienna: Fachverlag an der
Wirtschaftsuniversitat) 1989, p. 17.
8. Michael Valpy, The Globe & Mail, Toronto, 7 December 1994, p. 2.
9. Robert Cox, 'New Policy Directionsfor the State' in D. Drache & M. Gertler (eds.), The
New Era of Global Competition: State Policy and Market Power (Montreal: McGill-
Queens University Press) 1991, p. 340.
10. This is a quotation from Reich's contribution to the panel on 'Globalization and the
Nation-State,' as edited and reproduced in Review '90/0utlook91 (Ottawa: North-South
Institute) 1991, p. 18; for a more systematic account of his views of globalization, see his
The Work of Nations (New York: Vintage Books) 1992.
11. John Keane, 'Introduction' to Claus Offe, Contradictions of the Welfare State, John
Keane (ed.), (London, etc.: Hutchinson) 1984, p. 26.
12. Concerning which, see William D. Graf, 'Anti-Brandt: A Critique of Northwestern
Prescriptions for World Order' in Socialist Register 1981 (London: Merlin) 1981; or
W. D. Graf, 'From Brandt to Brundtland and Beyond: Hegemonic-Ideological Aspects of
the North-South Dialogue in the 1990'5' in Journal of the History of European Ideas,
Vol. 15, NO. 1-3 1992, pp. 3 9 9 4 6 .
13. On which, see Nassau A. Adams, Worlds Apart: The North-South Divide and the
International System (London: Zed) 1993, pp. 192-3.
14. Cox, op. cit., pp. 338-9.
15. On this, see Manfred Bienefeld, 'Is a Strong National Economy a Utopian Goal at the
End of the 'Ibentieth Century?.' Carleton University School of Public Administration
Working Paper Series 1994, pp. 15 and 35.
16. Richard Sklar, 'Social Class and Political Action in Africa: The Bourgeoisie and the
Proletariat' in D. E. Apter and C. G. Rosberg (eds), Political Development and the New
Realism in Sub-Saharan Africa (Charlottesville and London: University Press of
Virginia) 1994, p. 123. For a further critique, see my review in Candian Journal of
Development Studies, Forthcoming 1995
17. Jan Knippers Black, 'Elections and Other Trivial Pursuits: Latin America and the New
World Order,' Third World Quaterly, Vol. 14, NO. 3, 1993, p. 545.
18. Samir Amin, 'The Challenge of Globalization: Delinking,' in The South Centre (ed.),
Facing the Challenge: Responses to the Report of the South Commission (London: Zed)
1993, p. 137.
WILLIAM GRAF 161
19. Alicia Puyana, 'New Challenges for Developing Countries,' in The South Commission
(ed.), ibid, p. 284.
20. Black, op. cit., p 547.
21. See Atul Kohli, 'Democracy amid Economic Orthodoxy: Trends in Developing
Countries,' Third World Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1993, p. 678.
22. Jorge Nef and Remonda Bensabat, "Governability' and the Receiver State in Latin
America: Analysis and Prospects' in A. R. M. Ritter, M. A. Cameron and D. H. Pollock,
Latin America to the Year 2000: Reactivating Growth, Imp&ng Eq* Sustaining
Democmcy (New York, etc.: Praeger) 1992, p. 168.
23. Bany Gills & Joel Rocamora, 'Low Intensity Democracy,' Third World Quarterly, Vol.
13, NO. 3, 1992, pp. 504-5.
24. A point made by S. Qadir, C. Clapham and B. Gills, 'Democratization in the Third
World,' Third World Quarterly Vol. 14 No. 3, 1993, p. 13.
25. This point is made, in relation to the concept of good governance, by Adrian Leftwich,
'Governance, Democracy and Development in the Third World,' Third World Quarterly,
Vol. 14, No. 3, October 1994, p. 369.
26. Bjorn Beckman, 'The Liberation of Civil Society: Neo-Liberal Ideology and Political
Theory,' Review of African Political Economy, November 1993, p. 29.
27. On this see Leo Panitch and Ralph Miliband, 'The New World Order and the Socialist
Agenda' and Robert Cox, 'Global Perestroika,' both in Socialist Register 1992 (London:
Merlin Press) 1992.
28. D. Drache and M. Gertler, 'Introduction' to Drache and Gertler (eds.), op. cit. p. xvi.
29. The full quote is: "People tend to think that [in Latin America] the state is too big. I
believe that in the things that really matter, it is too small. In other words, justice,
-
education and health - which are the real functions of the modern state and the
environment. Meanwhile, the state was too big in other areas.' See Review 9010utlwk 91,
op. cit., p. 17.
30. Peter B. Evans, 'Transnational Linkages and the Economic Role of the State: An
Analysis of Developing and Industrialized Nations in the Post-World War I1 Period,' in
P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In
(Cambridge, etc.: CUP) 1985, p. 199.
31. Leo Panitch, 'Globalisation and the State,' Socialist Register 1994, p. 64.
32. See Frans J. Schuurman,'Modernity, Post-Modernity and the New Social Movements' in
Schuurman (ed.), op. cit., ch. 9.
33. The point is made by Ronaldo Munck, 'Political Programmes and Development: The
Transformative Potential of Social Democracy' in Schuurman (ed.), op. cit., p. 117.
34. Samir Amin, 'Preface' to Peter Anyang'Nyongo (ed.), Popular Struggles for Democracy
in Africa (London: United Nations University and Zed Press) 1987, p.5.
35. Nef and Bensabat, op. cit., p. 162.
36. For details see Michael Dolan, 'Global Economic Transformation and Less Developed
Countries' in R. 0. Slater, B. M. Schutz and S. R. Dorr (eds.), Global Transformation and
the Third World (Boulder: Lynne Rienner) 1993, pp. 264-5.
37. C. Douglas Lummis, 'Development Against Democracy' in Alternatives 16 (1991), pp.
54 and 59.
38. Samir Amin, Empire of Chaos, trans. by W. H. L. Anderson (New York: Monthly Review
Press), 1992.
39. Bienefeld, op. cit., p. 5.
40. For instance, David B. Moore, 'Development Discourse as Hegemony: Towards an
-
ldeological History 1945-1995,' in D:B. Moore and G. G. Schmitz (eds.), Debating
Development Discourse: Institutional and Popular Perspectives (London: Macmillan)
forthcoming 1995, p. 10; and 'Commentary: States, Markets and Africa's Crisis,' Review
ofAfrican Political Economy November 1993, p. 155 and ff.
41. Beckrnan, op. cit., p. 25.
162 THE SOCIALIST REGISTER 1995
42. C. Colclough and J. Manor (eds.), 'Introduction' to States or Markts? Neo-libemlism
and the Development Policy Debate (Oxford: OUP) 1993, p. 329.
43. Which the contributionsto the much-cited P. B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol
(eds.), op. cit. (Cambridge, etc.: CUP) 1985 generally fail to do.
44. Hartmut Elsenhans, Abhaginger Kapitalismus oder burokratische Entwicklungsgesellschaft:
Versuch uber den Staat in der Dritten Welt (Frankfurt: Campus) 1981, chapter 1.
45. James Petras, Critical Perspectives on Imperalism and Social Class in the Third World
(New York: MRP) 1978, p. 36.
46. Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford: OUP) 1977, p. 109.
47. Gills and Rocamora, op. cit., pp. 516-7 (with special reference to their case-study
countries of Argentina, Guatemala, the Philippines and South Korea).
48. Roger Burbach, 'Roots of the Postmodern Rebellion in Chiapas, New Left Review, No.
206, 1994, p. 113.
49. It is, however, worth stressing that the actual transformative potential of the new social
movements and popular struggles has by no means been exhausted. An analysis of
Carolyn Merchant's eco-feminist theory of women and ecological revolutions, Manuel
Castell's theory of urban social movements, and James O'Connor's eco-Marxist theory
of struggles relating to the conditions of production suggests that such sub-state groups
have a strong and 'direct interest in preventing capitalist commodification of communal
relationships, the environmental and public space' (Craig Benjamin and Terisa Turner,
'Counterplanning from the Commons: Labour, Capital and the 'New Social Movements"
in Labour, Capital and Society, 25:2 [I9921 p. 222) and as such may be of incalculable
importance in 'restructuring' the internal power relationships in Third World states.
50. See the (anonymous) 'Introduction,' Joel Migdal's 'The State in Society: An Approach
to Struggles for Domination,' and Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue's 'State Power and
Social Forces: On Political Contention and Accommodation in the Third World,' all in
J. S. Migdal, A. Kohli and V. Shue (eds.), State Power and Social Forces: Domination
and Transformationin the Third World. (Cambridge: CUP) 1994.
51. Michael Bratton and Donald Rothchild, 'The Institutional Bases of Governance in
Africa,' in G. Hyden and M. Bratton (eds.), Governance and Politics in Africa (Boulder
and London: Lynne Rienner) 1992, p. 263.
52. Joel Samoff, 'Class, Class Conflict and the State in Africa,' Political Science Quarterly,
Vol. 97, No. 1 (Spring 1982), p. 115.
53. The contributions to Colclough and Manor (eds.), op. cit., and especially Manor's
'Politics and the Neo-liberals,' underline this point; see esp. p. 306 ff.
54. Manfred Bienefeld, 'Structural Adjustment: Debt Collection Device or Development Policy?'
Carleton University School of Public Administration Working Paper Series 1994, p. 9.
55. Adrian Leftwich, 'Governance, the State and the Politics of Development,' Development
and Change, Vol25, No. 2,1994, pp. 379-81.
56. The point has wider applicability. To follow Ralph Miliband, despite globalization and
interdependence, 'the nation-state must remain for the foreseeable future the crucial point
of reference of the Left. This is not a matter of clinging to an 'obsolete' notion of sover-
eignty but simply to assert the right of a government seeking to carry out a programme
of radical social renewal not to be stopped from doing so by external forces.' Socialism
for a Sceptical Age (Cambridge: Polity Press) 1994, p. 179. Clearly, the 'counter-
hegemonic' power of the weak, whether of weak classes or weak societies and
economies, is best sewed through the collective power of the state.
57. Panitch, 'Globalisation and the State,' op. cit., p. 87.