Weak States, Strong Societies: Power and Authority in the New World Order 1784534803, 9781784534806

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 8.1. SGI scores grouped into bands

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Table 8.2. Quality of democracy

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Table 8.3. Corruption Perceptions Index 2013

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Table 8.4. Policy performance

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Table 8.5. Executive capacity

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Table 8.6. Executive capacity

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Table 8.7. SGI ranking by aggregate scores

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PREFACE

The sovereignty of nation-states and their ability to prescribe rules of behavior to populations on territories under their nominal control have been challenged by many recent developments, including the so-called Arab Spring, the resurgence of people power aided by new information technologies and global media, the selective intervention by the international community in humanitarian crises, transnational activist networks bound by loosely shared ideas, and integration projects eroding borders. Assaults on the old ideas of sovereignty from all directions appear to be even more acute than during the 1990s following the end of the Cold War. On the other hand, many state leaders in the twenty-first century have been quick to adapt to the changing conditions in order to ensure the primacy of statism by exploiting divisions, processes of cooptation and informal contractual arrangements within their individual countries and the changing international order or, as some might claim, disorder. They have shown a remarkable capacity to survive and maintain the traditional model of state – society relations, including in its conservative corporatist variant. For example, while several authoritarian Arab states, some with limited legitimacy and some dependent on rentier income, have experienced regime change, similar entities in Central Asia or Africa have continued to thrive. Despite Western bouts of emphasis on indigenous democratization as a firm foundation for stability and prosperity, the world continues to be dogged by many cases of weak states and strong societies or the reverse of this paradigm. This is witnessed in all continents in one form or another – a fact which is likely

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to have historical longevity in influencing the shaping of the international situation and which needs to be taken on board in any quest to generate a viable world order. With a focus on the issue of “weak states and strong societies,” the multitude of ways in which this phenomenon exists and functions against the background of global and regional influences constituted the subject matter of a discussion at a two-day workshop, which was convened at the United Nations University, Tokyo, on 23 to 24 January 2014. Drawing together prominent experts from various disciplines and zones of area studies, the product is the present edited volume, with its focus on a richly textured analysis of state – society dynamics in the changing world. Given the complexity and multi-dimensional nature of the subject matter, the authors of the volume’s chapters were not given any specific guidelines to which they should adhere, apart from a concept page. They were given the freedom to adopt their own approaches, but within the broad perimeters of the concept page. I am very thankful to all the contributors to the volume who worked with me closely, cooperatively and patiently. The whole enterprise is supported by the One Earth Future (OEF) Foundation, the United Nations University (UNU) and the Australian National University (ANU). I am very appreciative of them and Professor Ramesh Thakur, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Global Governance, for initially suggesting this project and encouraging me to take it on. I am also indebted to a number of individuals for their support. Amongst them, first of all, I must express my deep gratitude to my very intelligent, able and dedicated research assistant, Stephanie Wright, without whose valuable editorial assistance I would not have been able to prepare this volume for publication within a reasonable time, Dr David Malone, Rector of UNU, who graciously opened and hosted our workshop, and Dr Conor Seyle, Associate Director of Research Development, OEF, for being supportive of the project every step of the way. I also owe much to Dr Raihan Ismail for helping with the organization of the workshop, and the professional staff of our Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia), ANU, in particular Lissette Geronimo, Anita Mack and Tamara Ley, who is now working in another part of the ANU.

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Last, but not least, I am very deeply grateful to Mary-Louise Hickey, who as a very accomplished editor in her own right, helped me with this volume, as she has with every other publication that I have worked on. She is my kind, generous and loyal partner. Amin Saikal Canberra, March 2015

CONTRIBUTORS

Christopher Bickerton is a lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and Official Fellow at Queen’s College, University of Cambridge. Richard Falk is Research Professor at the Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Albert G. Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus, Princeton University. Karima Laachir is Senior Lecturer in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East, SOAS, at the University of London. Kirill Nourzhanov is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia), College of Arts and Social Sciences, at the Australian National University. Jide Martyns Okeke is a civilian expert in the planning and deployment of peace support operations at the African Union Commission, and Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of International Relations, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. Vesselin Popovski is Senior Academic Programme Officer at the United Nations University, Tokyo.

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Pia Riggirozzi is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Southampton. Amin Saikal is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia), College of Arts and Social Sciences, at the Australian National University. Carlyle A. Thayer is Emeritus Professor, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. Sven van Kerckhoven is a PhD fellow at the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, at KU Leuven. Maarten Vidal is a doctoral researcher at the Institute of International Law, KU Leuven, and legal advisor to the Flemish Department of Foreign Affairs. Jan Wouters holds the Jean Monnet Chair ad personam EU and Global Governance, and is the Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and the Institute for International Law, at KU Leuven. Stephanie Wright is a graduate scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

ABBREVIATIONS

AMISOM ARPCT AU EU FLN GDP GCC ICU IFES IRPT ISIS MENA NGO OECD OSCE PAP PPP SGI SNSF UN UNDP

African Union Mission in Somalia Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter terrorism African Union European Union National Liberation Front gross domestic product Gulf Cooperation Council Islamic Courts Union International Federation for Electoral Systems Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan Islamic State of Iraq and Syria Middle East and North Africa nongovernmental organization Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe People’s Action Party purchasing power parity Sustainable Governance Indicators Somali National Security Forces United Nations United Nations Development Programme

INTRODUCTION Amin Saikal and Stephanie Wright

The issue of a weak state, with a strong society or vice versa, has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly debate in the study of development, and the state–society relationship in developing countries, for quite some time. Since the end of the division of Europe and world bipolarity close to three decades ago, a number of critical developments have significantly altered the geopolitical landscape and raised new questions about the nature of the state–society relationship. They have included: the fall of Soviet communism; the crisis of neoliberalism as embodied in what John Williamson coined in 1989 as the Washington Consensus;1 the spread of “disrupted or failed states”2 and the unleashing of numerous ethnonationalist, sectarian conflicts and a governability crisis; the rapid advance of globalization and technological progress, fostering deeper and faster interdependence between nation-states; the rise of transnational and international organizations as more or less independent actors; and the emergence of new security threats and ungoverned or alternatively governed regions. More broadly, the global political landscape has been substantially altered by what Joseph Nye calls “power transition” from one dominant state (the US) to another (China) and “power diffusion,” denoting the sideways movement of power to sub-national, anti-systemic groups, including such networks and entities as al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).3 These changing regional and global contexts have generated a renewed need to investigate the paradigm of “weak state, strong society”

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in world politics, especially since the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War as we knew it.4 Working with the framework of treating both states and societies as complexes rather than singular units, this volume focuses on the paradigm of “weak states and strong societies” across a wide but not exhaustive range of regional contexts. In so doing, it seeks to provide an in-depth discussion of what constitutes a weak or strong state, and weak or strong society, by focusing on a number of case studies covering different parts of the world, in order to examine the validity or otherwise of the core elements of what is elaborated upon in the conceptual chapter. Through these case studies, the volume offers new insights into the study of the state–society relationship in the contemporary international environment. By examining how and under what influences the state– society relationship has been configured across a variety of national and regional contexts, the volume sheds light on a far wider set of dynamics and factors ostensibly peripheral to, but nevertheless consequential to, contemporary state–society relationships, as well as the impact of these in world politics. These factors include: sub-state entities; international/ regional states and external actors; transnational or regional entities; and “informal” elements in civil society such as clan groups or local powerholders or “warlords.” In addition, this compilation considers, wherever necessary, the wider landscapes – whether geographic, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sectarian, historical, cultural, or economic – in which state–society relationships take shape and evolve. From a comparative perspective, these dynamics are critical in deepening our understanding of commonalities and differences between states and societies in the twenty-first century. At the same time, they force us to question the adequacy of existing concepts such as strong/ weak, or indeed state/society. As this volume demonstrates, the cleanness of the division implied by these dyads is misleading. State actors are embedded in social contexts, and social actors can both influence and be influenced by the state. States may be “strong” in terms of their ability to control society through use of force, but weak in terms of legitimacy. Societies, on the other hand, can be weak from the perspective of resistance to the state, but strong in terms of the provision of services or the maintenance of collective identities. Similarly, it is rare that any “state” or “society” attains to the level of unity and cohesiveness implied by the singular versions of those terms. More commonly, both state and

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society are divided within themselves by crosscutting and consistently shifting faultlines, the contours of which often underlie expressions of “strength” and “weakness” in any given instance. Each of the volume’s chapters addresses these theoretical and historical concerns through the lens of different regions and countries in a changing global order. In so doing, these chapters make clear that there is not a single theme or conclusion that defines or underpins state– society relations and their relevance in world politics. Rather, what is conjured up is a set of themes, all of which serve to reinforce the fact that there are multiple issues that contribute to make a state and a society weak or strong, and that contribute to define or shape state – society relations in different countries and regions, with varying implications in global politics. In his conceptual chapter, Richard Falk provides a critical reexamination of the concepts of weak states and strong societies in light of the shifting nature of world politics. In this, Falk draws attention to a range of dynamics and issues of critical theoretical significance for conceptualizing the state –society relationship, including the question of multiple “societies” within the boundaries of the “state,” the importance of historical and particularly post-colonial legacies in shaping and analysing the formation of state– society relationships, and the uneven experiences of Westernization and modernization throughout the globe. He emphasizes not only the wide variety of possible state – society relationships that exist across national and historical contexts, but also the range of variables that color our perceptions of “weak” or “strong” states – a consideration that draws attention to the need for clarity and reflexivity within the analytical enterprise. In light of this observation, Falk suggests the need to distinguish between two different notions of the “strong” state – as the “effective” state, which possesses sufficient hard power resources to meet its challenges, or as the “legitimate” state, which is capable of meeting such challenges with minimal recourse to hard power. Similarly, he underscores the need to distinguish between the external and internal “strength” of both states and societies, in terms of their capacity to respond to domestic and international challenges respectively. These competing conceptions of state strength and weakness are taken up in Christopher Bickerton’s chapter on the rise of memberstatehood in Western Europe. Rather than engage with dichotomized

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debates about the “return” or “retreat” of the state in contemporary politics, Bickerton advances an analysis of the state – society relationship by examining the nature and consequences of state transformation in contemporary European contexts. He describes how, in the Western European case, the state has transitioned from the paradigm of the sovereign and autonomous nation-state to that of the European Union member-state, in which national governments exercise their authority through non-national institutional frameworks. Bickerton’s analysis suggests how the rise of the EU and the growing reliance of nation-states upon it for policymaking both embodies and promotes an increasingly distant and hostile relationship between state and society. The weakening of this relationship has resulted in the uncoupling of policymaking and politics proper, with the result that societies feel increasingly disillusioned with and unrepresented by their states, and state elites feel increasingly removed from their societies. At the same time, Bickerton reveals the ways in which nonstate and nonsocietal entities are becoming increasingly important in understanding the state– society dynamic. Following on from this, Jan Wouters, Sven van Kerckhoven and Maarten Vidal offer a different perspective on the European situation by providing a comparative analysis of federalism in Switzerland and Belgium. Through their analysis of Belgium’s progressive decentralization from its formation as a nation-state in 1830 into a federal state in 1993, they provide yet another example of the disparate historical forces that can converge to produce weak states and strong societies. Conversely, their analysis of Switzerland, which has moved in the opposite direction towards centralization from an initially federal structure, reveals that this progression is neither identical nor unidirectional. Wouters’s, van Kerckhoven’s and Vidal’s analysis demonstrates the importance of considering a multitude of factors – from language to economy to historical experience – in understanding the evolution of the state – society relationship in any given context. Vesselin Popovski then shifts the focus from the state to society by examining how changes within the structure of civil society in Eastern Europe from the communist era to the present have influenced its relationship with, and position within, a changing state. He traces the evolution of the state –society relationship in Eastern Europe in three stages: from an initial pattern of state cooptation of a loyal civil society,

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to the emergence of an “activist” civil society that opposed and ultimately defeated the communist state, to the transformation of “activist” civil society into a “neoliberal” form with the dual functions of state watchdog and state collaborator. Through his analysis of three cases – Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia – Popovski shows that the historical transformation of civil society in Eastern Europe has been both variable and uneven, as a result of both external influences and domestic conditions. Next, Karima Laachir moves us to the Middle East/North Africa. Through her analysis of the cases of Morocco and Algeria, Laachir invites us to question the limits of the framework “weak state, strong society.” She argues that Morocco and Algeria might instead be described as “fierce but weak” states, which are effective at imposing their authority while lacking in the ability to penetrate their resilient societies or to attain legitimacy. At the same time, Laachir brings our attention to the paradox of how so-called “strong” societies can in fact reinforce the authority of the state. While the use of hard power by the fierce state contributes to the resilience of society, the cooptation of civil society and humanitarian groups by the state serves to bolster its credibility, particularly in the eyes of international actors. Indeed, the state’s position within the international economy impacts strongly upon its ability to rely on hard power to maintain control of society. While countries with very little interaction with the world’s economy can repress their citizens with few consequences, those that rely heavily on global economic transactions are more cautious in resorting to violence. While the politics of state cooptation challenges the notion of any straightforward relationship between (secular) civil society and democratization, Laachir alludes to new forms of civil society and improvements in media technologies that may provide a key force for future directions in the state– society relationship. The failure to grasp the complex and highly specific issues of statebuilding in different national contexts, as Amin Saikal demonstrates in the cases of postinvasion Iraq and Afghanistan, may pose serious obstacles to the long-term success and viability of state-building projects. In his chapter, Saikal explores how the US’ role in funding and directing state-building in both countries, with a minimal understanding of the complexities of either, has profoundly impacted upon the perceived legitimacy and effective functioning of both the Iraqi and

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Afghan governments, albeit in different ways. While examining how competing regional and international interests can severely undermine processes of state-building, Saikal also considers how authoritarian legacies, coupled with the historically mosaic societies of both countries, have generated obstacles for the formation of a dynamic and mutually responsive relationship between state and society in both states. While demonstrating how external involvement in state-building has impeded possibilities for a strong and mutually responsive state – society relationship in both countries, Saikal’s chapter therefore also sheds light on the ways in which a weak relationship between state and society can increase the vulnerability of both to cooptation and aggression by external forces. It shows how state functionality in Iraq and Afghanistan has historically been framed in terms of the paradigm of the “effective” rather than the “legitimate” state, and concludes by considering the conditions for and likelihood of the emergence of a legitimate state in Iraq or Afghanistan in the near future. Kirill Nourzhanov’s analysis of the state in postcommunist Central Asia further complicates the “weak state, strong society” equation by offering another example of the “fierce but weak” state, whose incumbents act independently from constitutional constraints while remaining incapable of successfully penetrating society. Focusing on Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, Nourzhanov argues against pessimistic predictions of the imminent failure of the state in Central Asia. He demonstrates instead how the survival of the state in Central Asia has been secured through its dynamic relations with both domestic and international actors, and especially through the state’s accommodation of some elements of society at the exclusion of others. These complex dynamics have been largely overlooked within a paradigm that equates civil society with its formal, institutional expressions, suggesting the need for a broader understanding of “civil society” capable of encompassing the informal social groups such as clans, which are nevertheless effective in checking and constraining state power in Central Asia and elsewhere. A broadened understanding of civil society is taken up by Carlyle Thayer in order to investigate the nature of and challenges to state capacity in Southeast Asia. In his chapter, Thayer argues that the level of social control exerted by the state may be measured on a scale of three indicators: compliance, participation, and legitimation. Within this framework, Thayer advances a comparative analysis of state strength

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based on quantitative data obtained for four of the region’s 11 states: Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Thayer’s analysis reveals a complex configuration of state capacity built on particular strengths and weaknesses that vary widely from one state to the next. With the exception of Singapore, however, Thayer argues that states in Southeast Asia are “medium weak” ones that continue to confront serious challenges to their ability to dictate the “rules of behavior” to their societies. His findings suggest that in the case of Southeast Asia, in contrast to Western Europe, the persistence of “weblike societies” continues to be an important factor in ensuring resistance to state control. At the same time, Thayer highlights a number of features within the state in Southeast Asia – including the resistance of sub-state actors and a lack of political cohesiveness among elites – that contribute to its inability to penetrate society. The importance of historical context in evaluating state – society relations is further underscored in Jide Okeke’s chapter, which provides a critical analysis of the linkage of crisis and the African state in historical reality and Western discourse. He uses the example of Somalia to consider how the origins of the state in Africa, which differed radically from the European experience, shed light on the entrenchment and perpetuation of crisis within the continent in two key ways. On the one hand, Okeke argues that the African state’s emergence as a direct result of colonial experience established a state with little to no organic linkages or accountability to society. On the other hand, the (mis)representation of Africa in Western discourse since colonial times has contributed significantly to ill-conceived and self-interested intervention policies by external actors, which have increasingly prioritized short-term stability over long-term statebuilding efforts. While both the nature of the crisis in Africa and the paradigms for external involvement have changed considerably over the past century, Okeke nevertheless shows that the inability of the African state to reinvent itself by promoting an organic relationship between the state and civil society is at the heart of the ongoing struggle for security and a positive peace. In the final chapter, Pia Riggirozzi examines yet another critical dimension of the state –society relationship in her treatment of democratic citizenship in the postneoliberal era. Through her analysis of the relationship between neoliberalism and democratization in Latin

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America, Riggirozzi sheds new light on the wider interactions between the economic sphere and state – society relations. Riggirozzi argues that despite neoliberal expectations that democratization in Latin America would lead to more inclusive models of citizenship based on consumption and individualism, the failure of free market systems to generate greater economic inclusion in Latin America has resulted in the perpetuation of political elitism and state repression. She explores how the twin failures to extend the terms of political participation and to reduce socioeconomic equality under neoliberalism fuelled the emergence of the New Left, resulting in a new emphasis on increased political inclusivity and improved state capacity. Nevertheless, Riggirozzi also considers how the rapprochement between state and civil society has paradoxically increased the risk of cooptation and corporatist practices, leaving civil society groups with little power to articulate alternative politics.

Notes 1. John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform.” In Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? edited by John Williamson. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990. See also Narcis Serra and Joseph E. Stiglitz, eds, The Washington Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. 2. See Amin Saikal, “Dimensions of state disruption and international responses.” Third World Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2000), pp. 39 – 49; Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff and Ramesh Thakur, eds, Making States Work: Failure and the Crisis of Governance. New York: United Nations University Press, 2005. 3. For a full discussion, see Joseph S. Nye Jr, The Future of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. 4. This volume is not a commentary on Joel Migdal’s Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. However, a number of contributors make reference to his work in order to highlight certain relevant points.

CHAPTER 1 FRAMING AN INQUIRY Richard Falk

Introductory perspectives There are a great variety of state/society relationships in the world, and also a bewildering array of spatial and temporal contexts that shade our perceptions of strengths and weaknesses. This array reflects such basic conditions as geography, weather, resources, size, population density, stage of development, technological setting, continuity of leadership, religion, culture, and many more. Acknowledging this context dependence injects a cautionary note into any reliance on analytic and ahistoric approaches to guide inquiry into that intriguing category of political entities that can be described as being “strong societies” embedded in “weak states.” Conceptually, it seems also important to question whether “societies” should be automatically considered coterminous with “states.” Do some states have multiple societies within their borders? For instance, minorities predominantly resident in a particular region within a state (Kurds in Iraq or Turkey, Pashtuns in Afghanistan, and Catalans or Basques in Spain) seem to exist in a distinct “society” even if enjoying the nationality associated with the state, such as engaging in international travel using a national passport and casting votes in national elections. Societal decentralization often takes the form of a federated state structure. Such societies are strong in the sense of being culturally autonomous and politically semi-autonomous, often with their

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own language, culture, traditions, institutions, and grievances. If their relations to the dominant state are hostile, these societal formations can be thought of as “captive nations.” If such societies claim rights of self-determination, which is an inalienable right of all “peoples,” then there is posed an international law issue of some magnitude. Supposedly, it is not valid to assert a right of self-determination in the full sense of secession if it would fragment a sovereign state enjoying diplomatic status. At the same time, if the secessionist project is successful in creating a separate existence acknowledged as such by other states and the UN, then a new state comes into existence (Bosnia, Slovenia, and Croatia). It is difficult to generalize about this relationship between society and state because there exist so many variations, both with regard to the nature of the state/society relationship and what kinds of strength and weakness are being considered. Another preliminary observation that complicates, in a different manner, such an interpretative exercise, is the historical experience of the non-West in the period since 1945. Two important intersecting and contradictory phenomenon can be discerned. First, the colonial experience carried with it a nationalist message that was given a certain global salience when proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson after the First World War World War as “the right of self-determination,” which was meant by Wilson to apply narrowly to the peoples living in what had been the Ottoman Empire, and was not intended to challenge the legitimacy of the European colonial empires. Whatever Wilson’s intentions, this limited innovation in political identity was quickly universalized by Vladimir Lenin and others to apply to the entire colonial world by Lenin and others. It is a memorable anecdote that Ho Chi Minh, who was in Paris working as a pastry chef during the Versailles peace talks, was so impressed by the relevance of the ideal of self-determination to the future of Vietnam that he petitioned Wilson asking that he might study at Princeton, the university that Wilson had administered before he became president of the US. My Hegelian point is that articulating this ideal as related to the nationalist evolution of the European states induced in diverse ways the strengthening of many societies vis-a`-vis the colonial states, making such state structures less able to maintain internal law and order than had been the case earlier, superimposing a national societal

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layer of domestic unity without distinguishing in some instances the societal identity of one or more ethnic or religious sub-state societies. Nationalist resistance temporarily created a strong society vis-a`-vis the colonial state, but often postindependence both the state and society were weak. The contradictory observation is that the colonial state, in particular, deployed many instruments to weaken society, including disempowering the indigenous population from having the capacity to govern. As a result, when independence came, the postcolonial state was weak with respect to competencies needed for good governance, lacking the educational and bureaucratic base to administer society in an effective and humane manner. The intentionally disempowered postcolonial state was also often challenged by the postcolonial society that had been deliberately weakened by the colonial experience, either through a divide-and-rule mentality or by way of enforced civilizational assimilation. This emphasis on overall context and the importance of the colonial backdrop for many states and societies conditions inquiry, and might be clarified by reliance on case studies of varying transitions from colonial to postcolonial status. Joel Migdal uses case studies, but within an analytic framing of state/society relations.1 It would also be illuminating to compare civilizational experiences of state/society interaction around strong society/weak state hypotheses. I will venture one such impressionistic comparison—the soft revolutions in East Europe during the late 1980s and the so-called Arab Spring that commenced at the start of 2011. In both settings, the governments lacked political legitimacy, and securitized state/society relations so as to maintain order in the face of an alienated and hostile population. These East European societies had greater experience with political independence and possessed political cultures that conceived of themselves as part of the West, and sought the benefits of post-Enlightenment modernity. Such a background translated into relative strength in the form of societies which were capable of replacing the satellite regimes that had governed subject to Soviet hegemonic guidelines with constitutional democracies that did not have the burden of severe polarization, although there were certainly diverse views about the construction of the post-Communist state. In contrast, the countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region were without a deep experience of modernity, and even

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those non-Arab countries at the edge of the region that self-consciously embraced the Western path—that is, Turkey and Iran—did so in the face of a deep Islamic culture among the masses that resisted the adoption of the Western path, and experienced strong indigenous cultural revivals and also divisive forms of polarization. What is exhibited throughout MENA is a different type of strong society that reverts to traditional cultural ways, and generates counterrevolutionary movement tendencies to restore a coercive state apparatus that imposes its will on a dissatisfied and subjugated citizenry. The Egyptian experience since 2011 is paradigmatic, and because it is the central and most populous state in the region, its narrative deserves special attention. Three phases can be distinguished: (1) the largely nonviolent challenge to the corrupt authoritarianism of Hosni Mubarak’s rule; (2) an experimental period of inclusive democracy that included parliamentary and presidential elections, as well as a constitutional referendum, that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power and confirmed the democratic weakness of Egyptian urban liberal elites; and (3) an orchestrated crisis of legitimacy directed at the elected government of Mohamed Morsi culminating in a popularly backed military coup against the elected political leadership followed by a bloody crackdown on all opposition, but especially the Muslim Brotherhood, whose status changed from governing party to criminalized terrorist organization. A new constitution was drafted, new elections held, and General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the coup leader, was elected president. In effect, the strong Egyptian state of the Mubarak era based on its capabilities to establish order was reconstituted, partly by popular demand in view of widespread disappointment with the democratic interlude between January 2011 and June 2013. The experience of overthrowing two governments based on the mobilization of discontent has undoubtedly changed state/society relations in significant ways, making it more difficult for the state to dominate society and creating in society a sense of having the right and capacity to hold the state accountable. In this regard, the state/society interaction in Egypt, and throughout the Arab world, has altered the weak/strong assessment in unpredictable ways. Does this Egyptian story reveal to us a strong or weak state? A strong or weak society? This is the puzzle. I would contend that the state is weak if it needs to keep order by a reliance on the apparatus of state terror and police brutality, and that society is strong if it sets limits on

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consensual government and exhibits a capability to mount effective resistance if these unwritten limits are overstepped.

Conceptual clarification An initial conceptual issue is to clarify what is meant by “strong” and “weak” from both state and societal perspectives, as well as nationally and internationally. A conventional idea of a “strong” state is the possession of a preponderance of hard power resources sufficient to address effectively the full range of internal and external challenges to political order and territorial integrity of a sovereign state. That is, this conception of the strong state, with an ideological lineage associated with political realism, is essentially based on being an effective state. Authoritarian states that sustain stability provide good examples, for instance, Mubarak’s Egypt or Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. Another idea of a strong state is an emphasis on a capacity to meet such challenges with minimum reliance on hard power, depending more fundamentally on soft power by way of respect for law, consent from the citizenry to govern via free elections, and creative diplomacy to establish everyday order and national security at acceptable levels. That is, such a strong state is viewed by the preponderance of people under its control and internationally as a legitimate state, and is illustrated by states that qualify both as constitutional democracies and are not faced with serious threats of insurrectionary violence or external attack. The European idea of nation-state was essentially generated as a statebuilding strategy that sought to overcome the medieval heritage of identity as local and based on religious affiliation. Nationalism filled the void, and created a political entity consisting of a state that represented a society internationally as well as governing it internally within fixed boundaries. To create an effective state presupposed a corresponding loyalty, identity, and coherence, which was achieved by an ideology of nationalism divorced from religion, ethnicity, and local affinities. This idea of the nation-state was essentially a fiction as minorities often felt that the state was dominated by either a given ethnicity or religious orientation, and that claims of national unity were hiding patterns of domination. When the state is successful in generating the loyalty and identification of people resident within its boundaries, then the actuality of a nation-state has been achieved, giving strength to the state that can

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mobilize its citizens for a variety of actions ranging from sacrifices in wartime to the celebration of national holidays. From the time of Niccolo Machiavelli to the present, it has been understood by leading political thinkers that it is better to rely on the respect of the governed than to impose order by inducing fear. Governing on the basis of consent and respect is self-perpetuating, while governing on the basis of state terror and force gives rise to oppositional plots and can lead to insurrection. At the same time, making all generalizations unreliable in specific instances, the primary public demands are associated with sustaining order so that there is security in everyday life and the economy functions to provide the population with what is needed for subsistence. There is a proverb popular in the Arab world that expresses this expectation: “people would rather endure 100 years of tyranny than a single year of chaos.” With this outlook, maintaining order is the defining attribute of what is perceived to be a strong state. With regard to “strong” societies, the emphasis would be upon zones of autonomy in which local forces provide human security and order, or upon a capacity to resist external intervention from above or without on the basis of nonaccountable local and ethnic leadership and nationalist patterns of loyalty that distinguish between loyalty to the state and loyalty to the nation or nations, or to a particular community. The anticolonial wars of the prior century as occurred in Indonesia, Indochina, and Algeria are illustrative of societies making a transition from “weak” (easily dominated by external actors) to “strong” (capable of restoring nationhood and territorial sovereignty in the face of exploitative foreign ruling elites), that is, of becoming a sustainable nation-state. The warlord or militia state is one in which nationalist sentiments on the scale of the state is only operative in relation to external enemies, and when such a threat subsides, then decentalized societal and ethnic patterns of governance and deep cultural traditions generate tolerable levels of order most of the time.2 Weak states/strong societies are most vividly characterized by situations of conflict and resistance where the nation is the site of struggle for controlling the future of the country, and the state is either an antagonist or marginalized. Some of these issues have been explored by Mary Kaldor in her depiction of the distinctiveness of “new wars,” although not with this distinction in mind.3 What is evident is that the weak state cannot deal with such security threats as insurrectionary

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violence, civil strife, drug cartels, transnational crime, and external intervention, nor can the weak society. The strong society, however, has impressive soft power capabilities based on nationalist sentiments and perseverance that can often outlast the hard power dominance of intervening forces collaborating with a weak state. As the Afghan proverb expresses this inverted balance of forces: “you have the watches, we have the time.” In effect, the governmental center of authority is weak, and easily displaced by a hard power regime changing intervention, which occurred in Afghanistan (2002) and Iraq (2003), but the society was unconquerable, and thus strong. The dimension of time can offset deficiencies in weaponry and combat capabilities.4 The indigenous society has the psycho-political edge in such conflicts because of its nationalist resistance to foreign rule that became unconditional, but not until the last half of the twentieth century and only then exhibited a willingness to persevere against the militarily superior foreign adversary, accepting huge sacrifices to achieve its goals. In contrast, the intervening side, calculating on the basis of hard power expectations, tends to have a conditional commitment to its goals, losing the will to persist if the costs exceed certain levels, becoming disillusioned with such undertakings as casualties rise and prospects for success diminish. The American response to the September 11, 2001 attacks by way of overseas warfare illustrate the resilience and resolve of strong societies that became the scene of such regime-changing interventions. George W. Bush epitomized a failure to distinguish between regime change involving the governing elite in a state and exerting control over the society when he spoke about the early battlefield success after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq beneath the banner “mission accomplished.” Yes, the mission of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein was accomplished, but the real purpose of the attack was to create a new stable Western oriented state/society nexus that would serve both strategic and neoliberal interests not only in Iraq, but also in the region. The Vietnam War may be a primary instance of soft power resistance prevailing on the basis of determined nationalist resistance despite extreme hard power inferiority. What followed the societal victory in Vietnam, however, was the imposition of a coercive version of a strong state, sustaining security by coercive means. In effect, in anticolonial contexts the countries of Indochina displayed extraordinary strength, first against the French colonial rule and then against their American

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successor, but when it came to postcolonial realities, these societies seemed weak in relation to authoritarian and corrupt states. In effect, strength and weakness of societies and states are partly historically determined, with non-Western societies weak before the spread of the ethos of nationalism and the rise of indigenous confidence in the ability to challenge colonial structures of domination. For some participants, including Jawaharlal Nehru, a vital event was the defeat of Russia by Japan in the 1905 war that was interpreted as an Asian country triumphing over its European adversary.

Global setting As argued, the historical, ideological, and geopolitical context is important in interpreting the weak state/strong society phenomenon. During the Cold War, geopolitical discipline empowered the political leadership in many otherwise weak states, or states that were able to inhibit insurrectionary violence only with the help of outside forces. Often geopolitical rivalry can produce a surge of societal strength, as during the Iranian Revolution when the Iranian people briefly united to overthrow the Shah’s regime, but quickly regressed in the face of oppressive policies of the new Islamic leadership, which seemed to craft an Islamic or theocratic version of a strong state that proved capable of handling both external challenges (e.g., Iraq, 1980) and internal dissent. The September 11 attacks have created new forms of geopolitical discipline and the rise of transnational insurrectionary violence that exerts unprecedented pressure on state-centric conceptions of world order. The advent of drone warfare and global surveillance networks, as well as the countervailing capabilities of extremist politics able to inflict major harm on major states, suggests a reality where almost no states are “strong” in the sense of being able to uphold their security on their own, and no societies are “strong” in the sense of being able to mount resistance to authoritarian centralization or deal with mega-terrorist tendencies that are either transnational or in their midst.

International law, United Nations authority The Westphalian assumptions embedded in the United Nations Charter were altered, if not subverted to a significant extent, by the geopolitical

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concessions associated with a grant of veto power to the winners in the Second World War. The organized international community has not been able to make states and societies secure in relation to the war system, but the state is seen as generally weaker than society. It was possible, for instance, in Afghanistan and Iraq to achieve regime-change by the application of hard power superiority, but neither legitimacy for the new political order nor minimal societal order. That is, Afghan and Iraqi societies have been more difficult to subdue compared to the identities of state structures, which could be transformed so far as leadership is concerned, but not made effective. In the nineteenth century, this distinction between state and society seemed less relevant. Military intervention and gunboat diplomacy was impressively effective and efficient so far as resources were concerned, relying on European military technology to change governmental structures of authority and subdue whatever societal resistance was encountered, which was more than minimal but rarely able to repel the colonialists and their domestic collaborators. The European conquest of the Western Hemisphere is paradigmatic for the colonizing era, with small numbers of armed European colonial soldiers and settlers taking over entire continents without any deference to the claims of indigenous populations. What has changed in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Three prominent features may be noted. First, the rise of nationalist consciousness; second, greater confidence in resistance capabilities; and third, the spread of small arms and the development of guerrilla tactics designed to address the realities of asymmetric warfare from the perspective of the side lacking modern military technologies. The failure of military intervention in this period is stunning given the extent of hard power disparities. It has created a growing awareness of this dimension of strong societies, and has given rise to a reluctance to rely on military intervention to gain overseas political and economic objectives.

Modernity and development The strong and legitimate state is able to pursue modernity and development while providing the society with some realization of social justice and developmental progress. Gross inequality, persisting massive poverty and unemployment, and corruption undermine the claims of the

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state to the acquiescence of the populace, and increase incentives for recourse to insurrectionary challenges and the invocation of tradition as an expression of societal strength. This interaction was evident in the first phase of the Arab Spring, but the weakness of Arab societies exhibited the reemergence of a coercive state in a second phase that relies almost exclusively on hard power violence to sustain order, and sacrifices all claims to legitimacy. It is possible that an authoritarian state achieves various degrees of developmental success, including the improvement of the material conditions of life for the great majority of inhabitants. Arguably China has had the most spectacular version of a mixed normative record that has combined harsh authoritarianism and extraordinary materialist progress in a strong state/weak society interaction, especially in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square events of 1989. In the Arab world, Syria and Egypt represent different enactments of what takes place if and when strong and corrupted states are challenged by mobilized societal forces. It would appear that Syria became the scene of a regional and global proxy war, suggesting the limits of analyzing states as autonomous units constituting world order. Interregional and intraregional forces can weaken a strong state or strengthen a weak society, and vice versa. What would have ensued in Syria if there had been no covert efforts by outside actors to shift the balance against the state cannot be known. The outcome, for now in Egypt, in comparison, seems to reflect relatively the interaction of autonomous domestic forces initially organized against the Mubarak regime, which, after an interlude of democratic exploration, refocused their opposition on the Muslim Brotherhood and its political leadership under Morsi, and which eventually came to exhibit the hegemonic ambitions of the armed forces. At this stage, the only conclusion that can be reached is that the Arab countries have strong states and weak societies, at least with regard to state/society internal relations. The opposite is true for external relations, with the state exchanging weak international capabilities for the reinforcement of its internal control of society. The postintervention strife and chaos in Libya, and the unresolved state/society relations in Yemen are illustrative of patterns in which state and society neutralized one another. Both appear weak in relation to either security or developmental goals, although Libya has the benefit of rich oil deposits and Yemen is stressed by the absence of resources and

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water scarcity. In this respect, Libya has the economic potential to achieve balance and strength, but whether it has the political potential is very much in doubt, given the societal tensions of an ethnic and regional nature. Because Yemen is without much economic potential, it would seem that only the restoration of some version of an authoritarian state could impose societal order. Whether there will be a third phase of the Arab Spring remains uncertain. There is no doubt that the peoples of these countries have the experience of rising up to impose their will on the political process, a subjectivity that did not exist before the upheavals of 2011.5 Arguably, as well, the second rising of the Egyptian people in 2013 that collapsed and criminalized the elected Morsi regime can either be interpreted as expressive of the new strength of Egyptian society or as the pushback of the pre-2011 established order that involved an alliance between the armed forces and secular urban elites, and maybe it is a combination. The future will make clear whether Egyptian society now has a veto over the governing process or is once more reduced to passivity. Tunisia, with its strong labor unions and vibrant nongovernmental organizations, seems to provide the best example in the region of a new balance between state and society that rests on constitutional compromise. It has so far contained, but not without considerable disruption, the tensions between Islamic and secular affinities.

Time and space The ideas of strong and weak, state and society, assume the centrality of territorial boundaries in determining political balances. Such hermetic imagery is challenged by the pervasive significance of transnational actors and networks, explored by Anne-Marie Slaughter, and by more overarching ideas of global governance.6 More radical than this contemporary complexity of spatial relations is the growing realization that political legitimacy depends on addressing problems associated with protecting the carrying capacity of the planet as a whole, for example, in relation to climate change, demographic stability, and limits on per capita consumption. This focus on time, the future, as a dimension of governance suggests that all states and most societies are “weak” in their realism about approaching limits. In this regard, the best hope for the future is a transnational civil society movement that

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strengthens some societies with regard to an awareness of the dangers posed by these threats, and creates a climate of opinion and action that influences the policy responses of states in the direction of responsible behavior. In effect, the transnationalism of a globalizing world makes all states vulnerable to a range of forces that they cannot hope to control. The anti-immigration politics in more affluent states are pushing toward reinforcing the autonomy of political communities. The interactivity of capital flows and business activity are suggesting the diminishing relevance of national boundaries and identities. Thus, in addition to the strength and weakness of states and societies, it is important to consider these variables in the setting of regions and civilizations.

Conclusion The altered global setting and the changing patterns of conflict destabilize any settled meaning of “strong” and “weak” in the context of state/society relations. It may help to think of “strong” in postrealist terms as mainly established by legitimacy criteria that incorporate capabilities criteria, but that also give weight to normative considerations of human rights, democratic procedures, noncorruption, good governance, and rule of law. In relation to society, “strong” may be better comprehended as capacity and will to resist abuse from above and intervention from without; that is, a combination of normative expectations of equity and efficiency and nationhood, as well as the capacity to take account of future needs relating to climate, energy, food, and water. For instance, in countries where the Muslim Brotherhood has had the greatest popular strength it is partly a consequence of providing social services and security to impoverished neighborhoods ignored by governmental authorities, and thereby confirming the failures of the state to protect the people under its sovereign control from the hardships of poverty, crime, and corruption, or the depredations of ethnic and religious communal tensions. Stated another way, the strong state is able to uphold the political independence and territorial integrity of the country, and to promote development in a manner that is efficient and equitable, while upholding national control of modes of operation and distribution of benefits. The strong society is able and willing to exert pressure on the governing process so that human security is upheld, development proceeds on an

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equitable basis, local empowerment exists, and red lines that cannot be crossed by accountable leaders are generally respected.

Notes 1. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 2. See Deepak Tripathi, Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2011. 3. See Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. 4. Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, UN, and the Will of the People. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. 5. See Farhad Khosrokhavar, The New Arab Revolutions that Shook the World. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2012. 6. See Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004; Mark Mazower, The Governing of the World. New York: Penguin, 2012; Luis Cabrera, ed., Global Governance, Global Government: Institutional Visions for an Evolving World System. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011.

CHAPTER 2 FROM NATION-STATES TO MEMBER STATES: STATE— SOCIETY RELATIONS AND STATE TRANSFORMATION IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE Christopher Bickerton

Introduction When discussing the state in contemporary politics, it is common to use the terms “retreat” and “return.” For those interested in the way economic interdependence is limiting the capacity for national governments to tackle economic problems, the state appears in retreat.1 The forces of globalization and internationalization overpower national governments and their policy choices are often presented as an impossible choice between key objectives, only some of which can be realized.2 Within Europe, this sense of retreat is even more palpable: since 2009, the governments of Greece, Portugal, and Ireland have been wards of the “troika” – a shadowy me´lange of European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund officials, whose willingness to lend to these troubled states means they can dictate policy to them. When Ireland found itself able to refinance a part of its debt on open markets, this was heralded as a return of autonomy for the Irish state. Few commented on the fact that it only signaled a shift from a more defined master (the troika) to a more amorphous one (the markets).

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Those pessimistic about the future of the state have been challenged by others who take a rather different view. On the other side of the ledger lie those who emphasize the “return” of the state. Early on in the globalization debate, some scholars contested the idea that the state was in retreat: they argued that interdependence created new opportunities for powerful states to influence outcomes, most importantly by determining the new rules via which the global economy was to be managed.3 The claim that the state is back has been forcefully made by those interested in China as a new model for state capitalism.4 Particularly since the beginning of the economic and financial crisis of 2008, this alternative model to the neoliberal “Washington consensus” has gained in prominence. Some speak of the “Beijing consensus” and point to the success of the state, in countries like China, in weathering the post-2008 era of austerity.5 There is something rather cyclical about the debate between “retreat” and “return.” What seems clear is that the state remains central to political life and to the reproduction of social relations both in the East and the West. Awareness of this fact has begun to push the debate in a more fruitful direction, away from thinking about “more” or “less” stateness and towards theorizing modes of state transformation. Indeed, as scholars have become interested in this theme, the number of qualifying adjectives applied to the state has mushroomed. Alongside Philip Cerny’s “competition state,” we have Philip Bobbit’s “market state,” David Harvey’s “neoliberal state,” and many others.6 The main theme here is that while the state is here to stay, it is nevertheless being transformed. The task is therefore to understand this transformation, its key features, and its unevenness across different state traditions and national contexts. This chapter takes this notion of state transformation as its starting point and looks at processes of state transformation in Europe, focusing on what it calls the shift from nation-state to member state, and the implications of this shift for how we think about state – society relations.

Weak states, strong societies: A reformulation In his original formulation of the “weak state, strong societies” thesis, Joel Migdal7 sought to account for what he saw as a paradox of the Third World state: why, in the golden age of state intervention and Third

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World nationalism, were so few postcolonial governments able to properly penetrate their own societies and change them in line with their political programs? In order to properly understand state capabilities, and to explain this phenomenon of the weak Third World state, Migdal argued that we had to focus on state– society relations and on those social groups and forces that were successfully able to resist the encroachment of state power. The picture Migdal painted was therefore of determined yet frustrated state elites, running up against considerable societal resistance. If we take up Migdal’s argument today, and think about contemporary Europe, we find that there are some key differences. The focus on state – society interactions as the best measure of state capacities remains a very useful insight, but the “weak state, strong society” formula needs to be reworked. It is also not evident that merely reversing the term – to give us “strong state, weak society” – helps us much. Rather, we need to look at some of the basic presuppositions of Migdal’s approach. The first is that he assumed a desire by state elites to penetrate and reshape their societies. The presumption was of interaction, stymied only by varying degrees of resistance by social groups. In contemporary Europe, this desire to reshape society is not obviously present within political elites and it certainly is not necessarily a core pillar of party ideologies. At issue here is not simply the rise of neoliberalism and a belief that markets are self-regulating and should be left to themselves. What also prevails in Europe is skepticism about the efficacy of state action tout court. In place of what the French called the grands projets, today we have political elites whose interaction with their own societies is reduced to a minimum. In an ongoing debate surrounding infrastructural projects in the United Kingdom (UK), the economist Dieter Helm lamented the absence of any long-term thinking about where the UK should be in 30 to 40 years.8 What prevailed instead was short-sighted squabbling over the details of airport expansion plans and the building of high-speed rail links. This lack of vision is certainly not characteristic of more dynamic societies – China, Brazil, and other emerging markets – but it has become a deep-rooted feature of contemporary European societies. Along with elites set on minimizing their interaction with their societies, we also have societies that do not match Migdal’s image. The term Migdal uses is “weblike”: by this, he means societies that are

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structured in ways that are complex and escape the simple classifications used in political sociology, where the focus is on class and religious cleavages.9 Instead of being reducible to class or religious conflicts, Migdal argues that Third World societies are made up of overlapping webs, with multiple sources of value production. His point is that in governing such societies, states run up against multiple sources of resistance. Europe today is quite different. Interestingly, in his opening to his 1988 book, Migdal quotes Eugen Weber’s classic account of French nation-building, Peasants into Frenchmen, as an illustration of the truculence of local societal actors.10 In making this point, we can see that the “weblike” societies’ resistance to the encroachment of state powers refers to an earlier period in Europe’s history, where regional diversity was much higher and where the reach of state law could not be taken for granted. What characterizes contemporary European society is something quite different: a fluidity and individuation that has had the effect of dissolving many corporate or social identities. Sociologists of Europe have long noted the end of industrial society and its accompanying cleavages. Traditional poles of identity – workplace, union, church, and so on – have given way to more protean forms of identity.11 However, at issue here is not the resistance to state power that comes with societies that are yet to become national societies. This destructuring of identities makes for societies that are weak, not strong, and their very fluidity is often a permissive condition for the expansion of bureaucratic power. Another associated feature of European societies is a widespread disaffection with politics. This is evident in poll data which shows that the most distrusted institutions of all are political parties. It would appear that the loss of faith on the part of elites in widespread social transformation is matched by skepticism on the part of publics about the ability of political institutions to change society for the better. In Midgal’s account, state –society relations appear to us as a tumultuous marriage, full of passion and struggle. In contemporary Europe, the picture is more that of a divorce or separation, where state – society relations are characterized by mutual suspicion, hostility, and the keen preservation of distance. Based on this account of state – society relations, we can now look at processes of state transformation in Europe and see what form of state has arisen out of this decaying relationship between states and societies.

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Member statehood in Europe12 Traditionally, Europe was thought of as a continent of nation-states. Having gone through an extended process of state formation – from early princely states, through to the absolutism of Louis XIV – the settled form of state was the nation-state. A key feature of the nationstate was its autonomy, independence, and sovereignty. In particular, nation-states relied only upon themselves for their existence. As Napoleon once put it, France is no more in need of recognition than the sun. Neither peace treaties nor international law as such were required in order for Europe’s nation-states to exist. This degree of selfsufficiency reflected the strength of the representative bond between the state and the nation. Even in countries that lacked the strong republican traditions of France, or the attachment to parliamentary sovereignty in the UK, this strongly representative form of state– society relations was the basis for the formulation of national interests, deliberation with other states, and the assertion of national power. In contemporary Europe, notwithstanding the strong degree of regional integration, states remain the central unit of political life. And yet they look very different from the traditional, nineteenth-century bourgeois, egotistical nation-state of old. For instance, in the campaign for Scottish independence, the Scottish nationalists made it clear that they would wish to immediately join the EU. Far from considering that Scotland could survive on its own – the traditional leitmotif of nationalist sentiment – Scottish nationalists view Scotland’s future through the prism of European integration. A similar sentiment prevails in Catalonia, where independence from Spain is assumed to go hand-inhand with membership of the EU. Attempts by individual governments in Europe to wrestle themselves free from EU legislation is far from being considered salutary proof of defending one’s own national interest. When the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, found himself locked out of the Fiscal Compact agreement in December 2011, this was widely interpreted as a failure of diplomacy. “Going it alone” in Europe today is not a viable state strategy and governments consider themselves only in terms of their belonging to the wider European whole. Strikingly, at the height of the Eurozone crisis in Greece, when the introduction of austerity measures were dismantling the country’s welfare safety net and reversing the historic gains made in Greece since the fall of the military

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junta in 1974, no serious anti-EU sentiment emerged. The far left party, Syriza, had floated the idea of exiting the Eurozone but eventually its leader, Alexis Tsirpas, gave up on the idea, partly due to pressure put on him by other national social democratic parties. If the state in Europe is no longer the nation-state, what sort of state do we have? One answer to this is that Europe is now made up of member states. Of course, the term member state is perhaps the most common in the lexicon of European studies. Generally, it is understood as a juridical concept. When a state joins the EU, as did Croatia in June 2013, it goes from being a nation-state to a member state. Were a country to exit the EU, as the UK may do if there is a “No” vote to EU membership in the promised referendum of 2017, it would presumably go from being a member state back to a nation-state. Rather than think of member statehood as merely a matter of legal title, we can also think of it as a distinct and standalone form of state, one that contrasts with other forms of state such as the nation-state. Understood in this way, member statehood points to the importance of membership of the EU for the existence of European states. Far from the relationship between states and European integration being antagonistic – as assumed in much EU integration theory where the stand-off between national capitals and a Brussels-based superstate is central to the integration story – it is constitutive, with states realizing themselves through membership. Given the abstract nature of this definition, it is worth asking how can we know a member state when we see one? What are its principal characteristics? The key feature of member statehood is that national governments exercise their authority through EU policymaking frameworks. It is through regional integration processes that national governments rule. This has a number of implications for the configuration of member states. Of particular importance is the internal institutional balance. As noted by international relations scholars,13 international negotiations tend to empower the executive at the expense of the legislature. In the EU case, this goes even further. It is not only the executive but also much of the national bureaucratic apparatus which is empowered. In Europe, the results are complex. As national ministries have developed their own European expertise, less and less European business passes through the foreign affairs ministry. In this respect, EU integration has led to greater institutional autonomy for bureaucratic interests within states. At the same time, EU integration is increasingly

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dominated by meetings of heads of state and government within the European Council. This has become the new leading EU institution in terms of agenda-setting, and thus empowers the executives of EU member states. One European intellectual has described the EU political system as “executive federalism.”14 Significantly, the face of the EU’s response to the Euro-crisis has been the Merkozy image: the blending of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy into a single portrait. It is no coincidence that the personification of the EU takes the form of two national leaders in Europe. Another feature of member states, which follows from the above, is that policymaking and politics proper are uncoupled from one another. The procedures and dynamics that we associate with majoritarian democracy – political parties, manifestos, elections, and scrutiny of political behavior – have all remained firmly national. Policymaking, by contrast, has become strongly Europeanized; it takes place in the form of intensified cooperation between national and EU officials. Numerous examples of this exist. For instance, since the British general election of 2010, the Conservative – Liberal coalition government has tried to placate the extremely anti-EU wing of the Conservative Party. A referendum was promised after the next election, to be followed by a balance of competences review to determine which aspects of the UK’s relationship with the EU needed reforming. A detailed survey of key stakeholders in the UK was undertaken to find out what they felt about EU law and which aspects they wanted changed. Surprisingly, most were perfectly happy with the status quo. Those that wanted change wanted more, not less, European cooperation. The police, for instance, were firmly in favor of the European arrest warrant, a controversial measure. In fact, in the case of the UK Ministry of the Interior, where the goal had been to find evidence of EU migrants taking advantage of the benefits system, the minister in charge (Teresa May) delayed publication of the report because it was too favorable to the EU.15 In spite of much searching, little evidence could be found that EU residents in the UK were a drain on government spending. Indeed, the director of the Office of Budgetary Responsibility found the contrary to be true. This example illustrates the way in which national politics is separate from policymaking dynamics. A pro-European bureaucracy in the UK is at odds with a small, anti-EU wing of the governing party. As David Allen argues, the UK is a Europeanized government in a non-Europeanized

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polity, which is a good example of the contradictions inherent in the concept of member statehood.16 Member statehood is not just about the EU. If we define this form of state in terms of the tendency of governments to rule through external frameworks, then the EU is in some ways just the tip of the iceberg. States in Europe today are characterized by various trends that point to the exercise of power outside of the majoritarian procedures of representative democracy. The widespread use of independent agencies, for instance, is an important phenomenon. Interest rate setting authorities (central banks) and many regulatory authorities are independent. It is common for politically sensitive issues to be passed on to independent commissions, such as the Davies commission and the Leveson inquiry in the UK.17 This quango-ization of government policymaking is common across much of Europe and is not restricted to any particular country. In the case of Sweden, for instance, Sven Steinmo recounts how the difficult reforms of the country’s famous welfare state model – dubbed the “great pension compromise” – were made possible by the depoliticization of the reform process, which was achieved by the appointment of an independent commission: Sweden was able to deal with this very difficult set of political issues by depoliticizing them and treating them as technical matters. By insulating the policy-makers from the demand pressures of public constituencies, the commission was thus able to propose practical solutions. The demographic/fiscal crisis bearing down on Sweden was averted largely because it was taken out of the political arena.18 If the uncoupling of policy from politics and the expansion in executive power are hallmarks of member statehood, it is worth examining how and why the shift from nation-states to member states took place in Europe.

From nation-state to member state: The historical process The shift from nation-state to member state was uneven, and events in one country were not directly replicated in another. However, there are a set of common themes that we can draw out in looking at the process of state transformation.

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We can draw some contrast between the postwar national corporatist states of Western Europe, and the same states in the aftermath of the economic crisis of the 1970s. A key difference was the centrality of national planning and faith in national strategies, particularly those of an economic nature. The postwar era was one of planning and the scope of government policy was firmly national. It would be wrong to suggest that trends of depoliticizing policymaking did not exist in this period. Indeed, some would point to corporatist decision-making itself as a depoliticizing strategy. However, in this period, state–society relations remained strong and national governments were firmly embedded in a set of social relations. They remained representative in this sense, even if the way this representative relationship expressed itself was at times curious. In Italy, the state–society bond was evident in the degree of clientelism and patrimonialism that existed. In the 2008 film Il Divo, there is a scene where the Italian seven-times prime minister Giulio Andreotti hands out presents to a queue of people lining up outside the prime minister’s residence. At the time, the Italian state was firmly embedded in a set of institutions that wedded social interests, political parties, and government bureaucracies together. However dysfunctional this may have been, it was nevertheless a clear instance of firm state–society ties. The crisis of the 1970s had a severe impact upon these national, corporatist, Keynesian states. The combination of unemployment and rising prices undermined one of the fundamental laws of the postwar period: the so-called Philips curve where unemployment and inflation were inversely correlated. This had the effect of weakening governments’ faith in their ability to conduct national economic policy. The initial reaction was to radicalize existing policies: British Prime Minister Ted Heath hoped that wage and price controls might help reduce rampant inflation, but he was defeated by the trade unions. Other countries pursued their own policies, but everywhere it seemed that governments were hostage to social groups. Here we see something similar to Migdal’s weak states, strong society model. Leaders found their efforts to introduce reform constantly rebuffed by querulous societies. In France, Giscard d’Estaing appointed Raymond Barre as prime minister and asked that he implement a policy of austerity. Initially successful, this too failed as French citizens refused to accept the internal devaluation of wages implied by Barre’s attachment to France’s place within the European Monetary System.

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Unable to achieve reform via national strategies, a theme which emerged in the early 1980s – and came to dominate thereafter – was that the same goals could be pursued less directly and less publicly, via the European route. In this, France was the exemplar. Elected in 1981 on the platform of “Keynesianism in one country,” Franc ois Mitterrand faced severe difficulties in implementing his agenda after two years in power. Outside observers didn’t believe in his ability to both kick-start the economy with a renewed round of Keynesian spending and keep up the value of the French franc. In 1983, pressure mounted on Mitterrand to take France out of the European Monetary System in order that he keep his social commitments. After much deliberation, Mitterrand decided to give up on his Keynesian program. At the time, his finance minister Jacques Delors declared that France was faced with a choice between Europe and decline. Mitterrand himself realized that socialism was incompatible with a market economy and he decided to present his abandonment of the former as a commitment to Europe and to European integration.19 This move was of considerable significance for French politics as a whole. By opting to liberalize the French economy under the cover of closer European commitments, rather than via a more open clash of ideas about the virtues of markets versus planning and centralization, Mitterand deprived France of any pro-market political discourse. Its slow transition away from postwar planning and state intervention to a more conventionally limited state has thus taken place in an ideological vacuum. This helps explain why there is little support for the market as such in France, even if in practical terms France is – like all other European countries – a market society. It also helps to explain why the mood in France is so bad: change without a narrative leaves only malaise and discontent. The British case is interesting by way of comparison. In contrast to Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher was the head of a right-wing government, to which the language of deregulation and privatization came much more easily. However, she also had to face down considerable societal resistance to her program of change. In particular, Thatcher had to confront the British trade unions, a force that had defeated her Conservative predecessor, Heath. In her fight with the unions, Thatcher opted to take them head on, and to defeat them both in practice – by using the force of the state to break up strikes, helping business owners get around strike action, and so on – and in principle, by arguing for the inevitability of

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market society. In her famous words, there is no alternative to the market. What is striking about this confrontation, which came to a head in 1984– 1985 with the coal miner’s strike, was that there was no role for Europe. Thatcher did not use Europe as a foil for her own policy goals, as Mitterrand had done. As a result, the transition from postwar corporatism and planning in the UK, to deregulated and privatized neoliberalism, took place away from continental Europe and the European Economic Community altogether. This means that today, there is less of a need in the UK to govern through the EU as there is in other countries whose reliance on the EU for undertaking domestic political economic change is far greater. Perhaps this helps us understand why anti-EU sentiment in the UK is given free rein: Europe is less central as a governing mechanism for British political elites. The consolidation of member statehood occurred through the late 1980s into the 1990s, with the Maastricht convergence criteria being perhaps the greatest example of governing through EU-set policy goals. Struggling to implement their own reform programs, government leaders used the Maastricht criteria in ways that allowed them to introduce changes that would otherwise have been greatly contested. In Italy, for instance, fiscal consolidation in the early 1990s occurred under the sign of Maastricht convergence. Later, Romano Prodi even introduced a Euro-tax: a measure seen as necessary in order for Italy to meet the criteria on government spending and public debt. In Italy, the convergence criteria took on an added importance because of the political scandals of the early 1990s. As all the top politicians were brought before the courts on charges of corruption, the Italian political class found itself entirely discredited. In the face of such public skepticism, setting policy goals and implementing them was difficult. The Maastricht convergence criteria helped give the Italian governments some moral authority, and they would often stress that citizens should make sacrifices for the sake of Italy’s place in Europe. The effect of such kinds of justification is that, over time, political elites have begun to feel as much identity with one another as with their own populations. United in their belief in certain kinds of reform, and sharing common problems of governing at a time of considerable public disaffection with politics, national elites have found that they understand each other better than they do their own voters. If we take the example of the Eurogroup, the institution that brings together EU

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finance ministers for regular meetings, we find that a core function of the group is that it serves as a place where ministers are able to share experiences and discuss common problems.20 They also use the Eurogroup to bolster their own domestic reform efforts by pointing to consensus at the European level and arguing that this makes the case for reform at home. Without having to believe that individual ministers or officials are “socialized” into a particular kind of behavior, we can say that the frequency of meetings and coordinated decision-making is such that these elites are often united on policy issues even when domestic populations hold a different view. When Ireland voted “No” to the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, it was clear that the Irish government had been embarrassed by its own people. Having made assurances that it would get the “right answer,” Irish officials were then forced to go to Brussels to account for the different result.

“Hard but hollow”: Legitimation problems in a Europe of member states Member states are thus characterized by a strong separation of state from society, to the point where societies feel unrepresented by their own political elites and those elites identify with their European counterparts more than with their own citizens. Under such conditions, external frameworks such as the EU become central to the exercise of authority by national governments and over time policymaking and politics proper drift further and further apart. It is useful at this stage to reflect on what this means in terms of state strength and state capabilities. It would seem that if elites are able to liberate themselves from the demands and pressures of domestic publics, then their strength is enhanced. A member state is thus a strong state in so far as executives are strong, their action is relatively unchecked, and the freedom for maneuver at the regional or international level is extensive. This relative insulation from the claims of civil society is not, however, simply a source of strength. If we think that the authority of a state rests – at least in part – on its ability to legitimize its exercise of power, then such insulation can become a source of weakness. Specifically, when the political regime is one of majoritarian democracy, it is expected that there be some correspondence between input and output legitimacy, that is, between what a state does by way of policy

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outputs and where its preferences have come from, how they are formed and aggregated, and how domestic interests find their way into policy outcomes. If the state– society relationship is stretched too thin, however, then questions of input legitimacy arise. Member states rule through frameworks that exist outside of representative procedures; the question must inevitably arise, therefore, of the legitimacy of such frameworks. One way of describing member states therefore is as states that are “hard but hollow”: hard in terms of their ability to protect themselves from public contestation, but hollow in terms of their ability to represent domestic interests in international or regional level negotiations.21 This term, used by Vincent Della Salla to describe Italy, suggests that member statehood may not be such a boon for executives after all. In fact, it implies that member statehood as a state form is neither stable nor necessarily enduring. National elites can insulate themselves from domestic pressures only for so long since when that insulation extends too far, states lose their representative quality and appear as merely elitebureaucratic structures that bestride societies but that have no right to rule. What appears to be the permissive condition for these hard but hollow states to remain in place is that there is little domestic contestation owing to the public disaffection with politics that prevails. In Europe in recent years, there has been some evidence of growing contestation. As one study found, the crisis-related mobilizations – what it calls “subterranean politics” – such as Indignados in Spain, Occupy London, or the Stuttgart 21 protests, are more about democracy (or the lack of it) than about austerity policies as such.22 There is little sign, however, that these mobilizations are taking the form of new and enduring political organizations. Many of them are very ephemeral, with the Occupy movements that gripped much of Europe (and New York) in 2011–2012 not lasting more than a year. One political consequence of the rise of member statehood is that politics in Europe has increasingly come to be organized around the poles of populism and technocracy. As politics and policymaking have become uncoupled from one another, and as national elites have become divorced from society, one sees that the political discourse moves away from substantive left – right divides. Instead, we find political choices structured around technocracy (more European integration, and greater delegation of power to experts in the policy process), and populism

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(power directly exercised by the people, and hostility to organized interests and the political class as a whole). This does not necessarily signal the emergence of new electoral cleavages but we find that in many countries across Europe, positions are taken around these two poles. The crisis since 2008 has, for instance, been understood either as a complex problem of regulatory capture, to be resolved through more sophisticated regulation, or as an act of theft by financial elites at the expense of the people.

Conclusion Midgal’s work on strong societies and weak states is a useful starting point for thinking about state power and state –society relations in Europe. This chapter has suggested that we can revise Migdal’s terms in order to better capture the reality of contemporary European politics. Europe is characterized by state institutions and political elites deracinated from their own societies. State – society relations are marked more by their mutual hostility than by any sustained interaction. The state is not penetrating society and society is not capturing the state. This separation of state and society is expressed in the term member state, a term that points to the preference of governments to rule through external frameworks. Thinking about the state in contemporary Europe thus means reflecting upon its transformation, from nation-state to member state, and the consequences of this change. The chapter has suggested that as politics and policymaking drift apart in the member state model, we find that political debates are increasingly structured around the poles of populism and technocracy. The implication here is that whilst member states are themselves reflections of long-term processes of societal and political change, they are not particularly stable. The future of European politics may lie in the working out of these contradictions contained within the member state model.

Notes 1. Susan Strange, The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation-State: The Rise of Regional Economies. New York: Free Press, 1996. 2. Dani Rodrik, The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States and Democracy Can’t Co-exist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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3. Paul Hirst, Graeme Thomson and Simon Bromley, Globalization in Question. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009; Linda Weiss, “Globalization and the Myth of the Powerless State.” New Left Review 225, September – October (1997). 4. Ian Bremmer, The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? London: Portfolio, 2010. 5. Mark Leonard, What Does China Think? London: Fourth Estate, 2008. 6. Philip Cerny, Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; Philip Bobbit, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History. London: Penguin, 2002; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. 7. All references to Migdal’s work in this chapter refer to Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 8. Dieter Helm, “Britain in knots over infrastructure.” Financial Times. February 1, 2013. 9. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives. New York: Free Press, 1967. 10. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. xiii. 11. Charles S. Maier, ed., Changing Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the Evolving Balance between the State and Society, Public and Private in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 12. For an extended account of this argument, see Christopher Bickerton, European Integration: From Nation-States to Member States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 13. For example, Robert Putnam and his concept of “two-level games.” See Robert Putnam, “Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games.” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988), pp. 427– 60. 14. Ju¨rgen Habermas, The Crisis of the European Union: A Response. Cambridge: Polity, 2012. 15. For a full account of the British government’s balance of competences review, see Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “Review of the Balance of Competences.” December 12, 2012, www.gov.uk/review-of-the-balance-of-competences (updated December 18, 2014). 16. David Allen, “The United Kingdom: a Europeanized government in a nonEuropeanized polity.” In The Member States of the European Union, edited by Simon Bulmer and Christian Lequesne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 17. The so-called Davies commission, officially known as the Airports Commission and led by Sir Howard Davies, was set up to provide an independent opinion on the issue of airport expansion in the London area. For details of its work so far, see Airports Commission, www.gov.uk/government/organisations/airports-commissi on. The Leveson inquiry was established in the wake of the phone hacking scandal and it focused on the culture, ethics and practice of the British press.

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18. Sven Steinmo, “Governing as an engineering problem: the political economy of Swedish success.” In Politics in the Age of Austerity, edited by Armin Scha¨fer and Wolfgang Streeck. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013, p. 96. 19. Guillaume Durand, “Mitterrand, Maastricht et moi.” Charles no. 5 (2013), pp. 9 – 15. 20. Uwe Puetter, “Governing informally: The role of the Eurogroup in EMU and the Stability and Growth Pact.” Journal of European Public Policy 19, no. 2 (2004), pp. 854– 70. 21. Vincent Della Salla, “Hollowing out and hardening the state: European integration and the Italian economy.” West European Politics 20, no. 1 (1997), pp. 14 – 33. 22. Mary Kaldor et al., “The ‘bubbling up’ of subterranean politics in Europe.” Project Report (London: Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2012) tinyurl.com/owny46z (accessed October 16, 2014).

CHAPTER 3 THE DYNAMICS OF FEDERALISM: BELGIUM AND SWITZERLAND Jan Wouters, Sven Van Kerckhoven, and Maarten Vidal

Introduction By looking into states that have either been “hollowed out” due to decentralization, or have never reached the stage of complete unification, we can explore another instance of “weak states and strong societies.” In both cases, the state shares considerable decision-making powers with subnational entities, resulting in a federal state structure. In recent decades, several countries have moved toward a more decentralized state structure. This has resulted in an increase of decisionmaking powers, including legislative competences, at subnational levels. Although the move to decentralization in decision-making has taken place all around the world, the recent rise of decision-making at the substate level occurred first in Europe. The reasons for this can be explained from a historical perspective. European countries’ borders have shifted continuously throughout history. Large European empires and states have broken up and smaller countries have been incorporated into larger entities. Recent breakups of states, or aspirations to do so, have come in all colors and varieties. The roots of these separatist movements often reside with a people within a country that stresses the need for high levels of autonomous rule-making. The struggle of people to achieve autonomy in

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decision-making has taken place both violently (e.g., in Northern Ireland) and rather peacefully (e.g., in Catalonia). One potential solution to accommodate these demands without compromising the territorial integrity of the state is the construction of a federalized state, which is the object of study in this chapter. As elaborated below, the decision to centralize or decentralize decisionmaking powers depends critically on the economics of scale and the heterogeneity of preferences respectively. On the one hand, social groups within a nation-state can feel that they cherish similar preferences and share some sense of homogeneity with each other but not, or much less, with other inhabitants of the same country. On the other hand, economies of scale and scope might push centralization. In the first section of this chapter, we discuss the trade-off between centralization and decentralization in more detail. We then look deeper into these issues by examining the cases of Belgium and Switzerland. Both countries are instances of European states which are “weaker” than traditional nation-states, and where more decision-making powers are exercised at the regional level as a result of both heterogeneous preferences of strong societies and economies of scale and scope. As will be seen, the main difference between them are the opposite starting points and directions of the federal dynamics: in the Swiss case, federalism was the starting point after the aggregation of previously independent cantons, whereas Belgium began as a unitary nation-state that gradually developed in the direction of an ever stronger disaggregation.

Centralization versus decentralization: Socioeconomic theory Centralization, broadly defined, is the transfer of competences from a lower-level entity (“regions”) to a higher-level entity (the “state”). Decentralization is the opposite evolution.1 For the purposes of this chapter, federalization is the creation of a state structure whereby decision-making powers, including legislative powers, are shared by the state and a number of regions encompassing the entire territory of the state. For our use of the term “region,” we build upon Luk Van Langenhove’s definition of a region as a governance unit that has some statehood properties.2 In this chapter, however, regions are defined more restrictively as subnational entities, that is, entities at a governmental level directly below the national level.3 Our analysis also builds upon the

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framework of Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore, who have argued that the centralization versus decentralization debate boils down to a tradeoff between heterogeneity and economics of scale and scope.4 Generally, one can think of heterogeneity in two dimensions: geography and ideology. The geographical dimension requires jurisdictions to be geographically compact for the provision of a certain good or service. Transaction costs render it virtually impossible for a Belgian to set up an educational system with an Australian, even though both might perfectly agree on educational policies. The ideological distance represents how far a policy is from an individual’s preferences. The ideological and the geographical dimension generally go hand in hand. People living close to one another tend to have similar preferences, through self-sorting and common historical experiences. Due to this heterogeneity, devolving decision-making powers to the regional level might provide more distant citizens with a higher utility than centralizing them. This is particularly true in culturally or linguistically diverse countries with different social groups concentrated in regional areas, where people will have more diverse preferences. Moreover, regional governments have better information about local conditions and preferences, and can consequently make better informed decisions about local policy, thereby increasing welfare.5 This is particularly clear as far as educational and cultural issues are concerned. The counterweight to heterogeneity are economies of scale and scope. Public goods can only be provided at a certain cost, which includes some fixed cost. Sharing the burden of this fixed cost among a larger number of taxpayers will render public goods provision cheaper. Consequently, centralization will result in cheaper public goods provision. Clearly, there are some areas for which economies of scale are so important that providing them at the regional level would not make sense. Military defense and the protection of the internal market through a common contractual environment give rise to large economies of scale and should hence be assigned to the central level. Another reason to centralize is that the central level may be better equipped to deal with certain interregional externalities.6 Coordination might then solve the “beggar thy neighbor” problem. The term “economies of scope” refers to jurisdictions providing multiple public goods. In general, it will be cheaper to have a certain single entity providing multiple public goods. In this way, a number of

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costs, such as establishing an administration, only have to be incurred once in order to allow for the provision of multiple public goods. These costs can then be shared among the different public goods. Additionally, it can be argued that a single policy for the whole federation can result in a feeling of fairness. Redistribution between richer and poorer regions provides some kind of federal insurance, whereby regions can interchangeably support each other. On the other hand, federalism without centrally planned redistribution schemes may increase inequality among the regions, although this is not always the case.7 It is important to note that within the Alesina and Spolaore framework, it is imperative that decision-making competences and funding for their implementation go hand in hand. If the expenses are at the regional level, the funding thereof should also be generated at the regional level. Last but not least, a federalized structure increases the number of relevant actors in decision-making, as subnational entities will also have decision-making powers. Consequently, within a decentralized state, the decision to centralize competences will become more arduous since more actors will be able to veto a transfer to the central authority. When preferences are heterogeneous at the regional level, and decision-making is initially assigned to this level, it might therefore be the case that decision-making remains at the regional level, even though centralization would result in significant economies of scale and scope.

Federalization in Belgium and Switzerland: Political and legal realities From a superficial point of view, Belgium and Switzerland are rather similar. Both are small nations (11 million versus 8 million people) at the intersection of two great cultural zones in Europe (Latin and Germanic). This is reflected in their respective language setup. Both countries have multiple official languages: Dutch, French and German are official languages in Belgium, whereas Switzerland’s official languages are French, German, Italian, and Romansh.8 Both countries failed to achieve unification until post-Napoleonic times, and both currently have a federal state structure. Despite their small size, the two countries are economically prosperous,9 even though Belgium’s external sovereign debt rate is considerably higher than that of Switzerland.10 Yet the federal dynamics in both countries differ on a significant number of points.

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Belgium’s rising regional powers Federalization Contemporary Belgium is comprised of three geographic regions (Wallonia, Flanders, and Brussels). At the same time, it is inhabited by three distinctive linguistic communities (French, Dutch, and German). In pre-Napoleonic times, the area currently constituting the territory of the Kingdom of Belgium, then known as the Southern Netherlands, had been for centuries a conglomerate of independent feudal entities, most of which were bound together by personal unions under the Hapsburg rulers. For a brief period in 1790, these feudal entities managed to depose their feudal overlords and established a confederation which was known as the United States of Belgium. The Hapsburgs returned swiftly, only to yield to the French revolutionary armies a couple of years later. The area was then incorporated into the French Empire under Napoleon, and joined with the Northern Netherlands in a united kingdom that lasted from 1815 until 1830. When the country gained independence by seceding from the Netherlands in 1830, it was reorganized as a unitary state with local self-government for its nine provinces – largely based on the territories of the previous feudal entities – and many communes.11 Legislative powers were exercised at the central level only. One hundred and sixty-three years later, in 1993, Belgium was declared a federal state, as part of the fourth state reform.12 The sixth state reform of 2011–2013 further regionalized certain competences. This was the result of a gradual devolution process in the direction of decentralization that has gathered pace since the 1960s.13 Hence, Belgium’s transformation into a federal state did not come about as a result of a merger of various states or other entities, unlike most federations. The current regions of Belgium are relatively homogeneous units in a heterogeneous state. They are quite different in terms of population, socioeconomic development, and native languages.14 The first reforms towards a federalist structure took place in 1970. This was mainly intended to ease a linguistic conflict in the state by constitutionally entrenching powersharing between the two main language communities (Dutch and French). In addition to the language communities, however, the reforms also entrenched powersharing between the regions, entities with a clear territorial basis.15 Further reforms deepened the federal character of Belgium, which was, as indicated earlier, officially

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recognized in the Belgian Constitution of 1993. Decentralization to the regions was meant not only to attenuate tensions between the two main language groups, but also to enhance policymaking, facilitate policy reform, and improve the effectiveness of public policies. This evolution from a unitary state to a federal structure was precipitated by several factors. First was the issue of language. At the time of its emergence as an autonomous and unified state, Belgium’s cultural diversity was not reflected in its institutional set-up. This was mainly due to the fact that at that time, the Flemish economic elite and middle class were closely involved in French-speaking social and cultural life.16 Nineteenth-century elites were therefore predominantly Frenchspeaking, but this has been reversed in contemporary Belgium.17 The Belgian Constitution of 1831 granted linguistic freedom in the private sphere, whereas the law could establish an official language for the public sphere. As a result of this arrangement, French became the only official language. In the decades following independence (1830), the Flemish cultural elite increasingly advocated a more important role for Dutch. Nonetheless, it was not until 1898 that Belgium would ultimately recognize Dutch as an official language, resulting in serious grievances in the Dutch-speaking society. These grievances continued even after the Dutch language gained an equal footing with the French.18 As noted by Wilfried Swenden and Maarten Theo Jans, “[s]everal Flemish activists who had been socialised into the more linguistically averse climate of the inter-war period were not willing to reconsider their loyalty vis-a`-vis the Belgian state despite the latter’s accommodation of their initially nonterritorial grievances.”19 The increasing linguistic homogeneity in the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Walloon (French-speaking) Regions over the last century has further spurred the divergence of both regions. The fact that Dutch speakers and French speakers are to a large extent geographically segregated has certainly facilitated the transformation of Belgium into a federal state.20 Currently, the Flemish and Frenchspeaking media are living almost completely apart, resulting in increasingly diverging cultures. This trend has been institutionalized and enhanced by subsequent state reforms. Culture and education were the first competences to be transferred to the regional communities, leaving the central authority with few policy instruments with which to promote a shared Belgian culture or identity. Particularly in Flanders, these developments have encouraged an increase in groups of people

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with a predominantly regional identity (although this is often perceived to be complementary to the identification as Belgian). The result is a political attitude in Flanders that supports increased decentralization.21 Furthermore, the ideological conflict has been increasingly embedded along the linguistic divide, which has resulted in a different party political landscape in the respective regions, as discussed later.22 Second, after the Second World War, the diverging economic fortunes of Dutch-speaking Flanders (which entered into a period of rapid economic growth) and French-speaking Wallonia (which began a difficult transition out of an industrial economy based mainly on steel and coal) put more pressure on the unitary state structure. The result of this cultural and economic divide was an initial focus of Dutch-speaking Belgians on language and cultural issues, and an initial focus of French-speaking Belgians on socioeconomic issues. This partly explains the complex Belgian political patchwork, with the communities focusing on the former issues and the regions taking up the latter. As a result, French-speaking Belgians pay more attention to the regions, while Dutch-speaking Belgians tend to focus more on the communities.23

Structure and competences As mentioned earlier, Belgium is nowadays composed of two types of federated entities – the communities and the regions.24 This odd federal set-up is due to the language pattern, and results in a patchwork of overlapping jurisdictions. In Belgium, there are four language areas: the Dutch, French, and German language areas, and the bilingual (Dutch and French) capital.25 These form the territorial basis for three communities,26 and an equal number of regions.27 The Flemish Region and Community are based in the Dutch language area in the north, while the Walloon Region and the French Community are based in the Frenchspeaking south. Brussels, the bilingual capital, is a separate region, but not a community. Indeed, the Flemish and French Communities are each responsible for their respective language-based decision-making in Brussels, with complex institutional machinery for aspects that cannot clearly be attributed on a linguistic basis. The German-speaking Community is based in the German-speaking east of Belgium, but was deemed too small to be a region by itself, and therefore forms part of the Walloon Region.

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Even between the different regions and communities, de jure asymmetries are present.28 In practice, none of them have exactly the same powers. For example, the small German-speaking Community does not possess the same powers as its Flemish and French-speaking counterparts.29 The same holds true for the Brussels-Capital Region, whose powers are at the same time more limited and more extensive than the Flemish and Walloon Regions.30 The asymmetry is further strengthened by the imperfect congruence between regional and community borders.31 The organs of the Flemish Community, that is, the Flemish Parliament and the Flemish government, also exercise the competences of the Flemish Region, while such an institutional merger did not happen between the Walloon regional and French community institutions. On the contrary, the French Community has transferred a number of its competences to the Walloon Region and to the French Community Commission in Brussels, an organ made up of the Frenchspeaking members of the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region. Swenden and Jans argue that this can be attributed to the fact that only 3 percent of the total Dutch-speaking group lives in Brussels, compared with 18 percent of the French-speaking Belgians.32 Moreover, the Dutch-speaking Belgians share more socioeconomic preferences than the French-speaking Belgians living in Brussels and Wallonia. The regions and communities are autonomous institutions and have executive legal powers, as granted to them in the Constitution or by virtue of it. The regions have autonomous powers in mainly economic fields such as environmental protection, regional development, housing, employment, public works, agriculture, and transportation, as well as in the field of local government organization, while the communities have autonomous powers in issues related to culture, education, and personal social services. The communities and regions can cooperate with each other, but also with foreign states, including the conclusion of treaties, as stipulated in Article 167 of the Belgian Constitution. The division of powers is delineated in the Special Act on Institutional Reforms, which was adopted in 1980, and which has been adapted numerous times afterwards. All issues not devolved to the regions and communities remain federal competences. In a succinct list, one can summarize the federal competences as labor law, civil law, trade law, defense, justice, security, social security, and fiscal and monetary policy.33 Competences were drafted to overlap as little as possible and

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decisions of the federal state, the regions, and the communities are on an equal footing. As expected, there is still considerable overlap in areas such as health and labor market policies, and to a lesser extent in infrastructure and education.34 A neutral constitutional court guards the division of competences and the existing institutional outlook, and also protects fundamental rights and liberties. Regions have gained considerable spending autonomy, but very little fiscal and taxation autonomy, although this is set to increase substantially with the latest state reform.35 Communities depend fully on federal grants. This is a very important characteristic. As indicated by the theoretical framework in the first section of this chapter, the problem is that if there is no correspondence between the collection and the expenditure of taxes, this often results in fiscal imbalances. Due to the federal nature of social security and the regional nature of issues such as employment policy, there exists a mismatch in funding and (the consequences of) decision-making. This could allow a Region to free-ride. However, with full correspondence there will be very little, if any, room for redistributional transfers, which are relatively large in Belgium. Finally, Belgium’s federal government has very limited powers to coordinate policies of the regions and communities. It only has a power of substitution in the case of the condemnation of the Kingdom of Belgium by the European Court of Justice for the noncompliance of regional or community legislation with European Union (EU) law.36 There are also a number of situations in which it is mandatory for a government to consult with other governments. In most cases, cooperation between them is voluntary, and there are over 100 cooperation agreements and a number of permanent structures facilitating this cooperation.

Party political structure Political parties have also jumped on the regional bandwagon. Until the 1970s, Belgium was a classic example of a consociational partitocracy, whereby parties connected societal segments with decision-making among elites.37 The process of secularization has allowed ideological conflicts to ebb away. The political parties, divided along linguistic and territorial lines, began to coopt nationalist demands and responded by reorganizing into regional wings. Consequently, the Belgian party system has gradually been broken up into a Flemish-speaking and a Frenchspeaking party system. The traditional Belgian political parties

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(Christian-Democrats, Liberals, and Social-Democrats) all broke up along linguistic lines between 1968 and 1978. This allowed the formerly unitary parties to pursue more regional strategies.38 A result of this breakup is that party competition is limited to the respective linguistic territory. Bilingual Brussels is the only place where the Flemish and French-speaking parties do not live in different worlds. The linguistically divided political parties still form a family along ideological lines with their other-language counterparts, but only the two green parties (which were established in the 1980s and have never constituted a single party) form a single faction in the federal parliament. The other parties are only very loosely linked and do not coordinate extensively.39 Yet parties from the same political family have relatively similar party platforms in both regions. Since there is no federal constituency, parties from the same family often get very different electoral results in both language groups. However, when it boils down to government formation, the parties generally get their counterparts on board. The result is that it has been rather difficult to find Belgian governments that do not include the SocialDemocrats and the Christian-Democrats, as these party families are electorally strong in both Wallonia and Flanders. Due to the inclusion of the parties’ regional counterparts, the Belgian federal government often consists of oversized coalitions. Initially, the regional parliaments and executives were composed of federally elected politicians who acted in both regional and federal capacities. Direct election of all regional politicians was implemented only in 1995.40 Moreover, until 2003, federal and regional elections were held on the same day. This logically resulted in relatively similar outcomes on both levels. The latest state reform provides for a return to elections that are held simultaneously. Federalization in Belgium has been a top-down process in which the federal parliament has increasingly decided to transfer competences to the Regions and Communities.41 This was a means for the political elites to design the rules in such a way as to allow them to keep their positions.42 They could easily do so thanks to the strong societal entrenchment of the traditional parties in the consociational system.43 Each state reform was the result of a political deal between parties representing a majority in each of the two main linguistic groups in the federal parliament. From an institutional point of view, the Regions and Communities themselves were not involved in this process.

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Belgium’s federalism and the EU Belgium is a member state of the EU, and hence faces the risk of being hollowed out from below (through its regions) and above (through the European decision-making level). However, it has also been argued that these two evolutions might strengthen the central authority by taking away the less gratifying functions from the state.44 Bruno De Witte has argued that the European integration process initially weakened regional decision-making, by taking away from it some decision-making powers.45 The same happened to central governments, but in this case, the latter still had a say through the Council and European Council. Regions were initially completely left out of European decision-making. Only with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty were subnational governmental levels given a role in the European decision-making processes.46 Internal mechanisms have been set up within Belgium in order to define Belgian positions on European affairs.47 Since Belgium was a founding member of the European Communities that began with the signing of the Paris Treaty in 1951, its membership predates the federalization of the country. Existing EU primary (i.e., treaty-level) and secondary law (i.e., legislation) restrains the legislative autonomy of the Communities and the Regions, and narrows the margins for diverging policy options. EU law has been successfully relied on in adjudicating disputes between the country’s federated entities.48 At the same time, the existence of a European legislative has eased fears of a further devolution of additional policy areas. Interestingly, the process of European integration has not eliminated the pressure for decentralization in Belgium. It has been argued that it even makes a full separation less costly. That explains why nationalists claim to be pro-European, a phenomenon that can also be witnessed in Scotland and Catalonia. Swiss traditional federalism Federalization Switzerland was founded as a confederation around 1300 by three founding cantons in the High Alps (Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden) with the Federal Charter (Bundesbrief) of 1291. Nowadays, it consists of 26 cantons, and has remained a federal state in its current form since 1848. Federalism in Switzerland constituted a response to a powerful security threat – namely, the 27-day civil war known as the Sonderbundkrieg.49

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The war started when Roman-Catholic cantons formed a separate alliance (“Sonderbund”), in opposition to the centralization of power that began to take place following the electoral victory of the Radicals and the Liberals in the early 1840s. The conservative Roman-Catholic cantons objected to proposals for greater centralization and progressive reforms, resulting in the short war. The Protestants came out victorious, and the outcome was the new Swiss Constitution, drafted in 1848, ending the almost complete independence of cantons, and transforming Switzerland into a federal state.50 A significant difference from the Belgian structure is that the Swiss cantons do not coincide with language communities. The cantons are based on jurisdictions predating the Napoleonic era, when language issues played only a limited role. The speakers of the two main languages of Switzerland (German and French) are therefore divided over a number of cantons. Whereas there are 22 unilingual cantons, there are also 3 bilingual cantons and even a trilingual canton.51 These have remained relatively stable and there is only one example of the secession of part of a canton on a linguistic basis.52 The media in Switzerland are, as in Belgium, highly segmented by language.53 Yet primary identification remains with the Swiss nation, rather than with the cantons or the language groupings.54

Structure and competences The original Swiss Constitution was adapted several times, and completely replaced in 1999. Nowadays, Switzerland is officially a confederation of 26 cantons.55 The term “confederation” has its roots in a history of cantons willing to keep their decision-making powers, but in practice Switzerland is a federal republic. There are three levels of government in Switzerland: the federation, the cantons, and the communes. The cantons’ powers have slowly eroded over time. However, they still exercise a significant policymaking and revenue raising role (full taxation power) within the limits of the federal constitution. Also, the cantons are still responsible for policy implementation, giving them a certain leverage. Even though there are significant differences in the size and political power of the cantons, which can be seen as a form of de facto asymmetric federalism,56 all of them enjoy the same de jure rights, and even the same voting power and representation in the upper house, that is, the Council of States.57

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Cantons are formally involved in all phases of federal law-making, although the extent to which they exercise real influence can be highly variable.58 In contrast to the situation in Belgium, the Swiss federal government’s role has expanded in recent decades. The federation is currently in charge of most decisions, but issues such as culture and education still reside under the cantons’ flag. Indeed, all issues not explicitly given to the federal government continue to be the cantons’ responsibilities.59 Interestingly, any amendment to the constitution – for example, in order to increase the federation’s powers – needs to be approved by a majority of the people and the cantons. This makes the phenomenon of increasing centralization even more striking, as this quite demanding requirement needs to be satisfied every time the federal level’s powers are strengthened.60 Indeed, federalism provides a powerful institutional veto point.61 This has strongly constrained the maneuvering space of the Swiss federal government and increases policy stability.62 When a policy competence is initially not assigned to the federal level, it will be difficult to transfer it to that level afterwards. Social policy, for example, has always been a competence of the cantons, but over time the federal level became responsible for, inter alia, health, occupational hazard insurance, family allowances, and unemployment insurance. However, as these were originally canton responsibilities, their transfer was contested and time-consuming.63 Moreover, the centralization of additional policymaking powers is subject to endorsement by popular referendum. Sometimes these referendums are obligatory (for amending the constitution or joining a supranational organization). In these cases, not only majority of the population but also a majority of the cantons have to agree. Referendums can also be optional (when 50,000 signatures are collected in 100 days after a bill has been passed) or can be requested by at least eight cantons. Then a single majority is decisive. These referendums can also block the federalization of a competence.

Party political structure The Swiss Parliament, the Federal Assembly, has two chambers, both with equal rights. The National Council’s 200 members are elected by nationwide direct suffrage, and according to proportional representation. The Council of States’ 46 members are elected on the basis of the cantons and according to majority representation. Switzerland has a

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rich party landscape, but political parties have not been split up along linguistic lines and are still organized nationally. Each of the 26 cantons is a constituency. For the Council of States, each Canton has one or two directly elected representatives. For the National Council, each canton elects between one and 34 members. It is clear that the electoral system in the Council of States favors the smaller cantons, while this is less the case for the National Council. Switzerland does not have a system of parity between language groups in its federal executive, the Federal Council. For a long time, its composition was based on the “magic formula,” in which its seven members were appointed by political parties in approximate relation to their respective strength in the United Federal Assembly, that is, the joint meeting of both chambers. Since 2008, this formula has been abandoned. Apart from this ideological equilibrium, Article 175.4 of the Swiss Constitution provides for an equitable distribution of seats among the cantons and language groups, but does not set concrete quotas. In practice, five members of the Federal Council have traditionally been German-speakers, whereas the other two are Frenchspeaking or Italian-speaking.

Switzerland’s federalism and the EU At heart, the idea behind the Swiss federal democracy rests on the belief that local is better than distant.64 This core belief also explains Switzerland’s traditional aversion to membership of the EU. The accession of Switzerland to the EU would have to be approved not only by a majority of its inhabitants but also a majority of its cantons. Until now, Swiss voters have not only rejected their country’s participation in the European Economic Area and the start of accession negotiations with the EU,65 but also approved the popular initiative “against mass immigration” in February 2014, which effectively contradicts its obligations concerning free movement under bilateral agreements with the EU.66 This has already given rise to countermeasures by the EU. It is therefore unlikely that Switzerland will become an EU member state in the foreseeable future.

What do the theory and the reality teach us? Belgium has been considered a prime example of federalization by disaggregation and it is currently very close to a confederal structure of

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constitutionalized units.67 This is the result of the increasing cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic divide between its northern and southern parts. It has been noted that, in Belgium, federalization has proven to be an efficient way to deter conflicts along language lines but that at the same time it might not be durable.68 In comparison, Swiss history displays a process of increasing centralization.69 This trend has been reflected in the more than 100 changes to the 1874 constitution in the course of a century.70 However, as Switzerland was initially a highly decentralized country, it is still relatively decentralized compared to other federations.71 Swiss federalism has therefore been the result of the decision of the cantons to join ranks. Interestingly, these tendencies continue to play out. The theory outlined in the first section helps to shed light on these developments. In Belgium, the increasing linguistic and economic divide and cultural segregation of the two biggest regions has resulted in more heterogeneous preferences. This posed a big challenge to what had initially been a relatively centralized state. Decision-making in areas with higher heterogeneous preferences were increasingly transferred to the regions, while subject matters with larger economies of scale have remained at the federal level. However, even the latter are coming under pressure to be regionalized. This is, among other things, a result of the split of political party families along linguistic lines. In order to face up to the rise of more nationalist parties, the traditional parties have become increasingly responsive to regional aspirations. Switzerland, which started out with only very few competences at the national level, is increasingly centralizing its decision-making. Over the last century and a half, economies of scale have spurred cantons to transfer more competences to the federal level. At the same time, the Swiss national identity has strengthened, lowering the heterogeneity of preferences. This has taken place despite the fragmentation of the media along linguistic lines. The centralization process has been timeconsuming, since cantons can block the transfer to the national level. An important difference with Belgium is that, while Belgium is mainly divided in two strong blocks along language lines, Switzerland is divided into 26 cantons, some of whom comprise at least two language blocks. In terms of competences, however, some subject matters characterized with high heterogeneity continue to be the cantons’ responsibility.

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While both countries have vibrant civil societies, as reflected in the numerous associations existing in each of them, each has a very different attitude towards direct democracy. Switzerland has a strong tradition of direct democracy at the local, regional and national levels, which, although sometimes exposing regional differences (the so-called Ro¨stigraben), is also part of the Swiss national identity. In contrast, Belgium’s only experience with a national referendum – on the return of King Leopold III in 1950 – is widely seen as a national trauma, due to the very different outcomes it produced in the three Regions. While non-binding, popular consultations have recently been made possible in Belgium at the local and regional levels, similar consultations at the national level as well as binding referendums at either level remain a bridge too far. They would conflict with the tradition of the famous compromis a` la belge, whereby decisions are reached during nightly conclaves between parties and linguistic groups, and would also render Belgium’s participation in the EU more cumbersome. In Belgium, due to its history of foreign rulers, local government has continued to be an important player in state politics, and communities are strongly embedded, mainly at the regional level. Although Switzerland has not been subjected to foreign rule to the same extent, its mountainous geography has also allowed for a strong local entrenchment.

Conclusion Both Belgium and Switzerland are instances of a central state which is “weaker” than traditional nation-states as significant decision-making powers are exercised at the regional level. As has been explained throughout this chapter, their federal state structures are the result of both heterogeneous socioeconomic preferences and economies of scale and scope. The most significant difference between the two is the way federalism has been achieved. In the Swiss case, federalism was the starting point after the aggregation of previously independent cantons. The Belgian state took the opposite road to federalism, which was the outcome of a struggle toward more disaggregation. In Switzerland, there is a tendency to transfer more competences to the federal level, while in Belgium, exactly the opposite evolution is playing out. One of the main differences is that Belgian politics is dominated by the interaction between the two main language groups,

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while in Switzerland language groups are dispersed across 26 cantons, which differ extensively in area, population, religion, socioeconomic profile, and economic power. The Belgian traditional party families have also split up along linguistic lines, while such a development has not taken place in Switzerland. Finally, and paradoxically, whilst the EU can be said to have been a factor that has in a sense facilitated the decentralization of competences in Belgium, Swiss federalism (and tradition of direct democracy) is a factor which makes it more difficult for the country to join the EU. At the same time, the complex bilateral relationship between the EU and Switzerland diminishes the leeway of the cantons to adopt legislation in fields covered by the bilateral agreements, and favors further centralization of powers within Switzerland.

Notes 1. Decentralization can take place in various other forms as well. For example, there can be a mere territorial de-concentration of services, a decentralization of only executive competences, or the granting of autonomy to a limited number of entities while maintaining centralized government for other parts of the nation. 2. Luk Van Langenhove, “What is a region? Towards a statehood theory of regions.” Contemporary Politics 19, no. 4 (2013), pp. 474 – 90. 3. We do not pay attention here to supranational regions, cross-border regions, or local self-government. 4. Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore, The Size of Nations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 5. Friedrich A. Hayek, “The use of knowledge in society.” American Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945), pp. 519– 30. 6. Wallace Oates, Fiscal Federalism 1972. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011. 7. See Yingyi Qian and Barry Weingast, “Federalism as a commitment to preserving market incentives.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, no. 4 (1997), pp. 83 – 92. 8. In both countries, the smallest of these languages (German in Belgium and Romansh in Switzerland, in both cases spoken by approximately 0.7 percent of the population) enjoys official status in the area where it is traditionally spoken, and in contacts of the federal government with citizens speaking the language, but laws and official acts do not necessarily have to be adopted or promulgated in it. 9. According to the International Monetary Fund’s figures for 2012, Switzerland had a gross domestic product (GDP) purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of US$ 44,864, whereas Belgium’s GDP (PPP) per capita was US$ 37,459. See IMF, “World Economic Outlook Database.” April 2012. www.imf.org/external/ pubs/ft/weo/2012/01/weodata/index.aspx (accessed December 16, 2014).

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10. 99.6 percent of GDP (Belgium) compared to 52.4 percent of GDP (Switzerland). See World Bank, “External Debt.” data.worldbank.org/topic/external-debt (accessed December 16, 2014). 11. Article 31 of the original constitution of 1831 (currently article 41 of the Constitution) already provided that the provinces and communes could regulate matters of provincial or communal interest. 12. The Belgian constitution has been amended a number of times, more particularly to gradually introduce universal suffrage, in the period until the 1960s. State reforms refer to the gradual process which transformed Belgium into a federal state from that period onwards, and there were six of them. The first state reform of 1970 introduced the concept of “cultural communities” (Flemish, Frenchspeaking and German-speaking) with legislative powers for the two main cultural communities in a number of fields (in essence, cultural competences), as well as some of the current consociational characteristics of the central governmental organs (parity between the two main language groups in the Council of Ministers, alarm procedures, and special majority laws in parliament). It also announced the creation of three regions. The second state reform of 1980 widened the competences of the cultural communities beyond the cultural sphere, which was reflected by the fact that from then on they were simply called “communities,” and created the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region, with socioeconomic legislative competences. The third state reform of 1988–1989 transferred almost all educational competences to the communities and created the bilingual Brussels-Capital Region, with powersharing between Dutch-speakers and Frenchspeakers. The fourth state reform of 1993 transformed Belgium into a federal state. The fifth state reform of 2001–2003 devolved further competences to the regions (foreign trade, agriculture, and organization of local government). The sixth state reform of 2011–2013 reformed the financing of the communities and the regions and devolved further competences, for the first time also involving parts of the social security system. For an in-depth investigation of the first three reforms, see Richard Cullen, “Adaptive Federalism in Belgium.” UNSW Law Journal 13, no. 2 (1990). For more on recent reforms, see Wilfried Swenden, Marleen Brans and Lieven De Winter, “The Politics of Belgium: Institutions and Policy under Bipolar and Centrifugal Federalism.” West European Politics 29, no. 5 (2006), pp. 863–73. 13. John Fitzmaurice, The Politics of Belgium: A Unique Federalism. London: Hurst & Co., 1996. 14. Swenden, Brans and De Winter, “The politics of Belgium,” pp. 863– 73. 15. Liesbet Hooghe, “Belgium: Hollowing the Center.” In Federalism, Unitarism and Territorial Cleavages, edited by Ugo Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 16. Jaak Billiet, Bart Maddens and Andre´-Paul Frognier, “Does Belgium (Still) exist? Differences in political culture between Flemings and Walloons.” West European Politics 29, no. 5 (2006), pp. 912– 32. 17. Liesbet Hooghe, in Amoretti, U and Bermeo, N. (eds.) Federalism, Unitarism and Territorial Cleavages, John Hopkins Press. pp. 55 – 93.

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18. Although officially this was already achieved with the equalization act of 1898, in reality French remained the main official language until much later. 19. Wilfried Swenden and Maarten Theo Jans, “‘Will it stay or will it go?’ Federalism and the Sustainability of Belgium.” West European Politics 29, no. 5 (2006), p. 878. 20. Hooghe, “Belgium: hollowing the center.” This is particularly so since the advent of the 1963 law dividing Belgium into four language areas. A number of French-speaking municipalities lying in Flemish provinces were transferred to the neighboring Walloon province, and vice versa. Furthermore, due to sociolinguistic shifts, French ceased to be the language of the Flemish economic elite. 21. Billiet, Maddens and Frognier, “Does Belgium (still) exist?,” pp. 912– 32. 22. Ibid. 23. Wilfried Swenden and Maarten Theo Jans, “Will it stay or will it go?.” West European Politics 29, no. 5, pp. 877– 94. 24. Article 1 of the Belgian Constitution. 25. Article 4 of the Belgian Constitution. 26. Article 2 of the Belgian Constitution provides that there is a Flemish Community, a French Community, and a German-speaking Community. 27. Article 3 of the Belgian Constitution provides that there is a Flemish Region, a Walloon Region, and a Brussels-Capital Region. 28. Bruno De Witte, “Regional autonomy, cultural diversity and European integration: the experience of Spain and Belgium.” In The Changing Faces of Federalism: Institutional Reconfiguration in Europe from East to West, edited by Sergio Ortino, Mitja Zagar and Vojtech Mastny, 202– 25. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. 29. In contrast to the two other communities, it is not competent for language legislation (except for the use of languages in education). On the other side, due to the fact that the Walloon Region has transferred some of its competences (immovable cultural heritage, archeology, employment, local government, and tourism) to the German-speaking Community, this community also exercises regional competences. 30. Whereas the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region adopt decrees, which are legally equivalent to federal laws, the Brussels-Capital Region adopts ordinances, which are subject to a higher standard of judicial review. As far as competences are concerned, the sixth state reform devolved a number of “cultural competences of regional importance” to the Brussels-Capital Region, thereby blurring the distinction between the two types of competences. 31. Wilfried Swenden, “Asymmetric federalism and coalition-making in Belgium.” Publius 32, no. 3 (2002), pp. 67 – 87. 32. Swenden and Jans, “Will it stay or will it go?,” pp. 877– 94. 33. However, monetary and fiscal policy are now, to a certain extent, EU competence. 34. Swenden and Jans, “Will it stay or will it go?” 35. Swenden, Brans and De Winter, “The politics of Belgium.”

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36. Article 16, §3, of the Special Act on Institutional Reforms. 37. Kris Deschouwer, “Falling apart together. The changing nature of Belgian consociationalism, 1961– 2000.” Acta Politica 37, Spring/Summer (2002), pp. 68 – 85. Kris Deschouwer, “And the peace goes on? Consociational democracy and Belgian politics in the twenty-first century.” West European Politics, 29, no. 5 (2006), pp. 895– 911. 38. Billiet, Maddens and Frognier, “Does Belgium (still) exist?,” pp. 912– 32. 39. Swenden, “Asymmetric federalism and coalition-making in Belgium,” pp. 67 – 87. 40. The Parliaments of the Brussels-Capital Region and of the German-speaking Community have been directly elected from the start. 41. Swenden, Brans and De Winter, “The politics of Belgium,” pp. 863– 73. 42. Hooghe, “Belgium: hollowing the center,” pp. 55 –93. 43. Deschouwer, “Falling apart together,” pp. 68 – 85. 44. Keating, “Europeanism and regionalism.” In The European Union and the Regions, edited by Barry Jones and Michael Keating. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. 45. De Witte, “Regional autonomy, cultural diversity and European integration.” in Ortino, S., Zagar, M. and Mastny, V. (eds.) The Changing Faces of Federalism: Institutional reconfiguration in Europe from East to West, Manchester University Press. pp. 202–26. 46. The current article 16.2 of the Treaty on European Union (which was introduced by the Maastricht Treaty) provides that the “Council shall consist of a representative of each Member State at ministerial level, who may commit the government of the Member State in question and cast its vote” (emphasis added). On the basis of this provision, Belgium and Germany, but also other Member States, have mandated regional ministers to represent themselves in the Council. Furthermore, the Maastricht Treaty created the Committee of the Regions. 47. See the Cooperation Agreement of 8 March 1993 between the Federal State, the Communities and the Regions on the representation of the Kingdom of Belgium in the Council of Ministers of the European Union. 48. Wouters and Vidal, “International (human rights) law as applied between the entities of the Belgian Federation.” In Liberae Cogitationes, Liber amicorum Marc Bossuyt, edited by Andre´ Alen, Veronique Joosten, Riet Leysen and Willem Verrijdt. Antwerp: Intersentia, 2013. 49. Gilpin, Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. 50. Coolidge, “Switzerland/history/constitution.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica, edited by Hugh Chisholm. Vol. 26, 11th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911, pp. 259. For more information, see Clive Church and Paolo Dardanelli, “The dynamics of confederalism and federalism: comparing Switzerland and the EU.” Regional and Federal Studies 15, no. 2 (2005), pp. 163–85. 51. There are 17 German-speaking cantons, four French-speaking cantons, and one Italian-speaking canton. The three bilingual cantons are Vaud (French and

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52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES German), Valais (French and German), and Berne (German and French). The sole trilingual canton is Graubu¨nden (German, Romansh, and Italian). The canton of Jura was created in 1979 out of a number of French-speaking districts of the mainly German-speaking canton of Berne. Donald Ipperciel, “La Suisse: un cas d’exception pour le nationalisme?” Swiss Political Science Review, 13, no. 1 (2007), pp. 39 – 67. Paolo Dardanelli, “Communicative Nation and Multi-Nationalism.” Swiss Political Science Review 14, no. 3 (2008), pp. 142– 59. Article 1 of the Swiss Constitution. The least populated canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, has 15,000 inhabitants, whereas the most populated canton, Zu¨rich, has 1,500,000 inhabitants. Paolo Dardanelli, “Federal democracy in Switzerland.” In Federal Democracies, edited by Michael Burgess and Alain-G. Gagnon. London: Routledge, 2010. For historical reasons, some cantons are considered to be “half-cantons” (Obwalden and Nidwalden, Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt, Appenzell-Innerrhoden, and Appenzell-Ausserrhoden), and they each only have one representative in the Council of States whereas the other cantons have two. A. Vatter, “Federalism.” In Handbook of Swiss Politics, edited by Ulrich Klo¨ti, Peter Knoepfel, Hanspeter Kriesi, Wolf Linder and Yannis Papadopoulos. Zurich: Neue Zu¨rcher Zeitung Publishing, 2004. Church and Dardanelli, “The dynamics of confederalism and federalism,” pp. 163– 85. Ibid. Ellen M. Immergut, Health Politics and Institutions in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. George Tsebelis, “Decision making in political systems: veto players in presidentialism, parliamentarism, multicameralism, and multipartyism.” British Journal of Political Science 25, no. 2 (1995), pp. 289–325. Herbert Obinger, “Federalism, direct democracy, and welfare state development in Switzerland.” Journal of Public Policy 18, no. 3 (1998), pp. 241– 63. Church and Dardanelli, “The dynamics of confederalism and federalism;” Dardanelli, “federal democracy in Switzerland,” pp. 163– 85. In the Referendum of 6 December 1992 and Referendum of 4 March 2001 respectively. Referendum of 9 February 2014. Swenden, Brans and De Winter, “The politics of Belgium,” pp. 863– 73. For more on this, see Swenden and Jans, “Will it stay or will it go?” For some examples in this history, see Church and Dardanelli, “The dynamics of confederalism and federalism.” Clive Church, The Politics and Government of Switzerland. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004. David McKay, Designing Europe: Comparative Lessons from the Federal Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

CHAPTER 4 STATE—SOCIETY RELATIONSHIPS IN EASTERN EUROPE AND WORLD POLITICS Vesselin Popovski

Introduction Ever since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, sovereign nation-states have been the dominant paradigm driving international relations and bringing war and peace to Europe. After the Cold War, however, a growing number of scholars have argued that the sovereignty of nationstates has been eroded by a mixture of internal societal and economic problems, and the external forces of globalization. While these effects have been felt at varying levels in different countries, there is an argument that “[t]here has been in the 1990s a steep rise in the number of disrupted states, in both the political– administrative and territorial meaning of the words.”1 In some places, the vacuum created by state weakness has been filled by armed terrorist groups that are beyond the control of national governments, while in others, civil society groups have filled the gaps left by national governments with diminished capacity. This chapter examines the relationship between states and societies in Eastern Europe. It argues that there has been an evolution – although not without some backward steps – from a traditional, “activist,” antitotalitarian type of civil society, towards a “neoliberal” type, which plays

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a dual role as watchdog and critic of the state, and as a supporter of the state in the delivery of certain services. In communist times, Eastern European states developed and sponsored their societies in order that they would be loyal, uncritical, and serve the interests of the communist parties. Gradually, however, there emerged a parallel “activist” society, which expressed voices of discontent within the state. This activist society strengthened, became public, and ultimately led the massive protests in 1989 overthrowing the communist regimes. My chapter focuses on this second type of society in Eastern Europe, which engaged in opposition with and confronted the communist states. It examines the evolution of this society from an “activist” into a “neoliberal” type of social organization, characterized by its twin functions of state watchdog and collaborator, which functions to strengthen the state – society relationship in times of transition. This evolution of societies in Eastern Europe has been variable and uneven. The chapter illustrates this variety and unevenness of state – society relations by examining three cases: Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine. In Russia, the state remains authoritarian and the society remains “activist,” struggling with censorship and restrictions. This was very much the case with Ukraine until 2014, when civil society led a mass popular revolt that removed the corrupt state authorities. It is now expected to progress toward a “neoliberal” type, or “associationalist” civil society, operating with a greater degree of freedom, as is the case in Bulgaria, Poland, Czech Republic, and elsewhere. The events in Ukraine in 2014 demonstrated how the state– society relationship, despite its ostensibly domestic nature, may have a direct and significant effect on world politics, in the context of a major geopolitical transformation resulting from the fall of communism. These events led to a dramatic geopolitical turnaround in Europe and the world. Ukrainian civil society organized several months of daily protests at Maidan Square in Kiev and removed the corrupt President Viktor Yanukovich from power. Soon after, Russia responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula, inflating ethnic tensions, and supplying military equipment to rebels in Eastern Ukraine, leading to a civil war and producing the most serious confrontation in Europe so far this century. As the Arab Spring had done a few years earlier, the situation in Ukraine demonstrated how state– society relations cannot always remain domesticated, but rather can have a significant effect on world politics –

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one of the central arguments of this book. Not only can domestic dynamics in state – society relations affect world politics, but vice versa – global politics and external circumstances can play a major role in the evolution of the state – society relationship. This is particularly the case in Eastern Europe, which is historically and geographically at the center of dynamic ideological, political, economic, and civilizational currents. International influence on internal societal developments can bring about change, like the support for popular movements and human rights campaigns helped contribute to the end of communism in 1989, but it can also be absent or ambiguous. While most of the world stood united in condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea and supporting the new Ukrainian government in rebuilding and “Europeanizing” Ukraine, there has been little support for the civil society in Russia, which struggles even harder under the oppression of authoritarian rule in Moscow. My chapter first addresses in broad terms the state – society relationship, examining its dynamism, complexities, and issues of trust and accountability. It then situates Eastern Europe within the paradigm of the state – society relationship, presenting first the emergence of “activist” society during communism and subsequently its evolution into “neoliberal” society after communism. The variable and uneven nature of this evolution is then examined in three case studies – Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine.

The state –society relationship In Strong Societies and Weak States, Joel Migdal criticized some modernization and dependency theories that reduce the state – society relationship to dyadic constructions such as center– periphery or modern– traditional, and proposed a sophisticated alternative model for the understanding of societies and states. He regarded societies as a mix of social organizations and argued that the state is only one element among other social organizations that exercise social control and empower societies. Migdal presented the case of postcolonial Sierra Leone to demonstrate how a strong society can coexist with a weak state because other factors – ethnic and religious groups, villages, families, and so on – are well organized and exercise social control.2 In one of his later works, Migdal compared post-colonial state-building with state-

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building in new states emerging from the demise of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia after the end of the Cold War, revealing similarities and differences. The two cases are similar, Migdal wrote, as “the impediments that [post-Cold War] state leaders face in unifying and mobilizing their populations now, in this age of globalization, are not so different, after all, from those faced by earlier state leaders.”3 What made the third wave of state creation in the twentieth century different, however, was that: states were challenged from below, among other factors, by the increasing flow of immigrants, dissident cultural movements, individuals demanding rights, links of people though the Internet and from above by international institutions and international law, as well as laterally by other, voracious states, shadowy Al-Qaedalike networks, multinational corporations and other powerful market forces. The 1990s did not offer a welcoming environment for new states.4 The relationship between states and societies – like any relationship – can be confrontational, but it can also be cooperative. States are supposed to protect their populations from various human-made or natural disasters. Populations, in return, are supposed to support states by paying taxes, electing representatives, respecting law and order, and acting as good citizens. The state is generally the more powerful partner in this relationship, as – in the Weberian expression – it has the monopoly to use force. However, the state can be weakened, disrupted, and “failed,” whereas societies can be strengthened. The strong –weak equation can therefore be complicated, and it is not always entirely clear what can make states or societies strong, and what can make them weak. In times of transition from communist/totalitarian to liberal/democratic regimes, the answers to these questions are even less straightforward. A strong communist state may have empowered a strong and loyal supportive society, and may have also oppressed and weakened a dissenting society. A postcommunist state may experience weaknesses, many of which can be associated with the transition itself, such as undercapacitated institutions, breaks in law and order, criminality, economic difficulties, slow privatization, corruption, immature markets, low individual initiative, social problems, overdependency on the public

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sector, and incompetent bureaucracies. A state in postcommunist transition can be strong in one aspect (economic), but weak in another (law and order) or vice versa. It can be strong in all aspects, but still authoritarian and oppressive, and therefore “weak” in the sense that it does not possess widespread legitimacy. Similarly, civil society can be strong in one aspect (liberal orientation), but weak in another (organizational or financial). To clarify the difference between civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs): civil society is the space where citizens freely express opinions, engage in debates, and form public voices to influence policies. NGOs are organizations – with staff, membership, planning, budgets, and offices – that serve and organize the society to express its voice, and to act and contribute to public policy. Civil society can have a strong moral cause, but without being organized in NGOs – that is, without having a structure, plan, budget, publicity, activities, and so on – it may remain weak and inefficient. Trust in government is the crucial component in strengthening the state– society relationship, because governments that promise and do not deliver not only lose trust, but also weaken the possibilities of people and societies to organize alternative ways for delivering services: Rulers should have the honesty to share the difficulties of governing, to speak openly, and to provide room for doubt about what they are planing and what they are able and competent to do. If the existing challenges are openly discussed and explained, people will not overestimate the role of government, they will know in advance the limits of government, and, accordingly, will create their own individual, family, or community “safety nets.” If they know the limits of government, citizens can plan in advance how to meet social, economic, cultural, humanitarian, and other challenges and be ready to face negative consequences, such as poverty, economic recession, unemployment, a rise in criminality, old housing, the cost of children’s education, health issues, and environmental hazards.5 Civil society can be strengthened to engage in governance, and to fill capacity gaps in governance: “there is a broad acceptance of the strong necessity to engage civil society in governance and decisionmaking, but there is not yet enough acknowledgment of the necessity to provide for

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capacity-building and to reform the mechanisms of global governance.”6 Paradoxically, the lack of trust in government can create incentives for prominent societal leaders to join government service and work within the government to reestablish missing trust. Although some may disagree and demand that societal leaders should always remain nongovernmental opponents, there are examples and opportunities to solidify the state – society relationship by directly engaging individuals with civil society backgrounds and experience in governments. Some systems of governance grant civil society a greater level of freedom than others. In stable democracies, civil society tends to have a larger freedom and its watchdog functions are highly pronounced: “[in] the activist manifestation [. . .] the main actors are social movements, transnational civic networks, and social forums. They are a source of dissent, challenge, and innovation, a countervailing force to government and the corporate sector.”7 Although civil society can clearly serve a number of beneficial purposes, it can also run into problems that undermine its ability to generate positive results. First, there is a lack of accountability mechanisms to keep decision-makers within civil society in check. Unlike an elected government or the private sector, financial support for civil society generally does not come from the people who are receiving the services that these organizations provide. Thus, people who receive benefits from civil society organizations generally have little leverage to influence the organization’s behavior. This raises the questions of whether the neoliberal forms are more vulnerable to state co-optation, and to what extent a reliance on international funding compromises neoliberal civil society’s dual role as watchdog and service provider. There is therefore a need for innovative thinking about how to generate mechanisms of accountability. A greater level of participation of civil society beneficiaries in both performance assessment and budgeting could be one effective way to increase accountability.8 It is important to add the caveat that efforts to create accountability can be driven by political interests rather than genuine efforts to improve the effectiveness of civil society. Jean Hardisty and Elizabeth Furdon note that NGO Watch, which claims to monitor NGOs and encourage transparency and accountability, is in fact a tool of conservatives to attack liberal causes.9 Not only states, but societies can also be corrupted and abuse private financial or economic interests. Because civil society depends on grassroots support to advocate and advance its demands, there have been

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cases where private industry groups have created fake grassroots organizations to support their financial interests. Such groups, called “Astroturf NGOs” (named after human-made grass substitutes used in some indoor sports arenas), deliberately evoke publicity and calibrate their image in order to indicate strong grassroots support, while in their operations they advance special interests, avoid transparency, and limit public input.10 Such efforts to mislead the public indicate that civil society not only can become corrupted or co-opted, but can at times even be created for entirely uncivil purposes. Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao suggest an extreme case where vigilante groups can “attempt to impose unpopular points of view through a reign of terror.”11 In addition, civil society’s need for regular funding can be a source of problems. In Eastern Europe in particular, intense competition for grants and donations means that groups that would otherwise be able to work cooperatively, may become highly adversarial and fragmented.12 When domestic funding is limited or unavailable, civil society seeks external funding, resulting in a reliance on donors which may create a distance from representing the citizens’ opinions and push NGOs to represent instead the interests of their donors. In Russia, independent civil society groups are often stigmatized as “agents of foreign interests” because they receive external grants. This raises the question of whether support for civil society in countries like Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine might be obtained in different ways – that is, not necessarily through direct financing, but through capacity building, training, or joint campaigns. When societies faces significant opposition and obstacles from states, they may be inclined to undertake more politically neutral projects, such as economic or cultural development, childcare, and other services which the governments are disinterested providing.13 However, even when delivering such apolitical benefits to citizens, the picture is not always pretty. Jasmin Lorch has written that “civil-society organisations usually mirror the ‘dark sides’ of the authoritarian state in which they operate, such as hierarchies, exclusiveness and patterns of cooption.”14 Although often demonized by authoritarian governments, independent civil society can channel the dissatisfaction of people and catalyze a movement to challenge and even overthrow dictatorial regimes. The 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia succeeded in forcing the resignation of Eduard Shevardnadze, stemming largely from protests by citizens unhappy with the disputed results of parliamentary elections. Jonathan

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Wheatley notes that Shevardnadze’s resignation was more a result of divisions within the governing class rather than of grassroots efforts by civil society.15 Nevertheless, the fact that 100,000 people took to the streets is indicative of grassroots strengths. Interestingly, Wheatley argues that the Georgian protest movement does not qualify as civil society because it was not institutionalized or long-lasting, but he nevertheless acknowledges that several established organizations played a major role in the protests.16 Georgi Kandelaki also writes that some people overestimate the role that civil society plays, and acknowledges that “few civil society organizations did play significant roles in the revolution.”17 One therefore has to be careful and not exaggerate the role of societies and create overexpectations. Overall, based on examples from Eastern Europe presented later, I argue that politically oriented civil societies in authoritarian countries can be marginalized by a strong authoritarian regime; however, they can also galvanize and solidify public support and thereby become influential in shaping political processes. For instance, dissident societies in Eastern Europe, repressed by communism, gradually strengthened morally and organizationally to the point where they could finally challenge and overthrow the communist regimes. The state – society relationship in the transition from authoritarianism to democracy has been complex and presented bottom-up initiatives which stemmed from civil society demands for accountability while also being strongly rooted in the particular traditions of the country. The significance and increasing use of such initiatives attest to their broad legitimacy in society. Civil society in the postcommunist context has had an important role to play, offering leadership and putting pressure on the state for legal and institutional reforms. Postcommunist states have been prone to corruption that contaminates public life and affects human rights,18 and the role of civil society as a critic and watchdog continue to be central. Some leaders in Eastern Europe who came to power on the democratic wave after decades of communism (e.g., Adrian Nastase in Romania and Yulia Timoshenko in Ukraine) were prosecuted and jailed for corruption, although in both cases arguably there were also political reasons behind their convictions.19 After the end of communism, civil society in Eastern Europe underwent a transition away from “activist,” or what one may call “revolutionist” type of society, toward a “neoliberal” type of society, which

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is characteristic in established liberal democracies and plays the dual role of a constructive critic of the government, where necessary, and a contributor in delivering services to citizens. The experience of Russia, however, where the society has struggled over the last two decades against authoritarian and corrupted elites, and which has been deliberately weakened and marginalized by the Kremlin, demonstrates the opposite scenario. Ukraine is a good additional case study, where the “activist” society has also struggled, as in Russia, over two decades. In the Ukrainian case, however, civil society finally succeeded in removing an authoritarian regime, enabling the country to look forward to the “Europeanization” of Ukraine and transform itself into a “neoliberal” society.

The emergence of an activist civil society in Eastern Europe In the 1970s and the 1980s, independent civil society emerged in Eastern Europe in various forms – as independent trade unions, or as disillusioned groups of intellectuals writing theatre plays, lecturing in private apartments, or exhibiting critical art. These forms of organization and modes of expression did not immediately confront the communist state or affect the power structures. Nevertheless, they presented a challenge to the authorities, who responded by trying to infiltrate them secretly. The “activist” society emerged as an attempt to influence the minds of ordinary people and to educate them. Va´clav Havel presented the evolution of Czech society in his passionate treatise, “The Power of the Powerless,” problematizing the relationship of strong–weak state–society, and arguing that any form of dissent was dangerous for the communist government because it undermined the illusions that had been carefully and deliberately created by those in power.20 Havel urged people to boycott farcical communist elections and express solidarity with prisoners of conscience. Such acts of revolt, Havel argued, would “break the rules of the game” and liberate people, who would rediscover their suppressed identity and dignity and begin to live “outside the lie.” Breaking the rules of the game, argued Havel, disrupts and exposes the communist illusion as a game and artificial imagination. Societal protests thus shatter the fundamental pillar of communism – the image of appearances – and upsets the power structure by tearing apart what ideology had held together. Exposing any weakness became dangerous for the communist state, because people could peer behind the iron curtain and see the truth.

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In this way, Havel and others broke through the exalted facade of communism and exposed its weak, artificial foundations.21 Communists pretended they were strong with endless manifestations of power, huge military parades on national holidays, and grandiose monuments of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. However, some intellectuals could expose and ridicule this enormous communist power in a short theatre play, with a single lecture, in a movie, or even by drawing caricatures. Education through clandestine art, and dissemination of censored books served to open societies, remove fear and became a powerful weapon, enabling a “single civilian to disarm an entire division.”22 Before the genuine power struggle against the communist state started, there was therefore a major struggle to change the minds of the citizens – an education process – by civil society in Eastern Europe. Once people were liberated from fears and lies, they become what George Soros has described as an “open society,” which demands political changes. While such open societies defy communist dictatorships, the confrontation does not take place on the level of real, institutionalized, quantifiable power which relies on instruments and weapons, but on the existential level of human consciousness and conscience.23 One example of the educational role was the clandestine distribution of the book Fascism by Zhelyu Zhelev in Bulgaria. Ironically, the book was first published officially with a foreword by Lyudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the long-serving communist leader Todor Zhivkov. It was not long, however, before all of Zhelev’s readers were able to make out the allegory between fascism and communism as two similar totalitarian regimes, and the book was swiftly banned, taken out of libraries and bookstores, stigmatized, and deleted from university reading lists. A simple act of dissent can be the catalyst that sets the dominoes in motion, leading ultimately to the downfall of an authoritarian regime, similarly as in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale where a child sees the reality and shouts “the Emperor has no clothes!” The political unrest in Eastern Europe began as apolitical, or prepolitical, but the hidden movements to which it gave rise generated real political events, social movements, explosions of civil unrest, and sharp conflicts inside an apparently monolithic power structure, transforming the social and intellectual climate. Havel, for his part, advocated nonviolent methods – a “Prague Spring” or a “Velvet Revolution.” Elsewhere, however – in Romania for

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example – violence erupted because of the extreme brutality of the communist state, which had produced extreme suffering among the Romanian people. The Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who virtually many Romanian people to death for decades, were captured and quickly executed. The struggle for a free society can be achieved through “velvet” protests and within the constitutional means, but also through armed revolt, with the choice often depending on the brutality of the regimes and severity of human suffering. Civil society in the immediate aftermath of the fall of communism played a crucial role, as many communists in government were reluctant to relinquish power. In Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, roundtables were set to allow all political forces to enter into dialogue, leading to the adoption of a new constitution, free elections, and democratic consolidation.

Transition from activist to neoliberal civil society When the regimes changed in Eastern Europe, the sphere of civil society also underwent a fundamental transition and civil society developed into a “third sector” located between the public and the private, and providing auxiliary services and expert knowledge to the state.24 The civil society which originated as a way to challenge communist governments operated in the postcommunist transition both in an activist mode of a critical watchdog, and in a neoliberal mode of assisting the state to deliver services. The introduction of the “third sector,” arguably a consequence of the neoliberal way of thinking, codified in the Washington Consensus,25 changed substantially the relationship between state, civil society, and political economy in Eastern Europe.26 It was among the changes responsible for transforming the state-run “planned” economy into a market economy, redefining the state–society relationship.27 The economic transition in Eastern Europe followed two initial models: “shock therapy” (introduced by Polish Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz) and “gradualism” (characteristic in Romania and Bulgaria). The role of civil society has been instrumental in both models. In the case of “shock therapy,” civil society acted as a cushion for potential tensions between the government and the citizens. A strong civil society, in this context, can reduce the economic and political effects of the “shock” by protecting citizens from being excessively affected by changes in power dynamics or market fluctuations. Civil society absorbs,

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at lower levels, some of these effects, attenuating them or even disposing of them, playing a “therapeutic” role. In the gradualist model, civil society – and also the newly developed private sector – urged the government to avoid strong state intervention, to reduce unnecessary over-regulation, and to facilitate political and economic developments. This absorptive capacity or cushioning effect is characteristic of a strong and well-functioning civil society, which can ensure that a privatization or a change of government does not resemble a windstorm that leaves nothing in its wake. Subjection to outside criticism was essential for the transitional governments in Eastern Europe to function properly. Political parties and basic institutions in democratizing states work well when they continually draw strength and inspiration from a developed and pluralistic civic environment that offers well-founded constructive criticism. The aim of such an arrangement is not to exclude parliaments, governments, or political parties from civic life or to circumvent them; on the contrary, it is to enable them to work to the best of their ability as institutions that constitute the culmination of the civil system. An increasing rapprochement between the state and the private sector requires that civil society thinks carefully about how to collaborate in governance processes without becoming bogged down in political partisanship or sliding into money-driven enterprises. One problem in the evolution of the state –society relationship in Eastern Europe remains the reliance on funding from national or international donors.28 Dostena Lavergne argues that some liberal Bulgarian think-tanks, sponsored by European or US donors, become less independent and more donor-driven. As a result, their analyses of political and other processes in Bulgaria have become distant and subjective.29 Consequently, the effective public activity of neoliberal civil society depends on its ability to create a constructive balance between the function of a partner and that of an opponent of the government.

The state –society relationship in Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine Bulgaria The traditions of Bulgarian society stretch back a long way in history, from the organized guilds during the Ottoman Empire to the current

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day. This is a history of continuous and unified resistance of Bulgarian society against occupiers and totalitarian regimes – be they Ottoman, fascist, or communist. Two interesting facts of Bulgarian history during the Second World War bear mentioning. First, Bulgaria was the only country in Eastern Europe which saved its Jews from being deported to the Nazi concentration camps, a fact which is particularly striking in light of Bulgaria’s official status as a Nazi ally.30 Second, Bulgaria (again, despite its status as a Nazi ally) did not send a single soldier to fight against the Soviet Union. Saving the Jews was not an effort of the reigning Tsar Boris III, or the government. Rather, it was the result of the courageous effort of Bulgarian civil society, which refused to comply with governmental orders to deport 50,000 Bulgarian Jews to Nazi camps. In 1940, responding to Adolf Hitler’s demands, the Bulgarian government imposed restrictive policies on the Jewish citizens, sparking a tremendous amount of opposition in society. Bulgarian people, either through their elected members in Parliament, or directly in popular form, established societal bonds, protested, and threatened to disobey orders to enlist, report, or facilitate the extradition of Jews. Saving the Jews has since become a point of pride of the Bulgarians, who resisted not only their own government, but also the genocidal policy of Nazi Germany, the powerful occupier. Bulgarian society publicly denounced anti-Jewish laws and policies – professional guilds, artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, intellectuals, journalists, businessmen, shoemakers, hairdressers, youth organizations, and even courageous government officials were not afraid to join the fight against the Nazi holocaust. Individuals of disparate backgrounds, from elite intellectuals to illiterate villagers, with the latter leaving thumbprints in place of a signature, signed petitions against anti-Semitic policies. One of the most decisive and persistent supporters of the Jews was the Orthodox Church. This support came not in the form of a few individual priests voicing opinions, but the whole Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodoxy stood strongly united against the deportation of Jews. No other institution with comparable influence opposed the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi Germany as consistently as the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.31 Progressive antifascists in exile, such as G.M. Dimitrov and Kosta Todorov used Allied radio stations to speak out against the anti-Semitic policies, inspiring people inside the country to disobey orders, and to

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hide and protect their Jewish neighbors. In addition, exiled communist leaders campaigned from abroad against anti-Semitic measures; Georgi Dimitrov and Vasil Kolarov broadcast over clandestine radio station, Hristo Botev, condemnation of discrimination against Jews. Similarly, the Bulgarian people and the parliament refused to allow a single Bulgarian soldier to fight against the Soviet Union, due to historical friendship and cultural and religious bonds between Bulgarians and Russians. Again, the Bulgarian Tsar and the government may have wished to comply with Hitler’s demands and supply soldiers and weapons to the Eastern front, but the massive, unified resistance of society against the use of the Bulgarian army to fight against the Soviet Union became a decisive factor in preventing it. After the Second World War, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, most civil society groups in Bulgaria were controlled by the communist regime and used to advance its agenda. Towards the end of the 1980s, however, Bulgarian resistance against Communism solidified, encouraged by perestroika and reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. Independent groups and NGOs emerged, and their characteristics reflected the spirit of transition, the peculiarities and political uncertainties, as well as the mixture of national, legal, and political traditions. One can classify several sources of protest and, accordingly, several types of initially clandestine organizations, which made up the anticommunist civil society landscape in Bulgaria. Some initial catalysts for dissent were the jailing of political dissidents, and the forced changing of names imposed on the Turkish minority, which sparked human rights protests to oppose them. A stronger catalyst became the general dissatisfaction with the lack of economic opportunities, the refusal to allow people to travel and find work abroad, and the deterioration of labor conditions. The final catalyst for activating society against the communist regime were protests against industrial pollution and the poor state of the environment. On January 16, 1988, the Independent Association for Defence of Human Rights was established, unifying dissidents against the fear imposed by state authorities. The very first public act of this association was to send an appeal to the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (later the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), and seek recognition as an independent human rights advocacy. The core of the organization’s platform was to liberate people from the lies of

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communism (in a manner reminiscent of Havel) and to demand respect for human rights. The work of intellectuals –Zhelev’s Fascism, Blaga Dimitrova’s novels, Radoi Ralin’s caricatures, and Svetlin Roussev’s paintings – were instrumental in the process. The massive violations of the rights of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria and the forceful changing of their names produced major dissent, and many Bulgarians, sympathetic to their Turkish neighbors, openly opposed the antiTurkish propaganda and policies of the Communist Party. In the same period, serious economic discontent unified Bulgarian society, as worsening economic conditions resulted in even basic commodities often being missing from food stores and a regime of restrictions on the use of electricity and water being introduced. As mentioned earlier, the civic protests led to the creation of dissident trade unions who gradually united in a national labor confederation Podkrepa on February 8, 1989. If human rights activism was inspired by Czech intellectual Havel, the independent trade union activism was inspired by Lech Walesa, who founded the Polish Solidarnosc in 1980. The largest wave of dissent came with the rise of the ecological movement. In January 1989, the Public Committee for Ecological Protection of Ruse was formed when Ruse, a large town on the Danube river, was heavily polluted by a chemical factory in Giurgiu on the Romanian side of the river. People in Ruse developed lung diseases because of the pollution, and their countrywide supporters created a public committee to pressure the Bulgarian communist regime to address the issue with Ceausescu. However, Ceausescu’s wife was instrumental in the establishment of this chemical factory, and hopes for compromise and closing the factory were slim. The environmental movement gradually strengthened and raised concerns also with other polluted areas around large industrial complexes in Bulgaria and a massive dissident organization – Eco-Glasnost – emerged, shifting its platform to broader political issues, such as a lack of democracy and human rights. Eco-Glasnost insisted on deeper social-economic restructuring and took the initiative to engage the broader population by collecting petitions for its causes. EcoGlasnost’s activities transformed from meetings of small numbers of people in underground apartments to the mass mobilization of large numbers of citizens. The militia responded by seizing the petitions, and beating and arresting its activists. In response, however, Eco-Glasnost organized a mass public protest on November 3, 1989 in the centre of Sofia, when 10,000

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people marched on Parliament, calling not only for ecological protection as before, but also for Demokratzia. This first protest was followed by others in the next days and led to the resignation of the communist leader Todor Zhivkov on November 10, 1989. The 1991 Bulgarian Constitution prescribes nonpolitical functions to civil society: “Associations, including trade unions, shall not pursue any political objectives, nor shall they engage in any political activity which is in the domain of the political parties.”32 Bulgarian civil society has advanced and matured considerably over the last two decades. It has kept its watchdog function and often expresses concerns and even engages in massive protests as in 1997, when it aided in overthrowing a corrupt and incompetent ex-communist government, as well as in 2013 when it protested against the nomination of a corrupt politician to chair a parliamentary committee on national security. However, in addition to its “activist” model, the society also shifted towards a “neoliberal” model,33 advancing its expertise, building its profile, and broadening the scope of its objectives. It is not uncommon in Bulgaria today for progressive think-tanks to engage in drafting laws, for environmentalists to challenge developers, for human rights advocates to win cases in Strasburg, and for lobbyists to introduce regulations towards transparency and accountability. The latest protests in Bulgaria (2013 – 2014) indicate an evolution towards a “postmodern” model of civil society,34 following from what John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff described as “a neomodern myth” with its own legitimizing narrative.35 The protesters regard all parties as corrupt and at times make the extravagant demand to abandon the existing constitution and elections, and introduce a direct rule of civil society. The protesters did not promote their leaders and rejected attempts by existing political parties to hijack them, rather creating a space for themselves outside the political domain. One of the banners at the protests encapsulated this sentiment in the slogan: “This is not a protest, this is a process.” The claims were nonpolitical, amorphous, and while some may regard this as a weakness, this could also be a sign of strength. The evolution in civil society from activism, through neoliberalism towards postmodernity deserves further research: why is it, for example, that the Bulgarian people continued the protests after the elections in May 2013 and the formation of a new government? What will satisfy people and bring an end to the protests? Can civil society continue to oppose all politics and elections and perceive any

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future government a priori as corrupt? The activism cannot be easily reduced to an anticapitalist, anticommunist, or antiausterity movements – businesspeople, bank clerks, information technology engineers, university professors, and lawyers participate along with students and social activists. Nor do socioeconomic or class factors seem particularly important; the poor protest alongside the wealthy. The sentiment of solidarity can be similarly perceived within the university environment. On October 25, 2013, law students occupied the main building of Sofia University after their professor, who was also the chair of the Constitutional Court, did not appear for a lecture in order to avoid questions on seemingly unconstitutional decisions. Within a day, most professors declared their support for the students and the occupation spread to other universities. The students demanded not educational subsidies, free student loans, lower fees, or higher stipends, but rather rule of law, politics with “clean hands,” and the resignation of corrupt politicians.

Russia Within Amin Saikal’s definition of stable countries as being ruled either democratically or by a stable autocracy,36 Russia appears as something of a middle case. The appointment of Gorbachev as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985 was a major factor leading to the opening of Russian society after decades of totalitarianism. Perestroika and openness became drivers not only of domestic reform in the Soviet Union, but also in international relations and world politics. Gorbachev’s policies influenced popular movements in the rest of Eastern Europe and these changes began to take root in societies elsewhere. Ironically, the very openness that Gorbachev helped to bring to Eastern European societies would lead ultimately to the death of his own dream of reforming the Soviet Union and keeping the Communist Party alive. The fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 that resulted from the opening of societies had a flow-on effect in the Soviet Union, leading to Boris Yeltsin’s banning of the Communist Party in 1991, and to the dissolution of the Soviet Union into its constituent republics. In 2000, Vladimir Putin came to power with a political strategy to unite and strengthen the Russian Federation. Since that time, his United Russia party has won every election with a strong majority and remains unchallenged in power to date. One of the reasons for the extraordinary

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success of Putin is that many Russians continue to regard Gorbachev and Yeltsin as “destroyers” of the historically strong Soviet Union and Russia, not least because of massive propaganda in all state-controlled media to that effect. After two presidential terms, Putin installed his prote´ge´ Dmitry Medvedev to serve as president for one term, “switched” to the post of prime minister for four years, and then returned in triumph to the Kremlin in 2012. In the meantime, the Russian Duma extended the president’s term to six years. Accordingly, Putin may win the next round of elections in 2018 and stay in power till 2024, which would make 24 years in power in total, a term comparable to that of Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Yet while the 2012 election was scarcely a contest, with Putin’s victory all but certain beforehand, the large-scale protests that erupted in Moscow soon after the election suggest that the government might not enjoy the same support and legitimacy as before. At this stage, Russia can still be classified as cohesive, based on Saikal’s criteria, but there are some indications that it may be moving slowly towards disruption. Ever since the protests took place, Putin has moved quickly to weaken the civil society organizations that might be able to undermine his authority. This has entailed a crackdown on groups that receive foreign funding, or that engage in activities related to the promotion of democracy or human rights. The cornerstone of Putin’s crackdown was the passage of the Foreign Agents Law in July 2012 requiring civil society groups receiving funds from abroad to register as “foreign agents,” a term reminiscent of a Cold War mindset involving espionage and foreign interference in domestic affairs. Although the law was enacted in November 2012, virtually all organizations boycotted the registration, and, as of June 2013 only one NGO, the Russian Legal Information Agency, had chosen to register. One Russian news report claimed that between November 2012 and April 2013, 2,226 NGOs in Russia had received over 30 billion rubles – approximately US$ 940 million – without any of them having been properly registered.37 Despite the boycott, the Russian authorities used the Foreign Agents Law as justification for a series of raids on civil society groups, targeting over 80 NGOs including such globally prominent organizations as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Transparency International.38 According to Human Rights Watch, as of November 2013, two organizations had their activities

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suspended, four were facing civil lawsuits, nine were facing administrative court cases, 18 had been given notices of violation, and 53 had been warned not to violate the Foreign Agents Law.39 The timing of the passage of the NGO law, which came soon after the large street protests against Putin’s dubious election win, suggests that the Russian government may have some worries about the strength of its position and its perceived legitimacy among its citizens. The use of the legal system in Russia as a tool and excuse to both persecute and prosecute civil society is perverse. In Russia, the concept of the rule of law, normally a supporter of people’s rights and freedoms, is used, or rather abused, to maintain control. The law – at least in several areas – is no more than a facade, an aspect of the world of appearances. One may ask, therefore, why the law is there at all? The answer seems to be for exactly the same reason as ideology: it provides a bridge of excuses between the system and individuals, making it easier for them to enter the power structure and serve the arbitrary demands of the powerful. These excuses allow individuals to think that they are merely upholding the law and protecting society from criminals. Without laws, it would be more difficult to recruit new generations of judges, prosecutors, and interrogators. Like ideology, the law in Russia is an essential instrument of ritual communication outside the power structure. It is the legal code that gives the exercise of power a form, a framework, and a set of rules. Dictators like to be seen as “legitimate” rulers. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the sanctions imposed against Russia, it will be interesting to see how the state – society relationship will evolve. On the one hand, the state may use the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and the Western sanctions to further brutalize the society and restrict as much as possible public voices of discontent, but on the other hand this may galvanize support within an already oppressed civil society, particularly if more businessmen and companies in Russia are exposed to the direct effects of the sanctions. The economic failure of the Eastern European totalitarian regimes was no less crucial in precipitating their fall in 1989 than their human rights violations, and this may also happen in Russia. It will also be interesting to see whether the West will support the opposition movement inside Russia against Putin, and if so in what forms. Some experts argue that civil society, empowered by Western technical assistance, played a crucial role in the youth mobilization that

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led to electoral regime change in Eastern Europe.40 Others counter that the role of Western assistance was marginal and that the civil protests were successful largely because of joining forces with the political opposition.41 Russian society remains largely anti-Western which explains why the popularity of Putin continues to be high even after more people “bite the bullet” of sanctions.

Ukraine In postcommunist Ukraine, civil society has been weak because citizens had little power to impact political developments, clientelism, and corruption. The legacy of the totalitarian past has continued to influence the path of Ukraine’s transition to democracy. International assistance has been too little and too late, and even where it has delivered results, it has developed donor-driven interests and received little popular support. After the Orange Revolution in 2004, President Viktor Yushchenko was entrusted by society to rebuild the rule of law and integrate the country into the European Union. However, both the state and society proved to be too weak for this challenge. The state authorities’ slide into corruption exposed the inability of the collective power of citizens to manifest a strong society capable of holding the state accountable. Despite millions of dollars of Western assistance spent on bolstering civil society, for a long time, it has remained unable to challenge or interrupt the rotation of corrupt politicians. Ukraine, known as the “bread basket” of the Soviet Union, was the fifth strongest economic power among the former Soviet Republics in the early 1990s. Today, it has dropped to ninth place. In contrast, Moldova – being among the poorest republics at the time of the Soviet Union’s disintegration – has undergone a healthy recovery by accepting a liberal economic model, strict fiscal discipline, and transparency measures. Civil society in Ukraine tried to build on the wave of the Orange Revolution by creating the so-called Pora! Movements. However, these failed to transform the collective energy into organized moderate power. One branch of the movement (Yellow Pora!) tried to become a political party, but failed to win seats in the parliament. The other, Black Pora!, turned into a typical Western-funded NGO,42 which resembles its “NGO-cracy” counterparts in Bulgaria in its increasing detachment both from the political processes and from the needs of the people.43 Even if some elitist NGOs can access domestic policymaking and foreign

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funds, therefore, they often do little to represent society. This results in the paradox of a growing number of NGOs, in which fewer and fewer people register as members. Ukrainians’ engagement in NGOs has remained at the same level for 20 years – at about 5 percent.44 The elitist NGOs perceive themselves as strong due to the interactions they enjoy with Western embassies and foundations, through which they acquire skills such as applying for grants and reporting on projects. They structure their work around grants and projects, operating more as private consulting companies, than as open, inclusive, democratic institutions. Instead of being associations of citizens, they come to regard citizens not as “members,” but as “target audiences” or “beneficiaries.” Few NGOs of this kind have independent boards, publish annual reports, convene general assemblies, or have elected executives. They work instead for foreign donors, who fund their projects. They organize conferences and foreign study trips – often for governmental officials – and write reports, but hardly represent civic voices. Indeed, their leaders remain almost unknown to large parts of the population, and although some participate regularly in television talk shows, they are seen as individual experts, not as representatives of society. Paradoxically, one editor-in-chief of a leading Ukrainian weekly journal could name only five NGOs and two civic movements out of more than 71,000 currently registered Ukrainian NGOs. Only 9.5 percent of Ukrainians believe that NGOs inform them about important issues.45 More than half of the Ukrainians who know the names of some NGOs cannot identify the functions that these NGOs perform.46 Only 22 percent of Ukrainians trust NGOs.47 Even if postcommunist countries have undergone a significant move towards liberalizing their societies, the fabric of civil society is still feeble, particularly in Russia and Ukraine, because of the legacy of state oppression. Corruption and a disengaged citizenry add to social weakness and lead to never-ending transitions. The very fact that democracy has been only partially achieved is further reducing public trust in civil society. In contrast to the notion of civility in society, the societies in Russia and Ukraine experience “uncivil” traits, such as weak rule of law and high levels of corruption. In contrast to the situation in liberal democracies, private connections, such as kinship ties and clientelism, are more instrumental in public life than properly organized groups and societies in driving collective actions. Informal and kinship

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networks are often nontransparent, corrupt, sometimes even criminal. Forty-seven percent of Ukrainians think that connections are the most important factor in getting a job, while only 22 percent think the same of education. Thirty percent of citizens in Ukraine admitted in 2010 that they had to offer bribes to public officials in order to have their requests satisfied.48 This is significant in explaining relatively weak participation in civil society, as corruption deprives societies of the participatory spirit needed to propose solutions and reforms. Under a corrupt system, citizens prefer to “pay” to receive their services and, instead of defending their rights, they acquiesce in bribes and remain powerless to change the system. In a vicious circle, the state accepts the bribes, “enriching” its employees, and as a consequence this significantly weakens civil society and generates incentives for citizens to aspire to enter into state employment, because the private sector itself needs to pay bribes to the state. The weakness of civil society not only renders citizens helpless to prevent backsliding by ruling elites, but it also allows those holding power to commit abuses. In Russia and Ukraine, one can witness multiple examples of selective justice, imprisoning of opposition leaders, media censorship, and raids on the business sector and society activists. Governments in these countries often adopt decisions without any public debates. The adoption of the tax law in Ukraine in 2010, for instance, led to a massive protest on Maidan Central Square in Kiev, where the Orange Revolution happened in 2004, called “Maidan II” (or “Tax-Maidan”). In 2011, various NGOs blocked the proposed cuts to the benefits of Chernobyl and Afghan war victims, also planned without public dialogue. Also in 2011, a new citizens’ initiative united 50 NGOs in Ukraine launching a public campaign called Chestno (Fairness). In November 2013, Maidan Square was again full of protesters, this time opposing the government’s decision to sign a new trade and investment agreement with Russia, instead of proceeding with such an agreement with the European Union. The protests lasted throughout the coldest winter months without reducing civil society’s determination to achieve its purposes – a regime change. In February 2014, one of the most corrupt presidents in human history – Yanukovich – stepped down and fled to Russia. Through “Maidan III” or Euromaidan, civil society in Ukraine finally ousted a dictator and is now looking forward to the Europeanization of Ukraine.

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Conclusion This chapter illustrated the uneven progress of the state – society relationship in Eastern Europe over the last decades. In Bulgaria, the removal of the communist regime in 1989 led to a gradual evolution of the society from an “activist” model to a “neoliberal” model. The relationship between states and societies in Russia and Ukraine has been fragile because the democratic gains in both states have not been consolidated. Nevertheless, the hope remains that regime change in 2014 in Ukraine will finally strengthen civil society and move it toward a “neoliberal” stage, where it can counterbalance or complement the weak state. The lessons from Eastern European countries show that more democratic and open systems produce more collaborative civil societies. The post-Communist transitions in Eastern Europe not only created societies initially divided between cynicism and empowered optimism, but also built citizenship capable of critical thinking about state affairs, willing to express their views publicly. Such societies will be the main agents of positive change in this still uncertain region.

Notes 1. Amin Saikal, “Dimensions of state disruption and international responses.” Third World Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2000), p. 40. 2. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 121– 4. 3. Joel S. Migdal, “State building and the non-nation-state.” Journal of International Affairs 58, no. 1 (2004), p. 26. 4. Ibid., p. 20. 5. Vesselin Popovski, “Conclusion: trust is a must in government.” In Building Trust in Government: Innovations in Governance Reform in Asia, edited by G. Shabbir Cheema and Vesselin Popovski. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2010, p. 235. The complex relationship between states and society is addressed in Cheema and Popovski, eds, Building Trust in Government; G. Shabbir Cheema and Vesselin Popovski, eds, Engaging Civil Society: Emerging Trends in Democratic Governance. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2010; G. Shabbir Cheema, Christopher A. McNally and Vesselin Popovski, eds, Cross-Border Governance in Asia: Regional Issues and Mechanisms. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2011. 6. Vesselin Popovski, “The role of civil society in global governance.” In Engaging Civil Society, eds Cheema and Popovski, Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012, p. 23.

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7. Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier and Marlies Glasius, “Global civil society in an era of regressive globalisation.” In Global Civil Society 2003, edited by Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier and Marlies Glasius. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 10. 8. Mary Kaldor, “Civil society and accountability.” Journal of Human Development 4, no. 1 (2003), p. 23. 9. Jean Hardisty and Elizabeth Furdon, “Policing civil society: NGO watch.” Public Eye 18, no. 1 (2004). www.publiceye.org/magazine/v18n1/hardisty_ngo. html. 10. Sabine Lang, NGOs, Civil Society, and the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 208. 11. Ghazala Mansuri and Vijayendra Rao, “Localizing Development: Does Participation Work?” Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013, p. 56. 12. Jonathan Wheatley, “Civil Society in the Caucasus: Myth and Reality.” Caucasus Analytical Digest 12, 22 January (2010), p. 2. 13. Marie Perinova, “Civil Society in Authoritarian Regime: The Analysis of China, Burma and Vietnam.” Unpublished thesis, Department of Political Science. Lund University, 2005. http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func¼downloadFi le&recordOId ¼ 1330580&fileOId ¼ 1330581, p. 18. 14. Jasmin Lorch, “The (re)-emergence of civil society in areas of state weakness: the case of education in Burma/Myanmar.” In Dictatorship, Disorder and Decline in Myanmar, edited by Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson. Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2008, p. 153. 15. Wheatley, “Civil society in the caucasus,” p. 2. 16. Ibid., p. 3. 17. Georgi Kandelaki, “Georgia’s rose revolution: a participant’s perspective.” Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2006, p. 2. 18. For an excellent argument of why corruption must be treated as a human rights violation, see Raj Kumar, Corruption and Human Rights Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 19. Popovski, “The complexity and effectiveness of transitional justice in Latin America and Eastern Europe.” In After Oppression: Transitional Justice in Latin America and Eastern Europe, edited by Vesselin Popovski and Mo´nica Serrano. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012, pp. 486 – 7. 20. Va´clav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in CentralEastern Europe, edited by John Keane. London: Hutchinson, 1985. Translated by Paul Wilson, October 1978, www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat¼eseje& val¼2_aj_eseje.html&typ ¼ HTML 21. Mary Kaldor, Europe from Below: An East – West Dialogue. London: Verso, 1991. 22. Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in CentralEastern Europe, edited by John Keane. London: Hutchinson, 1985. 23. Adam Michnik, “A new evolutionism.” In Letters from Prison and Other Essays, translated by Maya Latynski. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985.

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24. Pioetr Zuk, Społeczen´stwo w działaniu 2001, ekolodzy, feministki, sklotersi: socjologiczna analiza nowych rucho´w społecznych w Polsce. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe “Scholar” 2001, p. 114. 25. Pawel Zaleski, “Global non-governmental administrative system,” p. 120. 26. Piotrowski, ‘Civil society and social movements in Eastern Europe,’ Global Civil Society Shifting Powers in a Shifting World, eds Heidi Moksnes and Mia Melin (Uppsala Centre for Sustainable Development, 2012) pp. 118 – 24. 27. Ibid., p. 118. 28. Zaleski, “Global non-governmental administrative system: geosociology of the third sector.” In Civil Society in the Making, edited by Dariusz Gawin and Piotr Glinski. Warsaw: IFiS Publishers, 2006, p. 121. 29. Dostena Lavergne, “La main invisible de la transition.” Unpublished PhD dissertation. Paris: E´cole des hautes e´tudes en sciences sociales, 2011. 30. Albena Taneva and Ivanka Gezenko, eds, The Power of Civil Society in a Time of Genocide: Proceedings of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on the Rescue of the Jews in Bulgaria 1940–1944. Sofia: Sofia University Press, 2005. 31. Frederick B. Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940–1944. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009; Michael Bar-Zohar, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews. Holbrook, MA: Adam’s Media Corp., 1998. 32. Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria, Article XII. 33. Emil Tzenkov, “Civil society in bulgaria: trends and risks.” Sofia: Center for the Study of Democracy, 2010, p. 7. 34. Kaldor, “Civil Society and Accountability,” p. 10. 35. John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, “Introduction.” In Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives, edited by John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 4. 36. Saikal, “Dimensions of State Disruption and International Responses,” p. 40. 37. Marina Obrazkova, “NGOs Refuse to Confirm Their Agent’s Status.” Russia Beyond the Headlines, July 15, 2013. rbth.ru/politics/2013/07/15/ngos_refuse_ to_confirm_their_agent_status_28083.html. 38. Miriam Elder, “Russia Raids Human Rights Groups in Crackdown on ‘Foreign Agents’.” Guardian, March 27, 2013. 39. Human Rights Watch, “Russia: ‘foreign agents’ law hits hundreds of NGOs.” June 14, 2013. 40. Joerg Forbrig and Paul Demesˇ, eds. “Reclaiming democracy: civil society and electoral change in Eastern Europe.” Washington, D.C: German Marshall Fund, 2007. 41. Serhiy Kudella, “Betting on society: power perceptions and elite games in Ukraine.” In Orange Revolution and Aftermath: Mobilization, Apathy and the State in Ukraine, edited by Paul d’Anieri. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2010.

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42. Orisya Lutsevych, “How to finish a revolution: civil society and democracy in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine” Chatham House Briefing Paper. London: Chatham House, January 2013. 43. Dostena Lavergne, “La main invisible de la transition.” Unpublished PhD dissertation. Paris: E´cole des hautes e´tudes en sciences sociales, 2011. 44. Democratic Initiative Foundations, “Can civil society influence Ukrainian politics?” Survey, October 2011. 45. Svetlana Kuts and Lyuba Palyvoda, “Civil society in Ukraine: driving engine or spare wheel for change?” Kiev: CIVICUS, 2006. 46. IFES, “Key findings: public opinion in Ukraine: key findings from an IFES July 2011.” 2011. www.ifes.org/,/media/Files/Publications/Survey/2011/Public_ Opinion_in_Ukraine_2011_Report.pdf. 47. Razumkov Centre, “Public opinion poll: do you trust NGOs?” 2011. www. razumkov.org.ua/ukr/poll.php?poll_id¼ 81. 48. Transparency International, “Global corruption barometer 2010.” 2010. www. transparency.ch/de/PDF_files/GCB/2010_TI_Global_Corruption_Barometer. pdf.

CHAPTER 5 STATE—CIVIL SOCIETY DYNAMICS IN MOROCCO AND ALGERIA: A CASE OF DIVIDE AND RULE? Karima Laachir

Introduction State– society dynamics in Morocco and Algeria are complex and multilayered and must be contextualized within the historical, political, and social trajectories of the two countries. These dynamics have evolved since the postcolonial era in diverse ways and forms that reflect the deep disillusionment of the masses with the state and its ruling elites and show the evolving agency of the people in challenging the state’s authoritarianism. In this chapter, I use the terms “state” and “regime” interchangeably because of the way the two are seen as closely interlinked in Morocco and Algeria. This is because in both Morocco and Algeria, the state has never been perceived as “neutral,” in the classical understanding of a state that is impartial towards the competing socio-political groups that it governs. Indeed, the state has always been closely linked with the postcolonial regimes in both countries. Morocco and Algeria have seen some political reforms in the last decades but without real change in the authoritarian nature of their regimes. Algeria was governed by a one-party system under military

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supervision from its independence in 1962 to 1989 when a multiparty system was introduced. In reality, however, the military still largely controls the politics of the country. In Morocco, the king oversees a multi-party system under a powerful monarchy, in which he has the ultimate executive power. Even though the revised Moroccan constitution ratified in July 2011 gave more power to the parliament, this did not really challenge the authority of the politically and economically powerful ruling elites headed by the royal palace. The formation of the state in Morocco and Algeria in the postcolonial era was preceded by the advance of state nationalism during the anticolonial struggle. This state nationalism has continued to exercise power to the present day and is partly responsible for a growing authoritarianism of Morocco and Algeria, both of which are states that oppress and quell dissent. The establishment of state – society relations in the postcolonial state has been based on the idea of servitude and obedience of the masses to the omnipotent state. In Morocco and Algeria, disenchantment with these oppressive regimes has been expressed in various ways and forms, through riots, violence, opposition groups, and artistic and cultural productions that offer alternative imaginings of the role of the state and its relationship with society. Moroccan and Algerian societies have proved to be resilient in the face of fierce but weak states. Civil society groups in both countries are diverse and active. Some of them have managed to escape the states’ policies of co-optation. However, the state has frequently capitalized on the ideological differences between these groups, particularly between secular and Islamist-leaning factions, using a strategy of divide-and-rule that weakens and disperses dissent. There has been much discussion about the role of civil society in promoting democracy in the Arab-speaking region, especially with the growing prominence of Arab social groups in defending human rights and women’s rights, calling for governmental accountability and transparency, and promoting environmental issues. Recent innovative research on civil society activism in the Arab-speaking region rejects the normative understanding of civil society as providing the parameter of democratic change; it also attempts to locate civil society activism under authoritarian constraints.1 These insights provide a powerful reminder that civil society under authoritarian regimes should not be assessed in the same way as in established democracies,

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but rather should be understood in its own authoritarian context. The importance of appropriate contextualization is suggested by a number of considerations. For example, many authoritarian states create various civil society groups in order to promote its image as a “democratic” state and to preempt opposition, both domestically and internationally. At the same time, authoritarian states also impose restrictive legal procedures and infiltrate civil society groups to keep abreast of their activities. However, this does not mean that there are no autonomous civil society groups which resist the state’s co-optation in the authoritarian context. In the Arab-speaking region, there are various types of secular and religious-based civil society groups. The normative division between the religious based activism as “undemocratic” and the secular one as democratic is problematic as it demonizes the Islamists and denies their active and complex participation in society as well as their large popular support base. I argue that in both Morocco and Algeria, the authoritarian state uses divide-and-rule policies to weaken civil society activism, exploiting in particular women’s rights and human rights as these are the two domains in which the Islamist and secular-based civil society groups are most ideologically divided. This divide-and-rule policy is not new to these two countries or to other authoritarian Arab states, as it has been used to divide and weaken oppositional elements for decades. This is because of the states’ fear of Islamist movements, which have emerged in recent decades as one of the most active and best organized forms of opposition to authoritarian states in Arab-speaking countries, including Morocco and Algeria. The Islamists’ electoral successes are feared not only by the regimes but also by prodemocracy secular groups. According to Francesco Cavatorta: What is worrisome for the spread of democracy in the region is that a large number of prodemocracy movements and prodemocracy intellectuals have been “scared” into embracing a police state in order not to face the possibility of an Islamist electoral victory. The willingness to be coopted and to lend some sort of “reserved” legitimacy to the incumbents has not been the product of coercion, rather of perceived irreconcilable ideological differences with Islamist parties.2

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Fear of Islamist rule is used by the Moroccan and Algerian states to divide civil society activist groups and coopt them to ensure the continuity of the regimes and to guarantee their control of the political and the social scenes in both countries. This situation also draws attention to the fact that civil society activism fosters authoritarianism in non-democratic contexts like Morocco and Algeria instead of helping to promote democracy. However, new forms of civil society activism that rely on individual initiatives and the use of cyberspace and social media may pave the way towards overcoming this perceived ideological divide.

States’ authoritarianism in post-colonial Algeria and Morocco Algeria The formation of the postcolonial state in Algeria is shaped by the legacy of French colonialism (1830 – 1962), particularly the last decade of militant anticolonial struggle (1954 – 1962). Anticolonial nationalism figured prominently in the ideological strategy of the National Liberation Front (FLN), the leading militant anti-colonial movement which seized state power in 1962 with the support of the masses. The involvement of politico-military leaders in Algeria’s War of Independence paved the way for the army’s control of politics since independence in 1962. Successive FLN governments imposed a nationalist and uniform vision of the Algerian nation as Arabo-Islamic, excluding the culture and language of the indigenous Amazigh population. M. Moncef Khaddar argues that: The statist recolonization, from within, of the system of “national” education and information brought about a dogmatic indoctrination and authoritarian homogenisation of the whole society. This latter was reduced to a “nation” without rights that survives in tragic contradiction with itself and with the dreams [. . .] and the struggles it initiated for “national liberation.”3 This state nationalism does not tolerate dissent and perceives opposition as a threat to “national unity.” It is based on the protection of the interests of the few, who maintain control intellectual and cultural life within the nation (and not just the military and security apparatus).

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Algeria’s one-party system (FLN) lasted at least formally until the popular riots of 1988. These were followed by a period of political liberalization from 1988 to 1990. This period was hailed as the first ever democratization process in the Arab-speaking region, but was reverted in 1992, marking a return to authoritarian rule. This reversal was the result of the military’s intervention to cancel the country’s first round of multi-party elections, in which the Islamist party Islamic Salvation Front appeared clearly on course to win the majority of seats in the National Popular Assembly in 1991. The ensuing civil war in the 1990s between the military and radical Islamist groups had devastating effects on Algerian society. The Algerian political system has completely derailed from its ambitious democratic project of 1988 as it has effectively opted for a president-for-life and still lacks fairness and transparency. The main political parties in the country have been coopted by the regime and are seen by the Algerians as being aligned with le pouvoir (the power-that-be or the ruling elites). Smaller parties have been unable to present a united and effective opposition to challenge the regime.4 To make things worse, Algeria has been plagued with endemic corruption among the ruling elites, which have plundered the country’s economic resources and oil revenues.5 Moreover, the continuing curb on civil liberties and the abuse of human rights at the hands of the state security apparatus in the form of arbitrary arrests and torture of those suspected of being “terrorists” threatens the rule of law. This situation is further aggravated by the lack an independent judiciary.6 The military, unimpeded by the judiciary, continues to use terrorism as a pretext to justify its tight grip on power. The Arab uprisings that swept its Eastern neighbors did not take off in Algeria for various reasons to do with the scars of the violence of the past, the divided opposition, and fear of army and security apparatus reprisals.

Morocco Morocco has a different political and historical itinerary. The country’s relationship with its ruling Alaouite dynasty goes back almost 400 years in history. Sharifian7 patronage continues to play an important role in the perception of the state in Morocco.8 The royal palace has always played a central role in Morocco’s political life using coercion and the cooptation of political opponents. Even though Morocco has had a

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multi-party political system since its independence in 1956, the monarch and his inner circle (known as the Makhzen) remain the effective rulers of the country; the monarch also claims the title of “Commander of the Faithful” (Amir al-Mu’minin), a position that endows him with ultimate religious authority in the country. The Moroccan state nevertheless maintains its image as the least authoritarian country in the Arabspeaking region as it promotes itself as open to democratic change and reforms. It is widely perceived as a “liberalized autocracy,” due to the limited social, economic, and political reforms that the state has pursued since the 1980s.9 However, these reforms have taken place without really challenging the centrality of the monarch in Morocco’s political life.10 The Moroccan regime was swift in its reaction to the Arab uprisings in 2011. It initiated new reforms of the constitution which give more power to the parliament and the prime minister.11 Even though the changes in the constitution may be perceived as a positive step towards democratization in Morocco, they have not really limited the King’s control of political power. In fact, the monarch and the Makhzen have dictated the terms and extent of the reforms in the absence of strong and independent political parties that can influence the political agenda for change. Authoritarianism is heterogeneous and differs from one country to the other. Some authoritarian states rely on brutal repression, others rely less on repression but use other means such as divide-and-rule and cooptation of dissident groups and activists. In recent decades, the Moroccan and Algerian states have relied less on brutal repression and more on these strategies of cooptation to maintain the political status quo. This is due to their relatively high degree of integration into the global economic and political systems. In other words, countries with very little interaction with the world’s economy can repress their citizens forcefully with little consequences, whereas those that rely heavily on global economic transactions can suffer severe consequences if financial sanctions are implemented by the international community to punish direct repression. Therefore, these regimes have to find more subtle ways to control dissent and to respond to calls for “social transformation” and to the new demands of social actors.12 Morocco’s integration into the international economic and political system allows the regime to cultivate a positive image of being the “most democratic” Arab state in the region and the most promising in terms of democratization in the

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Arab world, despite the fact that the king and the Makhzen are the real rulers of the country and not the elected government.13 The Algerian state also promotes itself to the world as a democratizing force through its emphasis on elections and the introduction of cosmetic reforms to maintain “legitimacy.”14 This allows the Algerian regime to “reap the benefits of [international] economic and political integration” and to maintain the support of the US and the European Union, which turn a blind eye to its repressive authoritarianism and violation of human rights.15 In fact, the Algerian regime, responsible for aborting the democratic transition, was supported by the West politically and economically after the 1992 military coup that cancelled the democratic elections and reverted to the authoritarian state.16 In other words, the West’s negative perception of Islamist politics allowed the Algerian military to conduct its actions without any international scrutiny.

Fierce states versus resilient societies From the aforementioned brief analysis, it is clear that the Moroccan and Algerian states ruthlessly control their civil societies, but are weak in creating the right conditions for social and political change or implanting meaningful economic and social policies. Joe Migdal claims that an important feature of a strong state lies in its ability to penetrate its society, a parameter that does not apply to the Moroccan and Algerian states which are perceived as out of touch with the realities of their societies.17 As mentioned earlier, Algerians refer to the state and its ruling elites as le pouvoir (or the power-that-be) whereas Moroccans use the term Makhzen to describe the opacity of the system. Migdal also claims that there is a link between weak states and strong societies in the sense that the weaker the state is, the stronger is the society. However, the terms weak state and strong society do not really apply to the context of Morocco and Algeria because they do not fit with these countries’ configuration of political and social power. I prefer to use Nazih Ayubi’s description of Arab states as fierce but weak states.18 I also prefer the use of the term “resilient” rather than “strong” society because it encapsulates the realities of the Moroccan and Algerian societies in their continuous efforts to resist the state’s oppression. Ayubi describes Arab states in general as weak, even though they are fierce and tough in quelling dissent, because “they fail to ‘penetrate’ the

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society in areas such as taxation and law enforcement.”19 Ayubi also identifies Arab states as being weak but fierce in their attempt to preserve the economic and political status quo and to protect the ruling elite, which describes precisely the Moroccan and Algerian states: The Arab state is not a natural growth of its own socio-economic history or its own cultural and intellectual tradition. It is a “fierce” state that has frequently to resort to raw coercion in order to preserve itself, but it is not a “strong” state because (a) it lacks – to varying degrees of course – the “infrastructural power” [. . .] that enables states to penetrate society effectively through mechanisms such as taxation for example; and (b) it lacks ideological hegemony (in the Gramscian sense) that would enable it to forge a “historic” social bloc that accepts the legitimacy of the ruling stratum.20 Ayubi’s statement is very pertinent to Morocco and Algeria where the state has resorted to the use of violence to suppress popular discontent, as in the brutal suppression of popular riots in both countries in the 1980s, and in Algeria in 2001. In both countries, “violence is integral to the idea and organisation of the state. It may be seen as a legitimate instrument of state power, or it may be disguised beneath the mundane surface of everyday administration of the state.”21 This description could easily be applied to the period in Morocco in the 1970s and 1980s during King Hassan II’s powerful grip on power and brutal oppression of political dissidents (known as the “years of lead”), and to Algeria’s oneparty political system (the FLN) and its absolute grip on power until the 1988 riots and the ensuing civil war in the 1990s. The global “war on terror” in the 2000s has also had strong repercussions in both countries, as it has reinforced political authoritarianism and the return of the police state under the pretext of fighting “terrorism.” Moroccan and Algerian societies have been resilient in surviving state authoritarianism since the 1960s. The post-colonial states in both countries have effectively withheld the rights offered to citizens in the constitution. These rights – including freedom of expression and association and equality before the law – were granted formally, but violated in everyday political life. Moreover, political dissent against the nationalist vision of the ruling elite was suppressed using torture,

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assassination and incarceration. Moroccan society, however, survived the so-called “years of lead” and the brutal oppression of political dissidents. It also survived the violent suppression of popular protests or the socalled “bread riots” in the 1980s. Riots are also very common among the Algerian youth, as they are the only way they can channel their anger at the regime and its contempt for their aspirations for economic and social justice.22 The Moroccan and Algerian societies have been resilient to the abuses of the state and its violence. They have lived with what Charles Tripp calls the public state, that is, the visible state in the public domain and the (deep) “shadow state” with the network that links the security services with the business sector, a network that exploits and plunders the country’s wealth and resources.23 The two countries have been dominated by the elusive power of the ruling political and economic elites and their machinations to maintain the status quo. These machinations include cosmetic reforms which allow them to maintain their grip on political and economic power while presenting a democratic face to the international community. I will now examine how civil society functions in this climate of repression in both countries.

Non-normative understandings of civil society activism under authoritarian states Civil society is perceived in most democratization studies to be an important component for promoting democratic change. Therefore, it is expected that building a strong civil society will eventually lead to democratization, as is presumed to have been the case in Eastern European societies. However, recent studies have questioned the role that civil society played in the fall of authoritarian Eastern European regimes.24 Civil society dynamics are very complex and need to be studied in their own contexts without the normative perception that is often apparent in liberal political theory.25 This is particularly the case with the Arab-speaking region, where international actors such as the European Union and the US fund and support the strengthening of particular civil society groups as a way to democratize the region. This normative perception undermines the dynamics of civil society under authoritarian regimes and obscures the evolving relationship between civil society and authoritarianism.

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Cavatorta identifies four dominant perceptions of civil society in the Arab-speaking region.26 The first is a liberal and normative understanding of civil society that perceives civil society in the region as too weak to contribute to any democratic change. The second recognizes that civil society in Arab-speaking states is strong when one considers the role of Islamist activism. The latter does not necessarily promote liberal values and is perceived as having an antidemocratic ethos; therefore, Islamist-oriented civil society activism is seen (within a liberal normative perspective) as “uncivil.” The third claims that civil society in the region has been gaining strength, but without undermining the strength of the authoritarian regimes. This is because the regimes themselves create their own civil society groups to pre-empt opposition and keep their power unchecked. This makes difficult the task of detecting genuine civil society groups from those created or co-opted by the state. The fourth, which represents Cavatorta’s view, argues that “civil society should indeed be treated as a neutral explanatory category, but it also suggests that Islamism should not be a priori treated as possessing an authoritarian nature.”27 This insight requires a rethinking of civil society activism beyond its normative use in the West and points to the need to contextualize it under authoritarian regimes. It also implies the rejection of an a priori labeling of Islamist activism as “uncivil,” since this not only ignores the contribution of Islamists to social and political activism but also “does not do justice to the variety of movements that operate within the sphere of civil society and does not reflect the diverse approaches to civil society that Arab political thought presents.”28 In other words, researchers should move beyond the belief that the “expansion of civil society and democratization are inherently linked,” so that a better understanding of civil society dynamics within authoritarian states can take place.29 In fact, some aspects of civil society reinforce authoritarian regimes rather than challenging them because of the way civil society groups are used to promote the state’s agenda while keeping the status quo.30 The recent Arab uprisings, according to Cavatorta, were not the outcome of civil society activism, but were more a result of mass dissatisfaction and “mass revolutionary fervour” as well as “loose horizontal networks.”31 Cavatorta is partly right in saying that the uprisings were not the result of direct civil society activism. However, his explanation ignores the years of cultural and artistic civil society

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activism, expressed through cinematic productions, literature, arts, cartoons and graffiti, which have paved the way for the recent revolutionary fervor in the Arab-speaking region. Individual artists and cultural producers have engaged in their own contexts to promote social and political awareness and to offer alternative visions of politics and society.32

Divide-and-rule of civil society activism: Women’s rights and human rights The divide-and-rule policy has led to the cooptation of civil society groups in Morocco and Algeria, as it pits some groups against others on the basis of their ideological differences, particularly in the domain of women’s rights and human rights. The state in both countries has exploited the ideological difference between secular groups, who prefer to keep religion out of policymaking, and Islamist groups, who enjoy a growing influence and a large popular support base, and who want to include their interpretations of religious teachings in policymaking. The divide-and-rule strategy has allowed the regimes in Morocco and Algeria to play the role of neutral arbiters that keep the social and political peace. This is achieved, for example, through the production of scaremongering discourses on Islamists politics and their alleged “obscurantism.” This discourse succeeds in generating concern within some secular civil society groups, who then become more inclined towards an alliance with the existing authoritarian regime than with the Islamists. Through this process, secular civil society groups are liable to be co-opted by the state in the name of uniting against the “obscurantism” of Islamist politics.33 Since the 1970s, Moroccan and Algerian states have employed the method of pitting cultural and religious groups against social movements to weaken and divide the opposition. This divide-and-rule policy is now used in the realm of civil society activism.34 This is supported by the international community who also view Islamist groups as “uncivil” and with no democratic ethos.35 As Cavatorta and Durac put it: “[t]he competitive trend between secular and Islamist organizations undermines the cooperative trend that the secular sector displays and allows the regime to successfully pursue divide-and-rule policies that guarantee its survival.”36 This does not mean that activism

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does not tackle important issues such as human rights violations and the rights of women; rather, it does not materialize into a force capable of challenging the regime and pushing for democratic change in both countries. There is, however, state support in both countries for civil society associations that focus on socioeconomic and developmental issues, because these are perceived as less problematic and may be used to counter Islamist-led charitable work.

The case of Morocco In Morocco, civil society activism took off in the late 1990s, particularly after Mohammed VI’s succession to power. In response to the changing dynamics in the political system and the attempt to ease political restrictions, various organizations were formed to open discussions on women’s rights, human rights, and social and economic development. Moroccan civil society, like its Algerian counterpart, is divided along ideological lines as it is comprised of both Islamist-based associations and secularist liberal ones. There are also divisions within each camp because of the various ideological orientations and their perceived proximity to the regime. Some associations in each camp are seen as being closely linked to the regime, while others are viewed as autonomous but suffering from the state’s continuous harassment and restrictions. Despite these developments, the activism of diverse forms of associations has not really challenged the power of the state and the Makhzen led by the monarch. On the contrary, they have in fact strengthened the king’s grip on power as, once again, the strategy of divide-and-rule was used to pit these groups against each other, allowing the king to appear as the arbiter and peacekeeper. This divide-and-rule strategy was used in relation to the Family Code or Mudawana. Secular feminist groups had campaigned for decades for a change in the Family Code to offer egalitarian rights to women, but their efforts had always been thwarted until they became cognizant of the preeminent political role of the monarch in approving those reforms. The monarch, while being aware of the significant appeal of Islamist groups in Morocco, offered his support to the secular camp and thus to changes in the Family Code, which were eventually implemented in 2004. Mohammed VI’s decision can be seen as an attempt to curb the influence of Islamist movements, but also to pit these two groups against one another, and to display the “regressive” character of the Islamist sector of

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civil society. It enabled the king to play the role of the arbiter and also co-opt the secular feminist movement in Morocco.37 In fact, the lack of a truly responsive and functioning party system means that lobbying by civil society has to target the monarch, rendering him indispensable if change is to be made on the particular issue that an NGO [non-governmental organization] is interested in promoting. This vital role of the King, “sacralized” in certain cases by the religious legitimacy the monarch enjoys, further strengthens his grip on the executive.38 As Cavatorta argues, even Islamist civil society groups have been pitted against each other by the Makhzen to weaken their camp. This is done for the purpose of isolating and marginalizing the most powerful and popular Islamist movement in the country (Jama’t al Adl wa al Ihsan or “Justice and Charity”) by pitting all other Islamist groups against it.39 The royal palace has also created and sponsored many social and development associations and provided them with funding to compete with the Islamists in the provision of social services to deprived Moroccans (which is again linked to the idea of the state preempting civil society activism that is subservient to the state). Another area of division between Islamist and secular civil society groups is that of human rights activism. Human rights activists in Morocco emerged in the late 1970s and came largely from secular civil society groups that promoted human rights, including the right to freedom of expression and dissent. These include the two major human rights organizations in Morocco, the Association marocaine de droits de humains (established in 1979) and L’organisation marocaine des droits humains (established in 1989), as well as Forum verite´ et justice (established in 1999 by the victims of the “years of lead.”) This forum campaigned for the state’s recognition of all the human rights violations committed during the “years of lead.” Mohammed VI aligned himself with the human rights discourse upon his accession to the throne in 1999, which led to the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2004. This initiative was perceived as unique in the Arab-speaking region as it investigated state-perpetuated human rights abuses during the dark decades of Hassan II’s reign in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. However, it can also be seen as part of a set of carefully state-staged

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reforms that aimed to establish a break with the state repression of the past. This effectively resulted in the cooptation of public criticism of past abuses without giving up much of the palace’s effective power.40 In contrast to civil activism in the domain of women’s rights and family law, in which Islamists and secularist associations remain estranged from each other, the domain of human rights activism saw some collaboration between ideologically different groups, particularly within the Forum verite´ et justice, whose objective, as mentioned earlier, is to hold the state accountable for all its human rights abuses. These human rights associations therefore defended the rights of both Islamist political prisoners and secularist ones, thereby creating an atmosphere of solidarity against the state’s abuses.41 However, this spirit of cooperation has changed radically since the Casablanca terrorist bombing in May 2003 that was carried out by the radical Islamist group Salafiya Jihadiya. In the aftermath of the attack, grave human rights violations took place against those linked to the group who were arrested and tortured (in a manner reminiscent of the human rights abuses during the “years of lead”). Major secular human rights associations of the left refused to lend support to the Islamists, or to defend their human rights against the state’s abuses. This reflects the way that human rights discourse has been fragmented since the May 2003 terrorist attack in Casablanca, which has been responsible for the generation of “divisions of victims of abuse into worthy victims (the ones before 1999) and unworthy ones (the postCasablanca salafi prisoners).”42 Moreover, the attack has created “the paradoxical situation where many long-term political prisoners on the left ‘condone’ human rights abuses against Islamists in so far as they are perceived to be enemies of democracy.”43 This highlights the growing chasm in contemporary Moroccan society between secular civil society, as represented by left-wing activists and intellectuals, and an Islamist civil society, which advocates for the inclusion of religious teaching in policymaking. This ideological difference creates substantial tension between the two main groups of activists – a tension that is easily exploited by the Makhzen in its attempt to divide-and-rule, pitting one current against the other.44

The case of Algeria Civil society associations emerged in Algeria from the early 1990s with the liberalization of the political process. They have included, among

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others, women’s rights groups and human rights groups.45 After the 1992 military coup, the civil war, and the recent “war on terror” with its novel and repressive securitarian measures, the state has imposed restrictive legal procedures on the creation of new associations.46 The state has also infiltrated civil society associations using security forces to monitor their activities.47 This points to the difficulties faced by civil society groups not only in maintaining their autonomy, but also in carrying out their work in an “authoritarian country like Algeria where the political calculations of the regime shape how society participates in politics.”48 The divide-and-rule strategy of the Algerian state is very similar to that of Morocco. Indeed, the Algerian state has used the Islamist threat as a card to divide-and-rule the opposition and civil society groups since the emergence of the Islamists as a powerful force in the early 1990s. The Islamist “threat” similarly served as an excuse for human rights abuses during and after the ensuing brutal civil war between the army and militant radical Islamist groups in the aftermath of the cancellation of the elections and the military coup of 1992. In fact, many secular and leftist intellectuals supported the 1992 coup because of the fear of an Islamist takeover.49 As in Morocco, the strategy of divide-and-rule is also put into practice in the domain of women’s rights (with organizations campaigning to change the Family Code) as well as that of human rights. What distinguishes Algeria from Morocco is the traumatic legacy of the civil war of the 1990s, which has left deep scars in the nation’s psyche. Civil society activism in Algeria, therefore, largely addresses issues related to human rights abuses during the civil war, the fate of the disappeared, and the rights of the victims and their families. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation implemented in 2006 was criticized by various human rights organizations in Algeria because of its perceived leniency towards the perpetuators (the military and the militant Islamists), to whom it offered amnesty without respecting the rights of the victims and their families.50 Therefore, Algerian civil society, in its quest for justice, still holds the state and the Islamists accountable for the atrocities committed during the civil war, particularly regarding the fate of the thousands of disappeared, despite the state’s attempt to whitewash this terrible episode of Algerian history. Civil society associations established

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during the conflict or at the end of it, such as Djazairouna, SOS-disparus, Collectif Bnet Fatma N’Soumer, and Collectif des familles de disparu(e)s en Alge´rie, have cooperated in their fight against the state’s imposed silence. They have campaigned for official recognition of the disappeared and for justice and truth for the families of the victims, despite the state’s continuous harassment and punishment.51 Unlike the divided human rights community in Morocco, most of these associations work together despite their ideological differences and are united in challenging the state’s imposed amnesty. According to Cavatorta and Durac, “the pressure to forget coming from the regime and, to a certain extent, from the political heirs of Islamism, coupled with the decision of society to avoid the issue of the conflict create a significant constraint for those associations and groups whose objective is instead to shed light on the conflict.”52 However, as in neighboring Morocco, the Family Code and women’s rights remain an area where the regime plays the divide-and-rule policy to pit secular civil society activists against Islamists. Secular women activists’ campaigns have been calling for the change of the code, which was revised in 1984 in an attempt to appease the rising Islamist forces in society. The revised code further undermined the legal equality of women in the domain of family law. The Algerian state, like that of Morocco, uses the issue of women’s rights to play the Islamist elements in the society against the secular liberals. Women’s associations such as Rassemblement alge´rien des femmes de´mocrates and Tharwa N’Fadhma N’Soumir have been campaigning for the abolition of the existing Family Code and its replacement with a secular law that guarantees the equality of women. On the other hand, there are groups that campaign for the Family Code to be wholly based on Islamic law.53 Secular women’s groups’ campaigns led to some minor changes in the Family Code in February 2005, which were perceived as not satisfactory. Unlike the cooperation between secular and Islamist civil society associations in the domain of the rights of the victims and the disappeared in the civil war, there is almost no cooperation between Islamist and secular women’s rights associations because of their ideological differences on the rights, place, and role of women in society. This means, as Cavatorta and Durac argue, that “the regime, which is devoid of any ideological project and simply aspires to remain in power, can use the divisive issue of women’s rights selectively to reward

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and punish dissenting groups.”54 If some secular women’s rights groups aligned themselves with the state during the civil war to fight extremism, they are now calling for the equal rights of women perceived as part of the democratic reforms in Algeria. The state, however, still pits different groups against each other, as “this policy of divide and conquer works because the spectre of Islamism has been defeated in the civil war, but it has not disappeared as a social force and, therefore, can still constitute a potential danger, particularly for the liberal and secular classes.”55 From the analysis above, it is clear that in Morocco and Algeria, “civil society groups and associations, irrespective of their ethos, largely contribute to the reinforcement of authoritarian practices.”56 In Morocco, this is beacuse the the “political system, centred on the absolute executive primacy of the monarchy, requires that the issues that civil society defends or promotes be sanctioned by the regime.”57 Therefore, civil society groups reinforce the power of the monarch as they compete for his approval as, for example, in the case of secular women’s rights associations that had to approach the king directly (and not the parliament) to support the change of the Mudawana or family law. In this sense, it is the Makhzen, headed by the monarch, who decides which causes should be sanctioned or blocked, and therefore limits the potential of civil society groups to bring about change. In Algeria, the regime remains largely in control of the activities undertaken by civil society groups: nonetheless, the regime, despite placing a number of administrative obstacles in their way, permits civil society groups to float these issues within society because their effectiveness is limited and because, in order to achieve some of their objectives, they are forced to work within the constraints of the system, thereby reinforcing it.58 This situation is further aggravated by the ideological differences between Islamist civil society groups and secular ones, even though these differences were largely put aside in the campaign for the rights of the victims of the civil war. The division within civil society further weakens dissent and strengthens the state’s authoritarianism.

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Conclusion A nuanced understanding of civil society activism under authoritarian regimes is important in disentangling state–society relations in Morocco and Algeria. This both entails and requires moving beyond a normative Western understanding of civil society’s role as expanding the public sphere and promoting democratization. “Liberal” authoritarian states such as Morocco and Algeria create state-sponsored forms of civil activism that make it difficult to distinguish genuine activism from other forms which are merely used to promote a liberal image of the state. In both countries, the regimes actively coopt leaders of professional associations and organizations under their wing so that state authority is not challenged. They also use terms such as “officially tolerated, ‘recognized’ or sponsored national organizations, as a tool for restructuring public participation in the political process and thus limiting the independence and influence of civil society organisations.”59 Therefore, civil society activism in Morocco and Algeria is largely controlled by the authoritarian states. This does not mean that civil society activism does not contribute to promoting social and political awareness, but it does not constitute a significant force that can successfully promote political change. This is also due to the ideological differences and divisions between Islamist and secularist associations, which are exploited by the state using a strategy of divide-and-rule. This allows the regimes to weaken dissent and play the role of the “neutral” social and political arbiter, while maintaining the status quo. The political regimes in both countries use the threat of the Islamists’ “obscurantism” to coopt secular civil society groups – particularly those working on women’s rights and human rights – pushing them into an alliance with the authoritarian state in the name of fighting the “Islamist threat.” However, the divisions in social society activism are not present in certain issues such as the question of the victims of the Algerian civil war. Encouraging steps of cooperation between various secular and Islamist groups in both countries have been taken (albeit at a very slow pace), giving some hope that these associations will eventually defy cooptation, especially in areas where they have shared objectives, such as the question of human rights. In recent years, there has been a shift from traditional to nontraditional forms of activism in both countries, facilitated by new

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technologies such as social media and the Internet (even though the latter is heavily surveyed). This is the result of decades of repression under authoritarian regimes that have controlled traditional forms of expression and association. Individuals, however, have invented new forms of activism such as creating blogs and virtual discussion forums. There is currently a growing number of individual dissenters who start up their causes and defend them without formal association. They connect via the Internet and pursue various forms of activism with likeminded people despite the hardships they may face.60 The result of these individual initiatives is widespread activism that is not traditionally confined to associative life. The “Daniel Gate” scandal in Morocco in August 2013 is an example of this kind of activism. This refers to King Mohamed VI’s pardon (on the occasion of the Throne Day) of 1,000 prisoners, including a Spanish pedophile who was serving 30 years of imprisonment for sexually abusing several Moroccan children. The royal pardon caused massive outrage across social media. Individual online activists created a Facebook page to denounce the king’s decision and made the protest national and global via other social media outlets. This was followed by demonstrations across Moroccan cities, some of which were violently suppressed by the police. Moroccans from across the social and political spectrum were united in their anger. This popular and open outrage against the king’s decision forced the royal palace to eventually issue a statement reversing its pardon of the pedophile, who had already fled abroad. In a country where criticism of the king is prohibited, this incident of open criticism of his decision in cyberspace and in street protests is unprecedented. This new form of individual activism from below and via social media outlets is a significant development as it creates new forms of opposition that are difficult for the state to control. It also gives the opportunity to people with ideological differences who are often coming from different sectors of the society to rally together for achieving common goals.

Notes 1. See Sheri Berman, “Islamism, revolution, and civil society.” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 2 (2003), pp. 257–72; Omar G. Encarnacio´n, “Civil Society Reconsidered.” Comparative Politics 38, no. 3 (2006), pp. 357–76; Francesco

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3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

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Cavatorta and Vincent Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World: The Dynamics of Activism. London: Routledge, 2010; Francesco Cavatorta, ed., Civil Society Activism under Authoritarian Rule: A Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge, 2013. Francesco Cavatorta, “More than repression: the significance of Divide et Impera in the Middle East and North Africa – The Case of Morocco.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25, no. 2 (2007), p. 192. M. Moncef Khaddar, “Nationalist ruling parties, national governments ideologies, partisans and statesmen: human rights offenders and human rights defenders in the North African post-colonial states and societies.” Journal of North African Studies 17, no. 1 (2012), p. 71. Youcef Bouandel, “Algeria’s presidential election of April 2009.” Mediterranean Politics 14, no. 2 (2009), p. 252. John P. Entelis, “Algeria: democracy denied, and revived?” Journal of North African Studies 16, no. 4 (2011), p. 663. Ibid. Sharifian is a term that refers to those who claim descent from the family of the prophet Mohamed and the symbolic power linked to that lineage. Abdellah Hammoudi claims the model of the relationship of Sufi master and disciple to be the cultural origin of the Moroccan state’s sustained authoritarianism. See Abdellah Hammoudi, Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Daniel Brumberg, “Democratisation in the Arab world: the trap of liberalised autocracy.” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 4 (2002), pp. 56 – 68. George Joffe´, “Morocco’s reform process: wider implications.” Mediterranean Politics 14, no. 2 (2009), pp. 151– 64; George Joffe´, “The Moroccan political system after the elections.” Mediterranean Politics 3, no. 3 (1998), pp. 106– 25. The amended constitution of July 2011 gives more independence to the judiciary, more protection of human rights, and recognition of Moroccan cultural diversity and the Amazih language as the second official language of the country. Francesco Cavatorta, “Civil society activism under authoritarian constraints.” In Civil Society Activism under Authoritarian Rule, ed. Cavatorta, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, p. 7. Cavatora and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World, p. 57. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid. Francesco Cavatorta, The International Dimension of the Failed Algerian Transition: Democracy Betrayed? Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009, p. 151. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Nazih N. Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. London: I.B.Tauris, 1995.

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19. Ibid., p. 1. 20. Ibid., p. 3. 21. Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 68. 22. Entelis, “Algeria: democracy denied, and revived?” p. 674. 23. Tripp, The People and the Power, p. 4. 24. Clive Tempest, “Myths from Eastern Europe and the legend of the west.” Democratization 4, no. 1 (1997), pp. 132– 44. 25. See Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World; Cavatorta, ed., Civil Society Activism under Authoritarian Rule. 26. Francesco Cavatorta, “Civil society, democracy promotion and Islamism on the southern shores of the Mediterranean.” Mediterranean Politics 13, no. 1 (2008), p. 110. 27. Ibid. 28. Cavatorta, “Civil society activism under authoritarian constraints,” p. 2. 29. Ibid., p. 4. 30. Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World. 31. Cavatorta, “Civil society activi sm under authoritarian constraints,” p. 4. 32. See Karima Laachir and Saeed Talajooy, eds, Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures: Literature, Cinema and Music. London: Routledge, 2013; Tripp, The Power and the People, p. 68. 33. As Cavatorta argues: “The willingness to be co-opted and to lend some sort of ‘reserved’ legitimacy to the incumbents has not been the product of coercion, rather of perceived irreconcilable ideological differences with Islamist parties. The primary objective, resisting the expansion of Islamism, leads to voluntary co-optation.” See Cavatorta, “More than repression,” p. 192. 34. Holger Albrecht, “How can opposition support authoritarianism? Lessons from Egypt.” Democratization 12, no. 3 (2005), pp. 378– 97; Ivelin Sardamov, “‘Civil society’ and the limits of democratic assistance.” Government and Opposition 40, no. 3 (2005), pp. 379– 402. 35. Francesco Cavatorta, “More than repression: the significance of Divide et Impera in the Middle East and North Africa – The Case of Morocco.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25, no. 2 (2007), p. 193. 36. Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World, p. 54. 37. For a detailed and rich analysis of this issue, see ibid., pp. 60 – 5. 38. Cavatorta, “More than repression,” p. 200. 39. Ibid., p. 198. 40. See Rachel Linn, “‘Change within continuity’: the equity and reconciliation commission and political reform in Morocco.” Journal of North African Studies 16, no. 1 (2011), pp. 1 – 17. 41. Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World, p. 66. 42. Francesco Cavatorta and Emanuela Dalmasso, “The emerging power of civil society? The human rights doctrine.” In Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics and

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46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES Society under Mohammed VI, edited by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, p. 129. Ibid., p. 130. Ibid., pp. 127– 8. These include Amazigh groups which campaigned against the state’s imposed monolithic national Arabo-Islamic identity and marginalization of the linguistic and cultural rights of the Amazigh people. Andrea Liverani, Civil Society in Algeria: The Political Functions of Associational Life. London: Routledge 2008. Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World, p. 7. Ibid., p. 41. Cavatorta, “More than repression,” p. 193. Cavatorta and Durac, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World, p. 42. For a detailed and thorough analysis of these associations, see ibid., pp. 41 – 8. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 52 – 3. Khaddar, “Nationalist ruling parties,” p. 80. Francesco Cavatorta, Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World: The Dynamics of Activism. London: Routledge, 2010; Francesco Cavatorta, ed., Civil Society Activism under Authoritarian Rule: A Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge, 2013, p. 262.

CHAPTER 6 AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ: STATE-BUILDING IN COUNTRIES WITH STRONG SOCIETIES Amin Saikal

Introduction State-building is a very complex issue which varies widely in the way it can be approached and undertaken. Political leadership, social composition, historical legacies, geography, economic structures, and foreign intervention, among other things, must be taken into account. Yet in general, one can identify four processes of, and approaches to, state-building. The first is internally designed and funded; the second is externally driven and funded; the third is internally funded but externally influenced; and the fourth is externally funded and internally managed. While various modes can be accommodated within each of these processes, and states may move between different processes at different moments in their history, these four types provide a useful framework for thinking about state-building in national contexts. With the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, state-building in both countries began to proceed predominantly along the lines of the second type (externally funded and driven). As the US ended its military involvement in Iraq by the close of 2011, however, the paradigm for state-building in that country shifted

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toward the third type. Afghanistan, by contrast, is likely to be placed between the second and third types following the withdrawal of most of the US and allied combat forces from the country at the end of 2014.1 Although the two countries are in many respects different from each other and have had contrasting historical journeys to state-building, they share a set of similar features and obstacles that have affected their paths of state-building and that reveal a number of common difficulties. Both countries are now essentially weak states with strong and assertive societies, which are at the same time major sources of instability in world politics. If not transformed into viable polities, where state and society are organically linked to one another through legitimately constructed national orders, involving inclusive processes of citizen participation and viable modes of change and development within a widely accepted rational-legal framework, these countries stand little or no chance of saving themselves from long-term structural disorder. This chapter has three aims. The first is to look at the main common characteristics of Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of their state-building journeys. The second is to examine how the US-led invasion of the two countries helped transform them from disrupted states into dysfunctional and weak ones, with assertive societies. The third is to examine to what extent these countries are likely to remain seriously disrupted states, and therefore to continue to be major sources of international concerns in the future.

Common characteristics First, it is important to define what is meant by a state. There are competing definitions of what constitutes a state, depending on one’s criteria and ideological leanings. A minimalist understanding of the term, and one on which most analysts can agree, is that a state is a selfgoverning sovereign political and territorial entity within internationally recognized borders, where the government has a legitimate monopoly over instrumentalities of power, including the authority to legislate, raise taxes, dispense services, impose justice, and maintain law and order within its geographic jurisdiction. However, other criteria could be built into this basic definition to determine what makes a state

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strong or weak, democratic or semi-democratic, authoritarian or concealed authoritarian, developed or underdeveloped, and so on. In their paths to state-building, Afghanistan and Iraq – both states with divided societies and located in a traditional zone of major power rivalry – have historically shared a number of common obstacles, which are rooted largely in their similar features. The societies of both countries have been shaped and deeply influenced by the religion of Islam, and both have been subjected to sectarian conflicts as a result of the overlap between religious, ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic divisions.2 While the Shiʽites, which may be further subdivided into various branches, form a majority in Iraq (around 60 percent) and a minority in Afghanistan (around 20 percent), in both countries they were the target of discrimination and marginalization until the twenty-first century. In the wake of their US-led invasion, this pattern has been reversed, with the Shiʽa majority dominating the power structure in Baghdad at the cost of being exclusionary toward the Sunnis, and the Shiʽa minority securing more levers of power than at any time before in Afghanistan.3 Afghanistan and Iraq also share some common political legacies in their modern histories.4 Prior to the US-led invasion, both countries were under authoritarian rule, although in different forms and with different degrees of intensity. Neither country had ever experienced a democratic transition. In each country, the ruler and his cohorts, forming the ruling “cartel” or “elite,” relied largely on top-down power structures and personalized rather than institutionalized processes of governance. Differing forms of despotism, colored by various ideological dispositions, ranging from socialism to Islamism to quasi-liberalism, had predominated in both countries, with the government enjoying little or no public mandate from society. The ruler’s political authority was based not on principles and public accountability, but on power and force. Administrative and security apparatus constituted the backbone for rule enforcement and regime survival. Constitutions and manifestos of state-building were constructed in order to legitimize rather than guide the ruling elites’ policy actions. Rulers maintained legitimacy by equating their survival and that of their regime with the strength and interests of the state. This often meant that change, whether in political, economic, social, or foreign policy arenas, was shaped to conform more to the political requirements of the ruler than to the common good. While the state’s

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monopoly on defining and implementing national change was not without its gains, it ensured that society remained dependent on and vulnerable to the whims and priorities of regimes for stability, prosperity, and security. Meanwhile, these goals were themselves used as a justification for state repression of society. From the time of its emergence as an identifiable political and territorial unit in the mid-eighteenth century until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was subjected to a variety of authoritarian forms of rule. Unlike Iraq, however, Afghanistan’s experience of authoritarianism did not result in the strengthening of the state or heavy centralization of political authority. Rather, Afghanistan managed to survive for most of its history primarily as a foreign aid-dependent “sovereign entity,” where the state remained perpetually weak in relation to its divided but challenging micro-societies.5 In Iraq, on the other hand, authoritarianism had gone hand-in-hand with the strengthening of the state, at great cost for its society. From the time of its consolidation as a modern state in the early 1920s until the US-led invasion, Iraq had existed as a dictatorial state. This was the case first under the British tutelage, lasting for more than three decades until the late 1950s, and subsequently under Arab nationalist and Ba’athist autocratic governance. State-building and centralization in Iraq reached its apogee during the rule of Saddam Hussein, who from the late 1960s to his overthrow in 2003 transformed Iraq into a personalized state, where the figure of Saddam loomed large everywhere and in everything.6 In economic terms, both countries were, and remain, defined by their status as rentier states. Revenue from foreign aid (Afghanistan) or oil (Iraq) has been historically deployed largely in support of regime preservation. Political suppression, patronage, nepotism, corruption and cooptation, arbitrary justice, massive social and economic disparities, and human rights violations underpinned the operation of the state. These entrenched features of the political landscape were punctuated occasionally by violent regime changes and social unrest. Society, as a result, was forced to be a reflection of the state, rather than vice versa. Whilst the state may have appeared coherent and effective, this facade was achieved through the politics of suppression and mutual distrust, as well as by the application of coercive measures to ensure societal compliance. State functionality was very much conceived through the

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application of coercive power, coupled with the politics of cooptation, patron–client networks, familial and broader social and cultural linkages, and patronage, each of which reinforced a pattern of divideand-rule politics that weakened and fragmented national societies. State functionality was determined, therefore, by the extent to which the center could employ these instruments and mechanisms of control to claim authority and jurisdiction over the rest of the country. This, however, did not mean that the state was entirely successful in neutralizing and subordinating the inner dynamism of the society or, more specifically, its various sub or microsocial units. Society, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, remained a powerful force, with its subunits capable of reasserting themselves, individually or in alliance with one or more other groups, whenever the repressive hand of the state was weakened as a consequence of either internal conflict within the ruling elite or outside interference. If the historical evolution of the two states was largely defined by the legacy of authoritarian rule, it was also and in both cases punctuated with instances of social revolt. The resulting state– society dichotomy, or lack of effective relationships between those who governed and those who were governed, was instrumental in making the Afghan and Iraqi journeys of state-building and state – society relations highly turbulent and violent.

Key differences In contrast to these common features in their political development, two main variables differentiated Afghanistan and Iraq from one another prior to the US-led invasions. The first was the mode of change and development. Whereas Iraq pursued a predominantly secular path to state-building, Afghanistan’s journey was more variable, progressing from traditional to semisecular to secular to theocratic. The second was the intensity of statebuilding projects. This was markedly less in Afghanistan, where human and material resources were in drastically short supply, and the state was never strong and expansive enough to integrate various microsocieties that constitute the Afghan state. As a result, whilst Afghanistan remained mired in traditionalism, with a very slow pace of social and economic development, Iraq went through a phase of radical development and modernization that placed it at the forefront of Arab countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

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In Afghanistan, the power and authority of the center was largely determined by the extent to which the center was able to forge alliances with local powerholders in the peripheries. Whatever strength the Afghan state had gained during the longest period of stability in Afghanistan’s modern history from 1929 to 1978 was substantially eroded by the ensuing 24 years of domestic bloodshed and turmoil, starting with the pro-Soviet communist coup of 1978, and the ensuing, decade-long Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s. The Soviet goal was to transform Afghanistan into a strong allied socialist state, but its failure proved to be disastrous for Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. It resulted in internecine conflict and the rise to power of the Pakistanbacked Taliban in most of Afghanistan, and in contributing to the eventual demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.7 Iraq, on the other hand, had developed a strong dictatorial state under the Ba’athist regime, with a functioning administrative and security apparatus. This was despite the fact that it had lost firm control over its Kurdish territory and was subjected to air exclusion zones in the north and south, as well as severe international sanctions, following the US-led military defeat of Iraq in Kuwait in the 1990 Gulf War. The Iraqi state, in direct contrast to Afghanistan, developed a number of essential welfare services, including free education and medical care, under the rubric of a Ba’athist socialist revolution.

The US invasions and their consequences It was against this backdrop that the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq took place. The US-led occupations of both countries were undertaken with a publicly professed aim of transforming them into stable, secure, and prosperous democratic states. In the case of Afghanistan, the invasion was prompted by al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US and constituted the first salvo in what was declared as the George W. Bush administration’s broader “war on terrorism.” The US military campaign in Iraq, on the other hand, was launched in the context of a war of choice. Its objective was to bring about regime change as a prelude to achieving wider regional ideological and geostrategic goals. The priority was to transform Iraq into a launching pad from which to change the entire Middle Eastern region in ways that could safeguard American interests, spread its version of

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democracy in the world, and protect America’s global power status in the long run. Expounding this priority was a group of neoconservatives, supported by two clusters of right-wing evangelists and ultra-nationalists, who came to dominate US foreign policy under the first term of President Bush. These entities came from different ideological backgrounds but with overlapping agendas and a common belief in what was termed a “doctrine of power reality.”8 This theory postulated that the US, as the mightiest economic and military power on earth, should make use of its resources to enshrine its position as the dominant democratic actor in world politics. As such, Washington’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq was not premised on any deep concerns for the suffering of the Afghan and Iraqi people. If it had been, the US would have acted much earlier to free the Afghan population from the dreadful, medievalist theocratic rule of the Taliban, and the Iraqi people from the brutal dictatorship of Saddam. Despite its publicly proclaimed ambitions for Afghanistan and Iraq, the US lacked any experience in state-building beyond its contributions to the post-Second World War reconstruction of Germany and Japan. Nor was it initially inclined to engage in such a process in Afghanistan or Iraq. Although the State Department had concerns about and plans for the postinvasion management of the two countries, the White House and the Pentagon took charge of both the invasion and its aftermath. Military-centered realism, ideological disposition, and raw punitive instincts, rather than altruism and long-term considerations, appeared to be driving these two bodies in their design and implementation of US policy approach and actions. Neither the United States nor the various international forces that cooperated with it appeared to have an in-depth knowledge of the historical complexities of the situation within each of the invaded countries and their neighborhoods, where regional actors, most importantly Pakistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia (in relation to Afghanistan), and the last two as well as Syria, and Turkey (in relation to Iraq), had pursued conflicting interests. As such, in planning and executing the Afghan and Iraqi military campaigns, Washington showed a very poor understanding of how preexisting complexities on the ground had historically impeded the development of the Afghan and Iraqi states. It also failed to see how foreign intervention could sharpen and deepen these complexities, as the

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Soviet experience in the 1980s and that of Britain in the nineteenth century had demonstrated in Afghanistan, and the US-led military reversion of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had revealed. Those complexities were confined not just to authoritarian structures and political cultures, nor were they restricted to the entrenched traditional and Islamic ways of life that had historically fostered antagonistic sectarian and ethno-nationalist allegiances in both countries. They also included entrenched social divisions along hostile personality, ethnic, clan, tribal, cultural, and ideological lines, with such divisions simmering under the veil of state suppression and cooptation. Each country is made up of various distinct multi-layered microsocieties, artificially and coercively banded together to constitute a nation-state. Afghanistan was, as it is today, comprised of at least eight of such micro-societies, none of which form a majority of the population, and most of which have extensive cross-border ties with neighboring countries. Ethnic Pashtuns, who are highly tribalized and to whose rival tribes the Taliban and former President Hamid Karzai and many of his cohorts belong, make up about 42 percent of the country’s population. The Pashtuns are closely followed by the second largest cluster, the Tajiks (close to 30 percent), with the remainder of the population split between smaller groups including the Uzbeks, the Turkmen, and the Hazara. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the Afghan people follow the Sunni sect of Islam, which in itself is divided into four schools of thought, and some 15 to 20 percent of the population adhere to the Shiʽa sect of Islam, which again is divided into several subsects. The same is true about Iraq, which is cleft by fewer but nonetheless sharper divisions. The country is made up of three main clusters: the Shiʽa Arabs, a heterogeneous group comprising some 60 percent of the population; the tribalized Sunni Arabs; and the tribally divided yet ethnically cohesive Sunni Kurds, each of whom constitute around 20 percent of the population. As in Afghanistan, these groups also straddle the country’s neighboring borders in sectarian and ethnic terms. This mosaic nature of Afghanistan and Iraq had traditionally been a major inhibiting factor for state-building. In the absence of a set of national norms, values, and practices that could cut across social cleavages, such social compositions had perpetually played a critical role in holding back the two countries from constructing viable and enduring domestic structures, rooted in the development of effective

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government–society relations, as firm foundations for building strong states. Of course, one could ask why Islam has not bound the Afghans and Iraqis together. The answer is that whilst Islam had been, as it is today, a dominant factor in influencing the psyche and behavior of a great majority of the Afghan and Iraqi people, in the postcolonial era it has rarely been able to supersede ethnic, cultural, and sectarian divisions amongst its followers. These impediments are not necessarily universal or unsurpassable. Indeed, one could cite multiethnic and multicultural India as a success story in overcoming its national divisions to build a strong and enduring state.9 However, it is important to note two points. The first is that the growth of the Indian state benefited from the British colonial political, judicial, and administrative legacy that provided it with some solid foundations on which it could build strong democratic structures, with a national system of political values and practices. Afghanistan was never technically colonized and the nature of the British colonial rule of Iraq and, indeed, many other parts of the Middle East, left no comparable legacy. The second is that as a result, secular tenets rather than religious dictates came to serve as a binding force among numerous Indian groups. As such, while religious-based communal conflicts and violence have surfaced in the Indian polity from time to time, these have not posed a threat to the integrity of the state itself. In addition to a lack of understanding about the Iraqi and Afghan states themselves, a further shortcoming of Washington’s postinvasion planning was that it gave inadequate thought to regional complexities and how they could interact with foreign intervention to foil America’s transformative efforts in the two countries. Whilst the US invasions achieved their military objectives relatively quickly, the long-term goal of creating stable and democratic states in Afghanistan and Iraq has been obstructed by Washington’s naı¨ve understanding of deep-seated regional complexities and conflicts of interests. This is despite the fact that the US had long been involved in these regional dynamics, as in its support of Saddam in the Iraq– Iran War of the 1980s, and its sponsorship of various anti-communist groups in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s.10 Even so, Washington took on face value the pledge of Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf that he would side with America in its “war on terror” and turn Pakistan’s back on its Taliban and, for that matter, al-Qaeda clients. US

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policymakers fell very short in realizing the depth of Islamabad’s commitment to the Taliban as a critical force in pursuit of Pakistan’s regional interests, including the long-running conflict with its main regional foe, India. It was not until the latter part of the first decade of the US-led intervention in Afghanistan that Washington fully grasped the fact that Pakistan had all along been playing a double game – publicly backing America’s “war on terror,” but secretly maintaining support for the Taliban.11 Whatever action the US subsequently took to prompt or persuade Pakistan to stop its support for the Taliban proved to be too late and in some ways counterproductive, as they strained US relations with the very country whose cooperation it so desperately needed in its operations in Afghanistan and the wider “war on terror.” Washington also failed to consider adequately how its arch-enemy, the Iranian Islamic regime, might react to the US’s occupation of two of its neighbors and the establishment of military bases in some of the former Soviet Central Asian Muslim republics. These activities, in conjunction with America’s strong military presence in the Persian Gulf, amounted to an effective encirclement of Iran. While pleased with the demise of the Taliban and Saddam, and willing to help in the process of Afghanistan’s political transition under the leadership of US-backed Karzai, Tehran could not be expected to be unconcerned about the US policy of containment of Iran. President Bush’s inclusion of Iran alongside Syria and North Korea as members of an “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union speech amounted to a declaration of war as far as the Iranian leadership was concerned. From that point, Tehran found it compelling to do whatever it could to deflect any security threat that the US activities in the region may have posed.12 Equally, Washington failed to foresee the deep reservations that America’s predominantly Sunni autocratic Gulf Arab allies, led by Saudi Arabia, would harbor over the loss of power by the Sunnis in Iraq, which would tilt the regional balance of power in favor of Shiʽa Islam and its champion in the region, Iran. Nor did it seem to be aware of the anxieties that America’s push for democratization in Iraq would generate in the Gulf Arab states.13 The Saudis and their allies within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) may have had a benign view of the American democratization project in Afghanistan. However, they could not be indifferent to a similar process in Iraq, where the development of

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democracy was regarded as a serious challenge to the legitimacy of their own autocratic and monarchical governments. The US military campaigns were designed for rapid victory and the establishment of viable orders under leaders who would conform to America’s transformative agendas. They were therefore anticipated to last for a relatively short period and at minimum cost. However, as the US and its allies found themselves entangled in deep-seated national and regional complexities, Washington could neither achieve a quick victory nor secure a viable order under effective leaderships in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Its expectation that a democratic transformation would occur organically and swiftly proved to be ill-founded, and reflected the naivety that has marred much of US policy in Afghanistan and Iraq throughout the wars. The US military involvement in Iraq lasted for eight years and in Afghanistan for much longer, with thousands of American lives lost and more than US$ 3 trillion spent, not to mention the incalculable Afghan and Iraqi human and material losses. The leaders it backed have proved to be incompetent, self-serving, and lacking in both strategic thinking and long-term vision. This is true of both President Karzai, who headed Afghanistan from December 2001 for nearly thirteen years, and successive Iraqi leaders, especially Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who led Iraq from 2007 to 2014. Both Karzai and al-Maliki turned out to be very poor state-builders, presiding over highly dysfunctional and corrupt systems of governance, which have left their societies to fend largely for themselves. By the same token, while disillusioned with their governments, the societies have had to take care of their human and non-human security dilemmas. During his term, Karzai acted more or less as an erratic tribal leader, creating a “Karzai cartel” rule with a reliance on Afghan traditional political practices.14 He pursued a number of contradictory policy behaviors, even toward the very country (the US) on whose support he continued to rely for power. His nepotistic and factionalist rule resulted in the increasing isolation of the center from the provinces and increased the power of local leaders at the periphery.15 Al-Maliki increasingly resorted to the politics of sectarianism, favoring his own pro-Iranian Shiʽite cohorts to marginalize Iraqi Sunnis, who opted for a bloody struggle to establish at the very least an extensively autonomous state of their own in western Iraq, more or less similar to what the Kurds have done in northern Iraq.16

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The disenchantment and power vacuum that al-Maliki’s rule generated was critical in empowering the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)17 to conquer large swathes of territories in northern and western Iraq and declare its Islamic State (IS) or Khilafat in mid2014. Initially, ISIS carved a niche for itself in northeastern Syria in the context of that country’s crisis and the lack of Western action to resolve that crisis.18 Ultimately, however, it was ISIS’s expansion into Iraq that enabled it to undermine seriously the integrity of the Iraqi state and to threaten Western interests, prompting the US to reengage Iraq in aerial operations against ISIS targets to stem its tide. Whatever the outcome of the Afghan and Iraqi situation, the lack of an effective and reliable partner on the ground compounded America’s difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, and contributed markedly in undermining the processes of state-building in the two countries. Strikingly, these factors were also critical in accounting for the US Vietnam debacle and the Soviet Afghan failure. Just as the US proved unable to secure anything more than a corrupt and dysfunctional government under Ngo Dinh Diem and his successors in South Vietnam, the Soviets were faced with the same fate in Afghanistan. All their efforts to unite the warring factions of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan to create a viable government under different leaders, from Noor Mohammad Taraki to Najibullah, came to nothing in the long run.

The future Pre-existing impediments have interacted with America’s poor understanding of the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their regional contexts, to ensure the failure of the US-driven statebuilding projects in the two countries. In Afghanistan, the state had historically been weak in relation to the society, and American efforts and for that matter those of its allies and the United Nations have brought little or no change to this state of affairs. Afghanistan remains a very weak state, highly vulnerable to countersystemic forces, notably the Taliban and their affiliates, and consequently to continued domestic structural disorder and outside intervention.19 Iraq, in contrast, had a relatively coherent and functioning state that managed to bind its three desperate main national groups together,

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albeit by means of violence and repression. The US invasion turned this around by pursuing the kind of postinvasion policy actions that generated the conditions for various deeply fault-lined and hostile societal segments to prevail over the state. Far from producing a sense of national cohesiveness capable of transcending microsocial identities, the “iraqization” of the conflict has resulted in tearing Iraqi society apart between various groups, with sectarian clashes robbing the country of any semblance of stability. The balkanization of Iraq has reached a point where it has seriously undermined its territorial integrity. Iraq’s elite is totally fragmented, with no national consensus in place.20 Various forces have become locked in a bloody struggle; some want it to move down the path of radical Islamism, with ISIS wanting it to become an extremist Sunni Islamic state and elements of the country’s Shiʽa population desiring it to be a radical Shiʽa state, while others desire it to have a secular or semisecular system of governance. There are also regional actors whose behavior encourages – advertently or inadvertently – the political and territorial partition of Iraq. Afghanistan is not far behind Iraq in this respect. If the current trends continue, Afghanistan is in mortal danger of internecine conflict, economic collapse, and disintegration after the withdrawal of most of the US troops and those of its allies as scheduled by the end of 2014. This may not happen immediately, and the “afghanization” of the Afghan conflict may endure for some time, as was the case in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, the long-term prognosis looks bleak for the country. The Afghan and Iraqi cases underscore the complexity of statebuilding and highlight the need for long-term and appropriate processes based on the historical and actual particularities of a given state. They also suggest that state-building processes are unlikely to succeed unless they emanate from inside, rather being driven by an outside power. While the US began to relegate state-building responsibilities to the Afghan and Iraqi governments in the context of its drawdown and withdrawal respectively, the impetus for state-building in both countries was never an organic one. As General Stanley McChrystal, former Commander of the US and NATO forces, finally admitted in 2010, and as former US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, remarked in 2014, the US walked into

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Afghanistan blindly and may well walk out in the same fashion.21 Their admission is equally true about the US adventure in Iraq. While campaigning for his first term, President Barack Obama criticized the US invasion of Iraq as an avoidable war of choice and promised to end American involvement in that country. This he did. However, his commitment to bring the war to a “responsible end” has remained tragically unfulfilled.22 The US left behind a broken Iraq, beyond the capability of Iraqis to fix. The Iraqi people have paid and continue to pay a very high price for what the US promised but failed to achieve. The US return to help the Iraqi government with aerial bombardment to destroy ISIS may not prove to be decisive enough to compensate for what has already transpired. As for the US invasion of Afghanistan, Obama publicly called it an act of necessity. Yet, as Gates has claimed, the President has not been as committed to the Afghan war as he publicly stated.23 The catastrophic situation that prevails in both Afghanistan and Iraq today can be substantially attributed to America’s poor understanding of the two countries, which was at the root of its misguided policies of trying to change them according to its ideological and geopolitical preferences. The two countries remain in the grip of long-term structural disorder, with little hope of being transformed into strong states founded on democratic values and practices in the foreseeable future. Their societies have broken loose and grown stronger in challenging any central authority which may try to involve them in viable processes of state-building, while remaining fragmented and without a common cause. The prospect for successful state-building in the two countries with strong but deeply divided societies appears a dismal one, and as such they may well remain a source of tension and anxiety in world politics for the foreseeable future.

Notes 1. The question of funding in Afghanistan following the withdrawal has proved a highly contentious issue, particularly given that 90 percent of the country’s national budget was still sourced, directly or indirectly, from foreign aid in 2011. For more information on Afghanistan’s foreign aid situation, see US Committee on Foreign Relations, “Evaluating US Foreign Assistance to Afghanistan.” United States Senate. June 8, 2011. www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/m edia/doc/SPRT%20112-21.pdf.

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2. For more detail, see Amin Saikal, Zone of Crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. London: I.B.Tauris, 2014, chapters 1 and 4. 3. For more on the Shiʽa revival in the region, see Vali Nasr, “Regional implications of Shiʽa revival in Iraq.” Washington Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2004), pp. 7 – 24; and Amin Saikal, “Afghanistan: the status of the Shi’ite Hazara minority.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 32, no. 1 (2012), pp. 5– 17. 4. For the political history of Afghanistan as a nation, see Amin Saikal, Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival. London: I.B.Tauris, 2004; for a political history of modern Iraq, see Adeed Dawisha, Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. 5. For a brief account of the history and politics of foreign aid in Afghanistan, see Jonathan Goodhand, “Aiding violence or building peace? The role of international aid in Afghanistan.” Third World Quarterly 23, no. 5 (2002), pp. 837– 59. 6. Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989. 7. See Amin Saikal, “Afghanistan’s Ethnic Conflict.” Survival 40, no. 2 (1998), pp. 114– 26. 8. For more on the neoconservative post-September 11, 2001 perspective, see Stefan A. Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, chapter 1. 9. For an account of state-building in post-independence India, see Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 10. See Kylie Baxter and Shahram Akbarzadeh, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Roots of Anti-Americanism. New York: Routledge, 2008, especially chapters 5, 6, and 8. 11. Lawrence Wright, “The Double Game: The Unintended Consequences of American Funding in Pakistan.” The New Yorker. May 16, 2011. 12. See Saikal, Zone of Crisis, chapter 3. 13. See Joseph Kostiner, “GCC perceptions of collective security in the postSaddam era.” In International Politics of the Persian Gulf, edited by Mehran Kamrava. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011. 14. Saikal, Zone of Crisis, p. 40. See also Michael Hughes, “Afghan in exile: taking a stand against the Karzai Cartel.” Huffington Post, May 12, 2011. 15. See Roger MacGinty, “Warlords and the liberal peace: state-building in Afghanistan.” Conflict, Security & Development 10, no. 4 (2010), pp. 577– 98. For a broader history of warlordism in the country, see Antonio Giustozzi, Empires of Mud: War and Warlords in Afghanistan. London: Hurst & Co., 2009. 16. See Fanar Haddad, “Sectarian relations and Sunni identity in post-Civil war Iraq.” In Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf, edited by Lawrence G. Potter. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 17. Also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

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18. For a detailed treatment of the rise of ISIS, see Patrick Cockburn, The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising. London: OR Books, 2014. 19. Amin Saikal, “Afghanistan on the Edge of a Political Abyss.” International Studies 47, no. 1 (2010), pp. 27 – 39. 20. See Amin Saikal, “Iraq: elite fragmentation, Islam and democracy.” In American Democracy Promotion in the Changing Middle East: From Bush to Obama, edited by Shahram Akbarzadeh, Benjamin MacQueen, James Piscatori and Amin Saikal. London: Routledge, 2013. 21. Michael Hastings, “The runaway general.” Rolling Stone. June 22, 2010; Robert Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 22. Michael R. Gordon, “In US exit from Iraq, failed efforts and challenges.” New York Times. September 22, 2012. 23. Bob Woodward, “Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary, offers harsh critique of Obama’s leadership in ‘duty’.” Washington Post. January 7, 2014.

CHAPTER 7 STATE—SOCIETY DYNAMICS AND AUTHORITARIAN STABILITY IN CENTRAL ASIA Kirill Nourzhanov

Introduction Over the past two decades, the predominantly pessimistic mood among external observers of state –society relations in Central Asia seems to have come full circle. Even in the early 1990s, in the heyday of post-Cold War expectations about the triumphant march of Western-style democracy, market economy, and “civilized” norms and institutions across the defunct Soviet space, an exception was habitually made for this region – the troubled “South” of Eurasia, with its intractable problems of ethnic violence, entrenched poverty, and illegitimate yet staunchly autocratic regimes.1 After a brief spell of enthusiasm caused by the greater involvement of the US and its allies on the ground in the wake of September 11, 2001,2 the label of “failed” or “failing” state has staged a comeback.3 A typical analysis published in 2011 suggested that the fundamental problems facing Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan had not changed compared to 1991, and spoke ominously of “instability, radicalization and [. . .] state collapse” within five to ten years.4 The image of tyrannical regimes in Central Asia lording it over the increasingly restive populations en route to a catastrophic rupture is as

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powerful and alarmist as it is misleading.5 It is informed by two venerable analytical traditions – historical institutionalism and elitism. The former’s path-dependency explanations view the region’s past, particularly its exposure to long Soviet rule, as the root of all present evils. As the story goes, Central Asia did not have national liberation movements and remained loyal to the communist masters in the Kremlin until the sudden implosion of the Soviet Union; hence “the Central Asian political systems survived independence and remained almost intact, giving these countries’ leaders the ability to run their countries with a more or less functional state apparatus.”6 These systems have retained trappings of totalitarianism, that is, “the all-encompassing nature of state control over (and penetration of) society under communism.”7 For David Lewis, it is the “Soviet-era forms and bureaucratic understandings of sovereignty” (as distinct from genuine nationalism) alongside ubiquitous patron– client networks that have rigidly led to torpid unreformable authoritarianism in Central Asia.8 The pernicious structural legacy of the Soviet (and/or Tsarist) past is sometimes complemented by Orientalist references to religion. Ernest Gellner, for instance, juxtaposed the Muslim part of the Soviet Union to other republics as having “only feeble strivings for pluralism, and accountable government, and on the contrary, accommodating itself without too much protest to clientelist and rapacious politics.”9 The elite theory, on the other hand, prioritizes agency of persons “who, by virtue of their strategic locations in large or otherwise pivotal organizations and movements, are able to affect political outcomes regularly and substantially.”10 Elites lead political and economic change; the masses are acquiescent – especially in situations of profound crisis such as that which occurred in the wake of the collapse of state socialism.11 The incumbent governing elite in particular enjoys a great deal of autonomy in molding institutions and determining strategic choices of a country. By way of example, Parag Khanna referred to President Nursultan Nazarbaev as “powerful enough to take Kazakhstan in virtually any direction he wants.”12 Similarly, in his study of post-Soviet Uzbekistan, Robert Cutler argued that the “perceptions and predispositions of the leadership of the authoritarian regime” is the key, and perhaps the only, factor that matters for what he called “a progressive deauthoritarian dynamic.”13 Pauline Jones Luong, while acknowledging the importance of structural factors carried over from the Soviet era, similarly

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explained divergent political outcomes in the region through “each president’s perceptions of his own power when the transition began and his inability to fully anticipate other actors’ perceptions of power shifts, namely regional leaders.”14 Preoccupied solely with their own survival and self-aggrandizement, the governing elites are said to have utterly failed in their quest for a “viable governance model.”15 There is much merit in the prevalent historical-institutionalist and elite-based approaches to politics in Central Asia, especially if the task is to explicate the patent lack of liberal democracy, ubiquitous corruption, and poor human rights situations in the region. However, neither explanation captures the entire picture. Contrary to the pessimists’ opinion, the past two decades have not been wasted by the former Soviet republics. They have retained their sovereignty, become integrated in the global capitalist division of labor, evolved distinct national identities, and avoided interstate wars that had beset other parts of the former socialist bloc. Occasional outbreaks of civil violence such as the 2005 disturbances in Andijan in Uzbekistan, or elite coups in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010, were relatively minor incidents compared to the revolutionary turmoil in the Arab world in recent years; they certainly have not led to a dramatic overhaul of the extant “governance models.” Perhaps this is because these models are not as ossified and unviable as some doomsayers suggest. It is the contention of this chapter that states in Central Asia are not in danger of failure in the foreseeable future because they have learned how to survive and, if not exactly thrive, then muddle through, interacting with the myriad of actors domestically and internationally. Joel Migdal noted that the most subtle and fascinating patterns of political change had arisen from the accommodation between states and other powerful organizations in society, adding that “such accommodations could not be predicted using existing models and theories of macrolevel social and political change.”16 His “state-in-society” approach, which will be followed in the outgoing analysis, enjoins researchers to avoid the views “that portray the state as largely determined by a grand historical narrative and/or that present it as a gargantuan coherent and unified ‘actor’” and focus instead on the mutually transformative relationship between state and society (or rather loose groupings constituting them) that structures day-to-day life and maintains the rules that govern people’s behavior.17

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There is nothing special about the state in Central Asia, its ostensibly totalitarian pedigree notwithstanding. Under the veneer of monolithic presidential rule, it is composed of agencies, sections, and cliques that often pull public policy in different directions. It also cannot bring other societal organizations into submission using Promethean ideology, coercion, or blunt instruments of the centrally planned economy as was the case under the Soviet political masters;18 it has to create coalitions with some of these organizations and block others in order to survive. Most Western commentators pay too much attention to just one segment of society in this dynamic – the modern civic realm represented by formal, democratic, tolerant organizations routinely engaged in political participation. There is now considerable literature coming from the African and Middle East contexts that valorizes a much broader understanding of civil society that is not necessarily modern, much less formal, and yet is rather efficient in checking authoritarian rulers’ abuses, increasing accountability, and creating a common framework for disparate interests.19 The chapter investigates the state’s interactions with groupings within this wider civil society, arguing that it is the positive mutually transformative engagement between the two that has produced viable governance models in Central Asia regardless of the palpable democracy deficit. Empirical evidence will be drawn primarily from Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, the richest and poorest countries in Central Asia respectively.

Fierce and weak: The authoritarian state in Central Asia The five republics of Central Asia have political systems dominated by the institution of the president, who is not just the head of state but also controls the government through the power of appointment; the legislative and judicial branches are in turn dominated by the executive. In theory, popular elections provide mandates to rule for presidents and parliaments. In practice, the fairness and transparency of these voting festivals have consistently drawn criticism at home and abroad. The five systems display differences in degrees of powersharing, coercion, and civil liberties, yet they unmistakably belong to the gens of authoritarianism.20 Taking stock of political developments in Eurasia in 2013, Freedom House lamented that “public life in the region is most often dominated by manipulated elections, a

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propagandistic media, a legal system that serves the leadership, and puppet opposition parties.”21 Kazakhstan and Tajikistan are located somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of authoritarian rule in Central Asia. Nazarbaev rose to the summit of power in Kazakhstan in 1989 thanks to the patronage of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. In December 1991, he was elected as the first president of sovereign Kazakhstan in an uncontested vote. In 1995, rather than facing new elections, he called a referendum which extended his mandate for another term. He won multi-candidate elections in 2005 and 2011, garnering 91.1 and 95.5 percent of the vote respectively. The two-term limit for the “First President,” as Nazarbaev has been legally known since 2000, was lifted through a constitutional amendment in 2007. In 2010, parliament bestowed the honorific title of Elbasy (“Leader of the Nation”) on Nazarbaev. He has declined grassroots initiatives, spontaneous or otherwise, inviting him to become president for life, yet in recent years a cult of personality has begun to emerge around his figure. The system of government in Kazakhstan can be concisely described as super-presidentialism.22 The executive bodies at all levels, including regional administrations, report directly to the head of state who, according to the 1995 Constitution, also doubles as the head of government. The bicameral parliament and the judiciary have circumscribed powers and do not exercise effective oversight over the executive. The official “party of power,” Nur Otan, has dominated the lower house of the parliament (Majlis). Following the 2007 elections, it was the only political party represented in the Majlis. Nazarbaev’s superpresidential techniques such as frequent changes to the rules of political competition, gerrymandering, direct and indirect control of the media, and, occasionally, repression, are well attested.23 Emomali Rahmon, who came to power in Tajikistan in 1992, has followed a similar trajectory in constructing a super-presidential regime. After serving as the head of a weak parliament inherited from the Soviet days, he was elected as president in 1994 and 1999. A referendum in 1999 approved a new constitution introducing a bicameral parliament with dramatically reduced powers and a mandate for Rahmon to run for two more consecutive terms, extended from five to seven years. The latest elections held in 2013 returned him to office with 83.6 percent of the vote. In the assessment of observers from the

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Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), “while quiet and peaceful, this was an election without a real choice.”24 While Tajikistan has a diverse range of political parties aside from the president’s People’s Democratic Party that heavily dominates the national parliament, politicians overstepping the line are known to have been punished through the medium of the selective criminal justice system. For instance, two wealthy former officials who dared to enter legal opposition ended up in jail for 23 and 26 years in 2005 and 2013, respectively, on charges including terrorism, theft, tax avoidance, and rape. The authoritarian regimes of Central Asia fit the image of what Nazih Ayubi called the “fierce state,” describing the situation where its incumbents can act free of constitutional constraint.25 It ought not to be confused with the “strong state.” Let us recall Migdal’s definition of the state: It is an organization, composed of numerous agencies led and coordinated by the state’s leadership (executive authority) that has the ability or authority to make and implement the binding rules for all the people as well as the parameters of rule making for other social organizations in a given territory, using force if necessary to have its way.26 The strength of Central Asian states is problematic both in terms of their internal cohesion and coordination, and the capacity to impose rules of behavior upon the population and mobilize it to accomplish the goals set by the national leaders. One salient factor of intrastate fragmentation is regionalism. Since the rigid system of Soviet control was lifted, local elites have constantly challenged the authority of the central government. Luong’s study of postindependence institutions such as electoral systems and parliaments came up with a theory of the “transitional bargaining game” which, in the case of Kazakhstan, pitted central leaders, “including the president, his closest advisors, a hand-picked number of legal experts, and a select group of Supreme Soviet deputies” against regional leaders, that is, provincial and district governors.27 Tajikistan provides another illustration of adversarial center – periphery relations. Competition among regional elites for control over the national

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government led to overt violence in the republic in 1990 while the Soviet Union was still intact, and culminated in the civil war of 1992 to 1997.28 Quantifying the state’s ability to penetrate society is not an easy task. Tax effort is often used as the measure of the state’s capacity to mobilize and extract revenues, which is an important aspect of social control.29 Throughout the 1990s, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan fared poorly on this account. In 1998, their tax revenue to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio was 7.3 and 7.7 percent, respectively, which was about half of the global average for low-income countries, and less than one-third for upper-middle income countries. In the next decade, however, figures improved considerably, to the high point of 22.5 percent and 18.8 percent respectively in 2011.30 Another indication of the state’s failure to penetrate society is that grand initiatives promulgated by state leaders in Central Asia often fail to be implemented. In 2012, a local analyst summarized Kazakhstan’s track record as follows: Since 2000, a lot of strategies and development programs have been drafted and adopted in Kazakhstan: a strategy for industrialinnovative development, a strategy for spatial-territorial development, a strategy for the complex transport development, a strategy for sustainable development, the “30 corporate leaders of Kazakhstan” program, a program for countryside development [. . .] Not a single program has been realized fully. The majority of them have been forgotten because the adoption of a new program in practice cancels the implementation of the previous ones. All the same, nobody has borne personal responsibility, either moral or material, for under-fulfilling and discrediting of the adopted decisions.31 A similar fate has befallen many of the grandiose projects of the government of Tajikistan. President Rahmon has identified food security and energy security as strategic priorities for his country. A major land reform is an integral part of the former, yet it has been routinely subverted, misrepresented, or ignored by local players.32 The construction of the Roghun hydroelectric station is fundamental to satisfying the country’s energy needs. After failing to secure external

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funding for the project, Rahmon declared it a national symbol in 2010 and called on all Tajiks to invest in the Roghun Joint Stock Company. In a drive reminiscent of Joseph Stalin’s forced subscription to the industrialization bonds, government employees, schools, mosques, farms, army units, and individual citizens were actively encouraged to buy the Roghun shares. By November 2011, only 1.8 million out of 5 million shares had found owners, and the Ministry of Finance quietly discontinued their further circulation posting a delightfully tautological comment that “there is no demand [. . .] We cannot explain the reason. Maybe, this is because there is a slump in people’s interest.”33 Two decades after independence, therefore, the state remains weak in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Compared to the 1990s, it has acquired more resources – administrative, human, and especially financial – to conduct the ordinary business of government, but its capacity to accomplish drastic reforms changing the nation’s destiny remains circumscribed.

Anemia of modern civic politics in Central Asia If the authoritarian state represents an order of deficient things (or a deficient order of things) in Central Asia, then civil society is its nemesis and redeemer in the eyes of Western scholars and politicians. Civil society is a normative concept imbued with the values of liberalism and modernity, as well as an analytic term commonly denoting “political parties, the communications media, and organizations of citizens interested in the quality of civic life.”34 Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a crusade-like movement coalesced incorporating a welter of private foundations, global prodemocracy networks, but also statesmen: “[l]eaders of USAID [United States Agency for International Development], USIA [United States Information Agency], and other governmental funding bodies concluded that the most noble mission their agencies could pursue in the newly independent states was to foster the development of ‘civil society’.”35 A decade into the process of democracy promotion, even the staunchest adherents of neoliberal globalization started to notice that ordinary people in Central Asia had developed a pattern of “undermining or neutralizing political reform activities of foreign donor organizations and even political reform initiated by Central Asian government leaders.”36 Another ten years later apprehension gave way to

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quiet exasperation. In 2011, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had to concede that civic participation had been weakening in Central Asia, and many civil society organizations in the region had become parasites, or, in politically correct terms, “‘professional’ donor-driven organizations with access to resources but weak links to local communities.”37 To better understand this phenomenon, Nancy Lubin conducted two thorough surveys of public opinion in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in 1993 and 2007. These surveys showed a great deal of consistency in people’s attitudes to the best form of government, which put a premium on order and discipline over liberal democracy and demonstrated that “views of democratic reform in many ways remained theoretical and abstract, with little relevance to their own lives.”38 While there was a substantial increase in party membership in Kazakhstan over the past decade (thanks to Nur Otan’s recruitment drive among state employees), civic activism and modern formats of volunteer work failed to take firm root.39 Surveys performed by the International Federation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in Tajikistan revealed similar dynamics. In 1996, 79 of the respondents voiced their “in principle” support for democracy; however, their understanding of what democracy entailed was rather unconventional. For instance, when asked about the ideal number of political parties in a democratic state, 47 percent said one, and 11 percent said zero. Only 9 percent identified freedom of speech as an essential attribute of democracy.40 Contrary to the West’s alarm about growing authoritarianism in Tajikistan, the share of Tajikistani citizens believing that they are already living in a democracy rose steadily from 39 percent in 1996 to 74 percent in 2004 to 83 percent in 2010.41 The confusion between the abstract notions of democracy on the one hand and satisfaction with a government that can maintain order and deliver basic public goods is all too obvious here. The weakness of pressure from below to democratize and the failure of externally-generated attempts at promoting civic-mindedness in Central Asia have been subjected to much analytical debate recently.42 Pathdependency and Orientalist tropes have little value; blunders by donors in implementing and executing the democratizing agenda cannot be ignored but are limited in scope; and active resistance by authoritarian regimes may be exaggerated when applied to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.

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In fact, the triangular relationship between the state, local civil society, and the latter’s patrons abroad provides a good example of mutual transformation rather than outright acrimony. The low point in this relationship was reached in the wake of a series of “cultured revolutions” during the period of 2003 to 2005 when the Central Asian leaders started to view all foreign-sponsored nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as harbingers of unconstitutional regime change. Administrative measures followed: in 2007, all NGOs in Tajikistan were forced to reregister, and only 948 out of 3,130 survived the process.43 This may have taken the wind from the floundering sails of human rights groups and other civic activists, but the bulk of the closed organizations operated in the service delivery sector, and their departure left a void the state could not fill. Following a series of formal and informal consultations, a compromise was reached: the authorities removed restrictions and the number of NGOs rebounded quickly, except that now they and their sponsors are expected “not to touch on controversial issues such as the nature of the political regime or legitimacy of the government,” sticking to poverty reduction and rural capacity building instead.44 The brutal structural reforms carried out by post-Soviet leaders in the 1990s at the behest of Western backers and in line with the prevalent neoliberal paradigm of development enshrined in the Washington Consensus had catastrophic repercussions for the future of civic politics in Central Asia. Joma Nazpary was the first political anthropologist to explore systematically the chaos wrought by wild capitalism upon societies in the region. On the basis of extensive fieldwork in Kazakhstan, he documented “the extreme legal and moral disorder in the social life” that arose from the sudden and, with the benefit of hindsight, unnecessary shock therapy, including such symptoms as: corruption, cynicism, violence, the mafia, lawlessness and arbitrariness of state officials, the dissolution of the welfare state, the dispossession of a wide range of people from economic and social rights, alcoholism, prostitution, ethnic conflicts, despair, suicide, and fear of the future.45 Charles Buxton’s study confirmed Nazpary’s findings and went one step further: “[h]ow can civil society growth sit easily with the collapse of society? If we make this link, it becomes clear that, for example,

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improving the image or even the work of CSOs [civil society organizations] will not fully gain people’s trust.”46 The dislocation, fear, and uncertainties of postcommunism described above apply to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan most accurately, but they were also present in Tajikistan, where transitional chaos had started to manifest itself already in the twilight years of Gorbachev’s reforms, as well as in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, where the dismantling of the old Soviet system occurred more gradually. Everywhere in the region traditional solidarity networks based on kinship, neighborhood (mahalla), mosque, and ethnicity quickly evolved as the main mechanisms available to individuals to survive. “The destruction of the welfare state is widely interpreted as the destruction of the larger society as a moral community,” commented Nazpary, “and this understanding has led to the individual ceasing to have any social commitment beyond his or her own networks.”47

Reconstitution of a strong traditional society and its interaction with the state The spontaneous and rapid “archaisation of society” and the proliferation of “folk-law institutions” were greatly expedited by the residual traditionalism of the Soviet period.48 Sergei Poliakov showed how under a veneer of socialist modernization, customary norms and practices regulating family, gender, labor, and economic relations continued to exist in Central Asia, particularly in the countryside.49 In the chaos of post-communism, these norms and practices burst into the open and quickly spread into the heretofore cosmopolitan urban setting on the shoulders of the rural poor flocking to the city. Kinshipbased networks formed alliances among themselves and other solidarity groups including the mafia, creating a mosaic of informal social and political exchange.50 The viability of the post-Soviet Central Asian states was and continues to be contingent on their engagement with powerful actors in this neo-traditional society. One can agree with Kathleen Collins that examining clans, that is, informal organizations “built on an extensive network of kin and fictive, or perceived and imagined, kinship relations,” is particularly central to an understanding of “the real nature of political order and disorder in Central Asia.”51

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Engaging with the clans In Kazakhstan, clan politics is structured primarily along tribal lines. Representatives of three tribal agglomerations – hordes or zhuzes – constantly compete for access to state resources. In the first half of the 1990s, President Nazarbaev consistently acted in the interest of members of his tribal group – the Elder zhuz – which was particularly evident in their preponderance in top executive positions; however, the resistance of elites from two other hordes forced him to form alliances and seek compromises (quite humiliating ones at times) with them.52 In Edward Schatz’s opinion, Nazarbaev eventually mastered the art of “clan clientelism” and “clan balancing” – privileging his extended family and the elite members of his zhuz, yet without upsetting the patronage networks of other “umbrella clans.”53 There was a brief moment when clan cryptopolitics became public. Martha Brill Olcott provided a compelling account of how, from 1992 to 1995, rival clans had captured such institutions of state as parliament, regional administrations (exacerbating the problem of regionalism discussed earlier), and the Constitutional Court. This threatened not just Nazarbaev’s grip on power, but the very existence of Kazakhstan as a sovereign entity. This provided the context for the constitutional reform of 1995, when “public opinion in the republic accepted direct presidential rule with little objection.”54 By 2005, a working pact had emerged among the elite clans with Nazarbaev as its chief arbiter and guarantor. A group of Kazakhstani experts described this pact as a result of trial and error rather than deliberate strategy, and outlined its broad characteristics as follows: the state ensures the clans’ access to economic resources away from public scrutiny and institutional oversight; the clans do not interfere with the state’s prerogative of defining national ideology; and political competition is confined to influencing the president rather than appealing directly to public constituencies.55 There are calls from marginal opposition politicians to acknowledge the zhuzes officially as a structural foundation of Kazakh society and bring clan politics into the open through some form of institutionalization.56 Such calls are not likely to be heeded, as the pact outlined above has been working reasonably well.57 Besides, all Central Asian leaders have learned from the lessons of Kyrgyzstan which experienced two “revolutions” in 2005 and 2010. In reality, these were not revolutions at all, not even regime changes, but rather elite circulations at the helm of the state

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brought around by disgruntled regional clans.58 It was Kyrgyzstan’s relatively open political space that allowed clan leaders opposed to the president to mobilize citizens through clientelist ties.59 As mentioned earlier, the civil war in Tajikistan was an extreme form of regionalism. The peace accord of 1997 was essentially about a powersharing deal between President Rahmon, representing the southern Kulobi clan, and elite factions from other regions, particularly Gharm and Badakhshon. Sally Cummings erroneously characterized this agreement as “institutionalized consociationalism.”60 In fact, it was a personal undertaking by Rahmon to give 30 percent of executive positions in government, including its military and security apparatus, to his former enemies. There were no formal laws or explicit mechanisms of mediation put in place; the informal elite pact rested on the goodwill of contracting parties and Rahmon’s role as an arbiter. To his credit, Rahmon has performed this role well. Most importantly, he presided over the demilitarization of clan politics in Tajikistan. By 2005, the central government had managed to coopt, disarm, or destroy the most notorious regional warlords both from Kulob and other regions. Peace has been maintained, although, unlike in Kazakhstan, there have been quite a few incidents associated with the creeping Kulobization of power and excessive interference of central government into local personnel appointments and business practices. Low intensity fighting occurred in Gharm in 2010 and Badakhshon in 2012 and 2013, but a suitable compromise was found between the government and disgruntled local leaders quickly. Post-Soviet states and clans transform and reify each other in Central Asia. Clan politics is highly informal, but it does not displace rationallegal authority and formal institutions entirely. Rather, the informal suffuses the formal system and provides authoritarian leaders with extra discretion about which rules of behavior they will apply in a given situation, and keep citizens guessing about this.61 John Heathershaw referred to this hybridity as an “intersubjective process of complex legitimacy”: in the eyes of the population, there is no alternative to the president as the chief custodian of peace, so “it becomes normal, justifiable and even a moral requirement not to know or care about politics.”62

Building the nation Migdal noted that the “third wave” of state creation after the end of the Cold War saw the governments’ sovereign prerogative to establish

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boundaries and define membership in the nation dramatically diminished by the double whammy of globalization and domestic societal fragmentation. The new state’s efforts to mobilize and shore up its authority would almost invariably feature the introduction of multiple categories of citizenship and the differential allocation of privileges.63 This analysis rings true for Central Asia, where Kazakhstan and Tajikistan represent the cases of the soft and hard social boundary between the dominant ethnic group and others. In his 2006 book Kazakhstanskii put’ [The Kazakhstani Path], Nazarbaev derided Zbigniew Brzezinski and Alexander Solzhenitsyn who, among many other commentators in the early 1990s, predicted the collapse and disintegration of Kazakhstan due to its patchwork of ethnic communities that used to be held together by the iron will of the Soviet regime.64 Nazarbaev claimed that he had a winning strategy to ensure national unity of the country from day one and implemented it unswervingly. In reality, the current national idea championing diversity and multiculturalism under the slogan of “Kazakhstan – our common home” did not take root until the late 1990s, after several abortive attempts to mount an ethno-nationalist project. The state had to abandon its early intention to build “Kazakhstan for the Kazakhs” in the face of resistance by the Russian minority (supported by nationalist politicians in Russia) that protested against draconian language reforms, official employment discrimination, negative reappraisals of Soviet history by the Kazakh authorities, and gerrymandering and migration policies designed to change the demographic landscape in the northern and northeastern parts of the country. The peak of protest was reached in 1994 when the most radical Russian groups revived old Cossack hosts and started to set up illegal governance structures.65 Another factor in the eventual moderation of the official line was the resentment felt by urban educated bilingual Kazakhs towards the influx of their rural ethnic brethren to the cities. The former often had greater cultural affinity with their Russian neighbors than with the migrants from the countryside, who were now touted as harbingers of real “Kazakhness” by the state.66 The mutually transformative relationship between the state and societal units within the framework of nation-building in Kazakhstan has led to a softening of the boundary between the titular ethnicity and ethnic minorities. The institutional embodiment of this process is the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan (renamed the Assembly of the

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People of Kazakhstan in 2007), a consultative and deliberative body headed by the president that consists of representatives of various minority groups and acts as a collective lobbyist on their behalf. The Kazakhs are still positioned as a privileged group, but only as a “unifying nucleus of the developing Kazakhstani civic community”; non-Kazakhs feel sufficiently reassured about their enfranchisement.67 On the other hand, within the privileged core itself the position of oralmans – Kazakh repatriates from China, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – has been downgraded. In the early 1990s, these overwhelmingly rural migrants were to be the vanguard of Nazarbaev’s ethno-demographic engineering, and the state allocated considerable financial resources to expedite their resettlement.68 By 2012, the oralmans accounted for 10 percent of the population of Kazakhstan, but they had failed to be integrated with the rest of the Kazakhs, developing sub-cultural enclaves instead, which was lately recognized as a potential security threat by the authorities at the highest level.69 The official narrative of nationalism in Tajikistan, by contrast, has had a decidedly ethnocentric character which has sought to foster national pride through appellation to the cultural exceptionalism of Tajiks, and their juxtaposition with the menacing and barbarian “other” – the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, Uzbeks in particular, who had terrorized Tajiks for centuries including during the Soviet period. “The Tajik people who survived this terrible onslaught will never forget the tragic events of their history,” wrote President Rahmon.70 The state has consistently identified the Uzbek minority as a “dangerous population”. Uzbeks have been denied access to political power at all levels, and their autonomous cultural and educational space has been circumscribed. A process of their creeping “Tajikization” is underway.71 Unlike the Russian minority in Kazakhstan, Uzbeks in Tajikistan could not find efficient ways to counter the exclusivist policies of the state. The lack of support from Uzbekistan and the lingering trauma of the civil war which decimated many local Uzbek communities may have been responsible for this failure. Nonetheless, the government of Rahmon does not have a free hand in imposing its chosen script of national authenticity upon all citizens. For instance, its attempts during 2008 and 2009 to promote the Sunni Hanafi creed as an integral part of Tajik national culture have been successfully challenged by the Shiʽa Ismaili Pamiris.72

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The Central Asian governments have constantly imposed, negotiated, and modified the social lines defining the nation-state since independence. Traditional social actors such as subethnic groups and ethnic and religious minorities have been more than passive subjects in this process. Migdal made an excellent point that the experiences of Central Asia in constructing the “third wave” states were not different in principle to what had been occurring in the Baltic republics or, indeed, in the US or Israel during their early statehood.73

Islam The specter of Islamic radicalism haunting Central Asia has been a favorite trope of Western commentators specializing in gloomy predictions of state failure in the region.74 Central Asia, according to this narrative, is at risk of becoming another Afghanistan, and the only way to deal with this scourge is for the local regimes to embrace liberal reforms with benign support from the US and its allies.75 Nick Megoran and John Heathershaw debunked this approach as crude, Orientalist, and determinist, a “preconceived self-referential discourse of danger which identifies threats to us [the West], while failing to appreciate the insecurities that are felt and experienced by Central Asians.”76 Their critique focuses on the methodology behind grand assumptions about radical Islam that is light on empirical evidence, and the way they are imposed upon indigenous security intellectuals who mechanically re-broadcast them at home. This critique is absolutely warranted. Recalling Edward Said’s memorable phrase, an anthropologist who spent decades studying Islam in Central Asia railed against an army of “combative and woefully ignorant policy experts” grinding out books on “terrorism and liberalism,” and identifying “good” and “bad” Muslims using simplistic schemes.77 Islamic “fundamentalism” in the region is a Protean creature, constantly snapping in and out of the “radical” mode, and deeply steeped in localized political, kinship, and economic relations.78 The idea (or ideal) of an Islamic state is not a going concern in Central Asia. Two and a half decades after independence, Central Asian Muslims remain strongly committed to the secular republican form of government. Their views on modernity, shari’a law, the role of religious figures and parties in politics, violence, and social issues such as women’s rights are also quite moderate and bear closer resemblance to Muslims’

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attitudes in Russia and Southeast Europe rather than the Middle East or South Asia.79 In their opinion, the three main threats posed by Islamic radicals are the disruption of socioeconomic stability, the dilution of their authentic cultural identity by alien doctrines, and random acts of terror.80 State response to the revival of Islam has been quite robust, and by no means reducible to the passage of tough legislation, increased police measures, and other means of administrative control. In search of a deradicalization strategy, secular leaders have engaged meaningfully with Muslim norms and institutions. In Kazakhstan, this engagement has proceeded on three planes: cooperation with the traditional Sunni establishment; investment in Islamic education and communication; and the incorporation of Islamic symbols, rituals, and festivities into the official national idea without jeopardizing its overall secular thrust. The state has informally encouraged the promotion of moderate Sunni Hanafism, traditionally prevalent in Kazakhstan, over other schools of Islam. Working together with the Hanafi Muftiate, it has deregistered a large number of mosques run by “suspicious” imams. Thanks to unofficial state patronage, the Hanafi establishment itself has improved the quality of its members, getting rid of the semiliterate and torpid personnel inherited from the Soviet period, and started to tackle the information assault of different “literalist” groups, especially targeting the youth, in an efficient manner. Taking stock of these developments in the period of 2011 to 2013, Galym Zhussipbek noted that “on the whole the strategy of curbing the spread of religious radicalism may be considered successful.”81 The state’s funding for a plethora of new Islamic institutions of learning, publishing houses, and media outlets may have begun to pay real dividends, enabling moderate Muslims to receive a proper religious education without going abroad and to be confident debating with assorted literalists.82 Nazarbaev has consistently promoted the line that the Kazakh national identity is based on organic fusion between the nomadic values of ancient Turks and the Qur’anic mores flexibly adapted to this milieu by the Hanafi scholars and Yasavi Sufi mystics. He is hopeful that this flexible “enlightened” Islam will continue to play the role of a “spiritual intermediary between secular authorities and the believers in the process of the stabilization of the social and political condition of the state.”83 Tajikistan has followed a similar path in dealing with the challenge of radicalism, with one important variation that further illustrates the

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benefits of a transformative relationship between state and society for regime legitimacy. In 1997, it became the first and thus far the only country in Central Asia to legalize an Islamist political group. The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) acquired the constitutional right to participate in elections and propagate its message in the mass media. The IRPT, at its inception in 1990 and during the Tajik Civil War, strove to establish a strict Islamic order in the country. Having left the underground and facing the need to compete for the hearts and minds of an electorate that was not that keen on political Islam, it switched its position and endorsed the secular republic as the preferred system of government for Tajikistan, promoting Islamic values, economics, and morals as means to improve it.84 As a mainstream opposition party, the IRPT has joined Rahmon in condemning extremist Islamic movements, yet it has also exposed and effectively moderated the regime’s awkward attempts to control religious discourse and practice. In 2010, the voting appeal of the IRPT was the same as in 2004, at about 6 percent, yet 62 percent of the electorate had a positive image of it; and only 2 percent of Tajikistan’s citizens believed that their religious freedom was not respected by the government.85

Political economy of authoritarianism The gloomy predictions of a jihadi revolution or general political instability in Central Asia are invariably premised on the abysmal economic performance by the authoritarian regimes.86 The mantra of “crippling poverty” and “declining standards of life” is so entrenched that it requires no empirical validation among the pessimistic observers. Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that after the shock of the Soviet disintegration in the 1990s, all countries in the region can boast some real achievements on the economic front. According to a 2014 World Bank report, the headcount ratio at the national poverty line in Kazakhstan decreased from 46.7 percent in 2001 to 3.5 percent in 2012; corresponding figures for Tajikistan were 96 percent in 1999 and 47.2 percent in 2009.87 Both countries registered sustained economic growth, and rode out the global financial crisis of 2008 to 2009 well. Over the past decade, their leaders displayed a conservative approach to development policies, abstaining from the radical reforms advocated by the West and focusing on macroeconomic

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stability and welfare provision. This clearly irritated some observers: US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks described Tajikistan as the corrupt, alcohol-sodden fiefdom of President Rahmon, who “has no deep understanding of the complexities and realities of the global economy.”88 Professional economists were more charitable, conceding that “[w]hile the regime is not at all committed to political and economic reform, it is attentive enough to maintain a certain amount of support from a significant portion of the population.”89 In their pioneering work, Pamela Abbott and Claire Wallace developed a composite methodology measuring the quality of life that combines objective and subjective indicators of wellbeing across four variables of economic situation, social cohesion, social inclusion, and empowerment. Their conclusion was unequivocal: “Kazakhstan now has levels of general satisfaction as high as or higher than those of the former Communist countries that are now part of the EU.”90 Others have also acknowledged that ordinary people are good judges of their own circumstances and that their lived experience is meaningful: it may be better to have moderate levels of prosperity than face the failure of high expectations associated with Western recipes, as was the case with Kyrgyzstan under President Askar Akaev.91 In 2012, 87 percent of Tajikistanis assessed their families’ economic situation as “good” or “OK” although “objective” indicators of GDP per capita probably did not warrant this; 75 percent were satisfied with life.92 Kazakhstan’s economic development is linked primarily to the oil and gas sector. Its GDP per capita grew by a factor of seven between 1997 and 2012 thanks to increased volumes of hydrocarbon production and high global prices. It is moving into the same category of global exporters as Kuwait, Iran, and Iraq, and has heretofore avoided the pitfalls of Dutch disease. A moderate policy of resource nationalism that commenced in 2007 has increased state control over natural resources without deterring foreign investors. In 2012, Nazarbaev unveiled an ambitious “Kazakhstan-2050” program whereby the country would enter the club of 30 most developed nations in the world by that year. As with other strategic initiatives mentioned earlier, it is doubtful that the program will be fulfilled as intended, but the president has clearly made a commitment to increased social spending.93 There is evidence that oil revenues are already being shared more equitably among Kazakhstan’s regions and all citizens as a whole, perhaps in response to the events in Zhanaozen.94

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Rentier income from labor migrants abroad has been the key factor behind Tajikistan’s economic growth, which averaged 8.7 percent in 2000 to 2007 and 6.9 percent in 2010 to 2013, as well as its progress in poverty reduction. Remittances sent by 1 million migrant workers, mostly employed in Russia, have accounted for over half of the country’s GDP in recent years. This revenue not only provides sustenance for households left in Tajikistan and alleviates the burden of joblessness, but also expedites local investment, development, and “human capacity building.”95 Far from being a passive beneficiary, the state has actively engaged with migrants, their families, and external actors to streamline rents, minimize associated risks, and maximize their benefits for society as a whole.96

Conclusion Migdal’s ideas about the mutually transformative relationship between state and society are helpful in problematizing the entrenched images of Central Asia as the preserve of obstinate dictatorial regimes teetering on the brink of collapse. The history of the region since independence has been about the rulers and the ruled figuring out how to survive and even thrive in a difficult post-Soviet environment. That the involvement of modern civil society in this process of social learning has been featherlight has not made it shallow or intangible. The chapter showed that the state in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, its fierce fac ade of super-presidentialism notwithstanding, is weak – much weaker than its communist progenitor. Neither state has the same capacity to penetrate, regulate, and extract resources as its Soviet predecessor. Paradoxically, this very weakness may have accounted for its endurance. Instead of behaving as a hegemon, the state has been constantly negotiating compromises with other social actors on issues of governance, national identity, security, and wealth distribution. The ensuing “hybrid innovative adaptations,”97 both formal and informal, have proved effective in maintaining and legitimizing authoritarian rule. The fact that the current modality of a state-in-society relationship has worked for over two decades in Central Asia does not guarantee its perpetuation in the future. A succession crisis exacerbating clan rivalries, a precipitate involvement of a foreign power, or a global economic downturn are some of the exigencies that could upset the delicate balance of the mutually constitutive engagement. If modern civil society

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re-emerges from the ocean of neo-traditional actors and asserts itself vis-a`-vis the state, an authoritarian withdrawal can be expected. Judging by the Central Asian publics’ near-complete indifference to the Arab Spring, this is not likely to happen any time soon.98

Notes 1. Michael Mandelbaum, “Introduction.” In Post-Communism: Four Perspectives, edited by Michael Mandelbaum. New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996. 2. Martha Brill Olcott, Central Asia’s Second Chance. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005. 3. Geoff Watson has provided an excellent analysis of the history and intellectual pedigree of the notion of the failed state as applied to Central Asia. In his opinion, the label is a Western construct, a caricature of the region’s peoples and environment based on Social Darwinism, ignorance, and the desire to legitimate intervention. See Geoff Watson, “‘Failed States’ on the ‘Perilous Frontier,’” historical bases of state formation in Afghanistan and Central Asia.” In China, Xinjiang and Central Asia: History, Transition and Crossborder Interaction into the 21st Century, edited by Colin Mackerras and Michael Clarke. London: Routledge, 2009. 4. International Crisis Group, “Central Asia: decay and decline.” Asia Report, No. 201. February 3, 2011, p. 36. 5. In 2008, David Lewis warned that the current regimes were unlikely to last for 15 more years, and that “when they do disintegrate, the consequences [to the West] may be far worse than anything we have seen so far.” See David Lewis, The Temptations of Tyranny in Central Asia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 236. 6. Hooman Peimani, Conflict and Security in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009, p. 4. 7. Larry Diamond, “Introduction: in search of consolidation.” In Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies: Regional Challenges, edited by Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, Yun-han Chu and Hung-mao Tien. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, p. xxxi. 8. David Lewis, “Sovereignty after empire: the colonial roots of Central Asian authoritarianism.” In Sovereignty after Empire: Comparing the Middle East and Central Asia, edited by Sally N. Cummings and Raymond Hinnebusch. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. 9. Ernest Gellner, Encounters with Nationalism. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1994, p. 180. 10. G. Lowell Field and John Higley, Elites and Non-Elites: The Possibilities and their Side Effects. Boston, MA: Routledge, 1973, p. 8. 11. John Higley and Gyorgy Lengyel, eds, Elites After State Socialism: Theories and Analysis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000.

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12. Parag Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. New York: Random House, 2008, p. 265. 13. Robert M. Cutler, “De-authoritarization in Uzbekistan? Analysis and prospects.” In Towards Social Stability and Democratic Governance in Central Eurasia: Challenges to Regional Security, edited by Irina Morozova. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2005, p. 139. 14. Pauline Jones Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity in Post-Soviet Central Asia: Power, Perceptions, and Pacts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 154. 15. Philip Shishkin, Central Asia’s Crisis of Governance. Hong Kong: Asia Society, 2012, p. 4. 16. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 31. 17. Joel S. Migdal, State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 251–63. 18. Modern day revisionists question the extent and even the conceptual veracity of totalitarian control in the Soviet Union, of course. 19. Sheila Carapico, Civil Society in Yemen: The Political Economy of Activism in Modern Arabia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010. 20. Sally Cummings, Understanding Central Asia: Politics and Contested Transformations. London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 63– 4. 21. Sylvana Habdank-Kołaczkowska, “Nations in transit 2013: authoritarian aggression and the pressures of austerity.” Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2013, p. 9. 22. Zhenis Kembaye, “The rise of presidentialism in post-Soviet Central Asia: the example of Kazakhstan.” In Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity, edited by Rainer Grote and Tilmann Ro¨der. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. 23. Ariel Cohen, “Kazakhstan: the road to independence energy policy and the birth of a nation.” Washington, DC: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, 2008; Andrew Wilson, Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. 24. OSCE, “Tajikistan presidential election peaceful, but lacking in pluralism and genuine choice, international observers say.” November 7, 2013. www.osce.org/ odihr/elections/107943. 25. Nazih N. Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. London: I.B.Tauris, 1995, pp. 450– 1. 26. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. 19. 27. Luong, Institutional Change and Political Continuity, pp. 213 – 52. 28. Kirill Nourzhanov and Christian Bleuer, Tajikistan: A Social and Political History. Canberra: ANU E-Press, 2013.

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29. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. 283. 30. Adapted from data by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. In 1989, the last year when the Soviet economy performed reasonably well, the tax to GDP ratio in Kazakhstan and Tajikistan was 41 percent. See Adrienne Cheasty, “The revenue decline in the countries of the former Soviet Union.” Finance and Development 33, no. 2 (1996), p. 34. 31. Renat Baitov, “Starshii nad provalom? Pravitelstvo Karima Masimova voidet v istoriiu Kazakhstana, kak samoe ‘dolgoe’i neudachnoe.” centrasia.ru. September 11, 2012. www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st¼ 1347342840. 32. Elizabeth Gomart, “Between civil war and land reform: among the poorest of the poor in Tajikistan.” In When Things Fall Apart: Qualitative Studies of Poverty in the Former Soviet Union, edited by Alexandre Marc, Nora Dudwick, Elizabeth Gomart and Kathleen Kuehnast. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003. 33. Zarina Ergasheva, “Prodazha aktsii OAO ‘Rogunskaia GES’ prekrashchena.” Asia-Plus, November 19, 2012. 34. Peter Loizos, “How Ernest Gellner got mugged on the streets of London; or, civil society, the media and the quality of life.” In Civil Society: Challenging Western Models, edited by Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn. London: Routledge, 1996, p. 47. 35. Frederick Starr, “Civil society in Central Asia.” In Civil Society in Central Asia, edited by Holt Ruffin and Daniel C. Waugh. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1999, p. 29. 36. Gregory Gleason, Markets and Politics in Central Asia: Structural Reform and Political Change. London: Routledge, 2003, p. 147. 37. UNDP, “Beyond transition: towards inclusive societies.” Bratislava: UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and CIS, 2011, p. 31. 38. Nancy Lubin and Arustan Joldasov, “Central Asians take stock, part II: comparison of results from public opinion survey, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, 1993 & 2007.” Seattle, WA: National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, University of Washington, 2009, p. 4. 39. Gulzhan Alimbekova and Aiman Zhusupova, “Osobennosti sotsialnogo samochuvstviia zhitelei Kazakhstana v svete izmeniaiushchiksia uslovii zhizni.” In Zdorov’e naseleniia i sotsialnye peremeny v postsovetskikh gosudarstvakh, edited by P. Brigadin. Minsk: GIUST BGU, 2013, p. 186. 40. Steven Wagner, “Obshchestvennoe mnenie v Tadzhikistane 1996g.” Washington, DC: International Foundation for Electoral Systems, 1996, pp. 6, 73, 85. 41. IFES, “Public opinion in Tajikistan 2010: findings from an IFES survey.” Washington, DC: IFES, 2010, p. 18. 42. Paul Kubicek, “Are Central Asian leaders learning from upheavals in Kyrgyzstan?” Journal of Eurasian Studies 2, no. 2 (2011), pp. 115 – 24. 43. Koalitsiia NPO Tadzhikistana, “Doklad NPO o vypolnenii Respublikoi Tadzhikistan mezhdunarodnogo pakta o grazhdanskikh i politicheskikh pravakh.” Dushanbe: N.p., 2013, p. 41. 44. Inna Zharkevich, “Civil society in Tajikistan – strengthening political accountability.” INTRAC Newsletter 45 (2010), p. 3.

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45. Joma Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan. London: Pluto Press, 2006, p. 2. 46. Charles Buxton, The Struggle for Civil Society in Central Asia: Crisis and Transformation. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2011, p. 16. 47. Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos, p. 87. 48. Olga Brusina, “Folk law in the system of power of Central Asian states and the legal status of the Russian-speaking population.” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 32, no. 45 (2000), p. 73. 49. Sergei P. Poliakov, Everyday Islam: Religion and Tradition in Rural Central Asia. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. 50. Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Birth of Nations. New York: New York University Press, 2007, pp. 96 – 100. 51. Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 24 – 5. 52. Nurbulat Masanov, “Kazakhskaia politicheskaia i intellektualnaia elita: klanovaia prinadlezhnost’i vnutrietnicheskoe sopernichestvo.” Vestnik Evrazii 2, no. 1 (1996), pp. 46 – 61. 53. Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics: The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2004, pp. 109– 12. 54. Martha Brill Olcott, “Nursultan Nazarbaev as strong president.” In Postcommunist Presidents, edited by Ray Taras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 121. 55. B. E. Kolumbaev et al, “Spetsifika formirovaniia i funktsionirovaniia sovremennoi administrativnoi elity Kazakhstana.” Vestnik Karagandinskogo universiteta 39, no. 3 (2005), pp. 148–9. 56. Galym Abilseitov and Petr Svoik, O gosudarstvennosti kazakhov: proshloe, nastoiashchee, budushchee. Almaty: N.p., 2012, pp. 79 – 80. 57. One possible exception may have been a riot of oil workers in Zhanaozen in December 2011, which is likely to have been inspired by small horde clans who sought to acquire more control over hydrocarbon rents on their territory. See Petr Bologov, “Mladshii zhuz: Poiavitsia li na beregakh Kaspiia novoe gosudarstvo?” lenta.ru, February 25, 2013. 58. Kirill Nourzhanov, “‘Coloured Revolutions’ as Elite Circulations: The Case of Central Asia.” In Political Islam and Human Security, edited by Fethi Mansouri and Shahram Akbarzadeh. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006; Kubicek, “Are Central Asian leaders learning from upheavals in Kyrgyzstan?” p. 116. 59. Scott Radnitz, Weapons of the Wealthy: Predatory Regimes and Elite-Led Protests in Central Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. 60. Cummings, Understanding Central Asia, p. 71. 61. Jo¨rn Gra¨vingholt, “The political economy of governance reform in Central Asia.” In Institutional Reform in Central Asia: Politico-Economic Challenges, edited by Joachim Ahrens and Herman W. Hoen. London: Routledge, 2013, p. 161.

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62. John Heathershaw, Post-Conflict Tajikistan: The Politics of Peacebuilding and the Emergence of Legitimate Order. London: Routledge, 2009, p. 74. 63. Joel S. Migdal, “State building and the non-nation-state.” Journal of International Affairs 58, no. 1 (2004), pp. 17 – 46. 64. N. A. Nazarbaev, Kazakhstanskii put’. Karaganda: ARKO, 2006, pp. 20 – 1. 65. Kurtov, “Politicheskie partii i dvizheniia Kazakhstana,” pp. 77 – 82. 66. Guzhvenko, Vostochnyi Kazakhstan, pp. 114– 25. 67. Throughout the 2000s, sociological surveys recorded an increasingly positive outlook on the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations in Kazakhstan by all communities. By the end of the decade, only 1.9 percent of Kazakhs, 5.8 percent of Russians, and 3.1 percent of “others” viewed them as “unfavorable.” See Kurganskaia, “Kazakhstanskaia model’ etnicheskogo soglasiia,” pp. 285– 6. 68. Oka, “A note on ethnic return migration policy in Kazakhstan.” 69. Alekseenko, “Migratsionnaia i demograficheskaia politiki,” pp. 165–7. 70. Rahmonov, The Tajiks in the Mirror of History, p. 95. 71. Matveeva, “The perils of emerging statehood,” p. 45. 72. M.M. Khudoyerov, “Ismailizm v nezavisimom Tadzhikistane: vozrozhdenie i reforma,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, no. 2 (2011), pp. 16 –27. 73. Joel S. Migdal, “State building and the non-nation-state.” p. 40. 74. Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. 75. Ibid. pp. 244– 5; Pauline Jones Luong, “The Middle Easternization of Asia.” Current History 102, no. 666 (2005), pp. 330– 40; Dennis J. D. Sandole, “Central Asia: managing the delicate balance between the ‘Discourse of Danger,’ the ‘Great Game,’ and regional problem solving.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 40, no. 2 (2007), pp. 257– 67. 76. Megoran and Heathershaw, “Danger and security in Central Asia,” p. 10. 77. Sergei Abashin, “The logic of Islamic practice: a religious conflict in Central Asia”, Central Asian Survey 25, no. 3, 2006, pp. 267– 86. 78. Murat Laumulin, “Islamic Radicalism in Central Asia.” In Religion and Security in South and Central Asia, edited by K. Warikoo. London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 139– 49. 79. Nancy Lubin, “Islam and Ethnic Identity in Central Asia: A View from Below.” In Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting Legacies, edited by Yaacov Ro’i. Portland: Frank Cass, 1995, pp. 53 – 70. 80. Taarnby, Islamist Radicalization in Tajikistan, pp. 56 – 7; Shibutov and Abramov, Terrorizm v Kazakhstane, pp. 41 – 4. Despite a handful of high-profile terrorist acts in Central Asia since 1999, their frequency and impact have not been particularly significant, well below the metrics for Iraq, Afghanistan, and also the UK and the US. See Institute for Economics & Peace, “Global terrorism index,” pp. 48 – 9). 81. Galym Zhussipbek, Religious Radicalism in Central Asia. Washington D.C.: Rethink Institute, 2013, p. 14.

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82. Alizhan Sh. Nurmanova and Asilbek K. Izbairov, “Islamic Education in Soviet and post-Soviet Kazakhstan.” In Islamic Education in the Soviet Union and its Successor States, edited by Michael Kemper et al. London: Routledge, 2010, pp. 280 – 312. 83. N. A. Nazarbaev, “V religii ekstremizma net.” In N. A. Nazarbaev – osnovopolozhnik kazakhstanskoi modeli mezhetnicheskogo i mezhkonfessionalnogo soglasiia, edited by A. N. Nysanbaev and A. G. Kosichenko. Almaty: Til, 2010, p. 24. 84. Muriel Atkin, “Token constitutionalism and Islamic opposition in Tajikistan.” Journal of Persianate Studies 5, no. 2 (2012), pp. 244–72. 85. IFES, “Public opinion in Tajikistan 2010,” pp. 17, 28, 33. 86. Eshref Trushin and Eskender Trushin, “Challenges to economic policy in Central Asia: is a miracle possible?” In Central Asia: A Gathering Storm? edited by Boris Rumer. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. 87. World Bank, “World databank.” databank.worldbank.org/data/home.aspx (accessed May 5, 2014). 88. George Camm, “Tajikistan led by ‘Cronyism and Corruption’ – WikiLeaks.” EurasiaNet, December 13, 2010. www.eurasianet.org/node/62564. 89. Bertelsmann Stiftung, “BTI 2014 – Tajikistan country report.” Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2014, p. 32. 90. Pamela Abbott and Claire Wallace, “Satisfaction and societal quality in Kazakhstan.” In Happiness across Cultures: Views of Happiness and Quality of Life in Non-Western Cultures, edited by Helaine Selin, 107– 20. Dordrecht: Springer, 2012, p. 117. 91. Anna Matveeva, “Legitimising Central Asian authoritarianism: political manipulation and symbolic power.” Europe-Asia Studies 61, no. 7 (2009), p. 1110. 92. Monitoring sotsialnykh nastroenii naseleniia stran postsovetskogo prostranstva. Moscow: Evraziiskii monitor, 2013, pp. 6, 8. 93. N. A. Nazarbaev, “Strategiia ‘Kazakhstan-2050’: novyi politicheskii kurs sostoiavshegosia gosudarstva.” In Poslanie Prezidenta RK – Lidera Natsii N.A. Nazarbaeva narodu Kazakhstana, edited by B. K. Sultanov. Almaty: KISI, 2013, pp. 53 – 68. 94. Bertelsmann Stiftung, “BTI 2014 – Kazakhstan country report.” Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2014, pp. 16, 27. 95. Gianni Betti and Lars Lundgren, “The impact of remittances and equivalence scales on poverty in Tajikistan.” Central Asian Survey 31, no. 4 (2014), p. 406. 96. K. J. Kamolov, “Tahlili ravandhoi muhojirati mehnati dar Tojikiston.” Tojikiston va jahoni imruz 30, no. 3 (2012), pp. 99– 116. 97. Marlene Laruelle, “Discussing neopatrimonialism and patronal presidentialism in the Central Asian context.” Demokratizatsiya 20, no. 4 (2012), p. 322. 98. Kirill Nourzhanov, “Central Asia and the Arab spring: discourses of relevance and threat in the region.” In Democracy and Reform in the Middle East and Asia: Social Protest and Authoritarian Rule after the Arab Spring, edited by Amin Saikal and Amitav Acharya. London: I.B.Tauris, 2014, pp. 121 – 42.

CHAPTER 8 WEAK STATES AND STRONG SOCIETIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Carlyle A. Thayer

Introduction This chapter adopts the framework developed by Joel S. Migdal in his classic publication, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World.1 Migdal’s central argument is that: the capacity of states (or incapacity, as the case may be), especially the ability to implement social policies and to mobilize the public, relates to the structure of society. The ineffectiveness of state leaders who have faced impenetrable barriers to state predominance has stemmed from the nature of society they have confronted – from resistance posed by chiefs, landlords, bosses, rich peasants, clan leaders, za’im, effendis, aghas, caciques, kulaks (for convenience “strongmen”) through their various social organizations.2 This proposition then leads to a consideration of what is the state? What are state capabilities? And what are strong and weak states? Migdal defines the state as follows: It [the state] is an organization composed of numerous agencies led and coordinated by the state’s leadership (executive authority) that

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has the ability or authority to make and implement the binding rules for all the people as well as the parameters of rule making for other social organizations in a given territory, using force if necessary to have its way.3 According to Migdal, state capabilities include: “the capacities to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined way.”4 Strong states, therefore, “are those with high capabilities to complete these tasks, while weak states are on the low end of a spectrum of capabilities.”5 Migdal argues that states have a dual nature, “their unmistakable strengths in penetrating societies and their surprising weaknesses in effecting goal-orientated social changes.”6 The dual nature of the state leads Migdal to raise this central question: “why have so many Third World states been so ineffective in accomplishing what their leaders and others had so eagerly expected of them, while a few others have done so much better in developing capabilities in social planning, policy, and action?”7 Migdal’s framework for analysis focuses on the interaction between state and society. States attempt to impose social control – or the rules of behavior – on society. He asserts that this struggle for social control must be brought into stark relief even before we can begin asking why some states have succeeded in their drive towards predominance and others have not. The model suggested here depicts society as a me´lange of social organizations, rather than the dichotomous structure that practically all past models of macrolevel changes have used (e.g., center– periphery, modern–traditional, and great tradition– little tradition).8 Social control involves rule-making, rule maintenance and enforcement, and rule adjudication by specific state organs and social organizations. According to Migdal, the groups in society that exercise social control may be heterogeneous in their form and the rules they apply; and the distribution of social control in society may be in the hands of numerous fairly autonomous groups rather than concentrated in the state. The ordinary people in any given country are sensitive to the roles of both the state and social organizations in setting the rules of behavior because their livelihoods depends on it. According to Migdal:

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These organizations – states, ethnic groups, the institutions of particular social classes, villages, and any other enforcing the rules of the game – singly or in tandem with one another, have offered individuals the components of survival strategies.9 Thus, the major contestation in state–society relations in so-called Third World states revolves around the question of “who has the right and ability to make the countless rules that guide people’s social behavior.”10 According to Migdal, “[t]hese struggles over whether the state will be able to displace or harness other organizations – families, clans, multinational corporations, domestic enterprises, tribes, patron-client dyads – which make rules against the wishes and goals of state leaders,” are determinative for social control.11 The levels of social control the state can exert are measured in a scale of three indicators: compliance (conformity to the demands of the state), participation (organization of the population in the state’s institutional components), and legitimation (acceptance of the state’s rules as right).12 Strong societies are what Migdal terms “weblike societies” where social control is “dispersed among various social organizations having their own rules” rather than those that are “centralized in the state or organizations authorized by the state.”13 Southeast Asia is comprised of 11 very diverse independent states. These states vary in terms of size, level of development, historical legacies, heterogeneity of society, experience under colonial rule, and political systems. Virtually all states in Southeast Asia confront serious challenges to their ability to dictate the “rules of behavior” to their societies. This chapter presents an analysis of the factors that contribute to weak states and strong societies in contemporary Southeast Asia. This chapter is divided into three sections. The first discusses the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI). The second critically examines the concept of a strong state, utilizing data from the Bertelsmann SGI for four states: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The third offers some conclusions on weak states and strong societies in Southeast Asia.

Bertelsmann Sustainable Governance Indicators There are no readily available cross-country indicators of state capacity for all of the countries in Southeast Asia. However, the Bertelsmann

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Stiftung in Germany has developed a series of measures of policy performance and governance capacities in Asia known as Sustainable Governance Indicators. The SGI comprises two main indexes, a Status Index and a Management Index. The Status Index examines the quality of democracy and policy performance in an individual country.14 The quality of democracy is measured by four variables: electoral process, access to information, civil rights, and rule of law. Each of these variables is subdivided into categories designed to examine the quality of democracy in four main areas: discriminatory electoral practices, the right of citizens to public information and the independence of the media, the protection of civil rights, and the legality of the government and administration (see Table 8.2 on page 155). Policy performance is measured by four variables: economy and employment, social affairs, security, and resources (see Table 8.4 on page 158). Each of these variables is also subdivided. For example, the economy and employment variable includes economic policy, labor market policy, enterprise policy, tax policy, and budgetary policy. The Management Index: examines how effective governments are in directing and implementing appropriate policies. Referring to more than the act of governing, executive governance encompasses the organizations and actors surrounding executives. Governments can fully develop their capacity only if they are embedded in a supportive environment. Therefore the Management Index examines not only the capacity of executives to act strategically, but also assesses whether parliaments, intermediary organizations and citizens hold governments accountable, enhance the knowledge base of decisions, and deliberate their normative appropriateness.15 The Management Index comprises two main variables – executive capacity and executive accountability (discussed separately later). Executive capacity is disaggregated into steering capacity, evidence-based instruments, inter-ministerial coordination, societal consultation, policy communication, effective policy implementation, adaptability, and organization reform capacity (see Tables 8.5–8.6 on pages 159 and 161). According to the SGI 2011 Codebook:

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Steering capability questions refer to the role of strategic planning and expert advice, the effectiveness of interministerial coordination and regulatory impact assessments, and the quality of consultation and communication policies. Questions on implementation assess the government’s ability to ensure an effective and efficient task delegation to ministers, agencies or subnational governments. Questions on institutional learning refer to a government’s ability to reform its own institutional arrangements and improve its strategic orientation.16 Two subject matter experts provide scores on each variable (see discussion below). The scores range from 1 (low) to 10 (high). The scores are grouped into four bands: 1 –2, 3 –5, 6 –8, and 9 –10 thus providing an overall indication of how a particular country ranks (low, medium low, medium high, and high) (see Table 8.1). The Bertelsmann SGI is drawn up by country experts in a six-step process. This involves (1) the first expert enters scores and supporting text for the first draft; (2) a second expert reviews and revises the draft text by adding comments and entering independent scores; (3) the regional coordinator further revises the text, contacts country experts to reconcile points of disagreement, and enters quantitative scores within the range provided by the first and second expert; (4) regional coordinators meet to calibrate and verify interregional comparability, and a board meeting is held for verification and final approval; (5) the country reports, policy papers, and special studies reports generated by the survey are edited; and (6) the reports are published and released to the public. The country reports are approximately 10,000 words in length. Unfortunately only four country reports from Southeast Asia, covering Table 8.1 SGI score 9– 10 6– 8 3– 5 1– 2

SGI scores grouped into bands Band

Description

1 2 3 4

High Medium high Medium low Low

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the period of 2010 to 2011 inclusive, have been released and published thus far.17 These reports provide one basis for comparing state capacity vis-a`-vis society in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

Strong societies and weak states in Southeast Asia With the exception of Brunei, all of Southeast Asia’s other ten states hold regular national elections. Of the four states on which a Bertelsmann country report has been published, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia are putative electoral democracies. The Bertelsmann country reports for Singapore and Malaysia, for example, characterize their political systems as “electoral authoritarian regimes.”18 Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia permit opposition parties to register and contest regular national elections. In the cases of Singapore and Malaysia, the same ruling party/coalitions have remained in power since independence: the People’s Action Party (PAP) and the Alliance/ National Front respectively. Indonesia is currently in transition and is in the process of consolidating democracy. Its electoral rules invariably result in a coalition government. Vietnam began to hold elections in 1992 under a law that required more than one candidate to contest each constituency.19 Only members of the Vietnam Communist Party and self-nominated independent candidates approved by the peak mass organization, the Vietnam Fatherland Front, are eligible to contest elections. There is no opposition block in Vietnam’s National Assembly.

Status Index: Quality of democracy The SGI scores on quality of democracy clearly indicate that none of the four countries is a liberal democracy (see Table 8.2). Due to defects in the electoral process, civil rights, rule of law, and access to information, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia can be classified as low-quality democracies. Their aggregate scores fall in the second lowest category or band three (where scores range from 3 to 5).20 Vietnam falls in the lowest category, or band four (where scores range from 1 to 2). Vietnam may be classified as a one-party state. Singapore was the only country to receive scores in the highest band for three variables:

5 4 6 1 2 2 5 1

Electoral process

9 4 4 9

Quality of democracy

9 2 3 1 3 3 6 1 3 2 7 2 5 4 5 2

Access to information

* See Table 8.3 for Corruption Perceptions Index data 2013.

Singapore Malaysia Indonesia Vietnam

Table 8.2

Country

Candidacy procedures Media access Voting and registration rights Party financing Media freedom Media pluralism Access to government information

5 5 4 2 3 4 5 1

Civil rights

Civil rights Political liberties

7 3 3 4

Nondiscrimination

9 3 5 3

Legal certainty

7 4 6 1 4 3 4 1

Rule of law

Judicial review Appointment of justices

9 4 3 3

Corruption prevention*

156 .

.

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Voting and registration rights (all adult citizens can participate in national elections. All eligible voters are registered if they wish to be. There are no discriminations observable in the exercise of the right to vote). Party financing (the state enforces that donations to political parties are made public and provides for independent monitoring in that respect. Effective measures to prevent evasion are effectively in place and infringements subject to effective, proportionate, and dissuasive sanctions). Prevention of corruption (legal, political, and public integrity effectively prevent public officeholders from abusing their position). Singapore ranked in the top fifth of 175 countries surveyed by the Corruption Perceptions Index in 2013 (see Table 8.3).

Status Index: Policy performance Policy performance for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam was measured by three variables: economy and employment, social affairs,

Table 8.3 Rank out of 175 5 38 53 94 102 114 116 119 140 157 160

Corruption Perceptions Index 2013 Country

Score

Surveys used

CI lower

CI upper

2012 score

Singapore Brunei Malaysia Philippines Thailand Indonesia Vietnam East Timor Laos Myanmar Cambodia

86 60 50 36 35 32 31 30 26 21 20

9 3 9 9 8 9 8 3 4 6 7

82 43 44 32 33 26 27 25 18 15 15

90 77 56 40 37 38 35 35 34 27 25

87 55 49 34 37 32 31 33 21 15 22

Key: CI ¼ confidence interval Source: Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2013.” 2013. www.transparency.org/cpi2013/results.

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and security and resources (see Table 8.4 overleaf). The aggregate results place Singapore in a class by itself (medium high or band two). Singapore scored in the highest category on all indicators of economic and employment policies and security (band one), and the medium high category (band two) for social affairs and resources. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam all fell in the mid-range of the medium low category (band three) with average scores around 4 on all three indicators. There was variance, however. Indonesia scored best for its economic and employment policies; Malaysia scored best for its social affairs policy; while Vietnam and Malaysia tied for their policy performance in the security and resources sectors. In other words, the nature of the political system – whether low-quality electoral democracy or one-party state – cannot account fully for poor policy performance. We now turn to a discussion of how a state manages and implements policy.

Management Index: Executive capacity As noted earlier, the Management Index includs two broad variables – executive capacity and executive accountability. Executive capacity was further disaggregated into three categories (see Table 8.5 overleaf): .

. .

Steering capability (strategic capacity, interministerial coordination, evidence-based instruments, societal consultation, and policy communication). Policy implementation (effective implementation). Institutional learning (adaptability and organizational reform capacity).

When the scores for all these variables and sub-categories are aggregated, Singapore emerges as the strongest state, consistently scoring in either band one or band two. The sole exception was Singapore’s poor performance on indicators of evidence-based instruments, where it scored in band three. Singapore scored in band one on steering capacity, societal consultation, adaptability, and organizational reform capacity. It scored in band two on interministerial coordination, policy communication, and effective policy implementation (with average scores ranging from 8.4 to 8.7). The results for Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia were clustered in band three with average scores ranging from 5.1 (Indonesia),

Economic

10 5 6 4

Country

Singapore Malaysia Indonesia Vietnam

Labor market

9 6 4 4

Enterprise

9 6 5 3

Tax

9 2 3 1

Budgetary 9 4 7 4

Health care 9 7 4 5

Social inclusion 7 5 4 6

Family 7 6 4 6

8 4 4 2

Pension

Integration 7 3 4 3

Security and resources policies

10 8 4 8

External security

Social affairs policies

10 4 6 6

Internal security

Economy and employment policies

8 5 2 5

Environment

Policy performance

8 3 1 2

Research and innovation

Table 8.4

8 4 3 3

Education

Executive capacity

Strategic planning Scholarly advice RIA application Needs analysis RIA alternate options Government expertise Government gatekeeping Line ministries Cabinet committees Senior ministry officials Line ministry civil servants Informal coordination procedures Negotiating public support Coherent communications policy

Key: RIA ¼ regulatory impact assessments

Societal coordination Policy communication

Inter-ministerial coordination

Evidence-based instruments

Steering capacity

Table 8.5

10 8 1 1 1 9 9 9 9 9 9 5 9 8

Singapore 7 4 3 3 3 8 10 8 7 5 6 8 4 6

Malaysia 6 5 3 4 4 7 7 7 na na 5 6 5 5

Indonesia 5 2 3 9 9 7 10 10 8 9 2 8 3 6

Vietnam

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5.5 (Malaysia), and 5.6 (Vietnam). Indonesia and Malaysia ranked above Vietnam in steering capacity, while Vietnam topped the list for evidence-based instruments, particularly needs analysis and alternate options for regulatory impact assessments. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam all scored in band three for interministerial coordination (see Table 8.5) with average scores ranging from 6.4 (Indonesia), 7.4 (Malaysia), and 7.7 (Vietnam). However, all three states performed less credibly in social consultation and coherent communications policy (see Table 8.5). Vietnam outperformed Indonesia and Malaysia for the effectiveness of policy implementation. Vietnam’s average scores fell in band two, while the average scores for Indonesia and Malaysia fell in band three.

Management Index: Policy implementation The results for effective policy implementation reveal that Singapore topped the list followed by Vietnam (see Table 8.6). Their scores fell in band two (8.7 and 7.3, respectively). Singapore failed to reach band one because of its low score for constitutional discretion. Vietnam scored extremely well in ministerial compliance, monitoring line ministries, monitoring agencies, and task funding. Like Singapore it received a low score for constitutional discretion. The average scores for Indonesia and Malaysia fell in band three (5.1 and 5.3 respectively). Indonesia received the highest score of all four countries surveyed for constitutional discretion. Malaysia received the highest score for monitoring line ministries. Malaysia received scores for government efficiency, ministerial compliance, and monitoring agencies at the band two level. Indonesia received a band two score for task funding. Management Index: Institutional learning There were two indicators of institutional learning – adaptability and capacity for organizational reform. All of Singapore’s scores fell in band one. Malaysia and Indonesia ranked second and third with scores falling in band three. Vietnam scored last with its institutional learning capacity rated at band four level (see Table 8.6). In sum, the Management Index scores revealed that collectively Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia scored highest in the category of interministerial coordination with an aggregate score of 7.5

Government efficiency

10 6 5 6

Country

Singapore Malaysia Indonesia Vietnam

Ministerial compliance

9 6 4 9

Monitoring line ministries

9 8 4 9

9 6 5 9

Monitoring agencies

Effective policy implementation

Executive capacity

9 3 6 9

Task funding

Table 8.6

Constitutional direction 5 3 8 2

10 5 4 7

National standards

9 5 2 2

Domestic adaptability 9 6 7 3

International coordination

Adaptability

9 6 5 3

Self monitoring

9 6 5 3

Institutional reform

Organization reform capacity

Institutional learning

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or band two. The four countries also attained an aggregate average score of 6.6 for effective policy implementation. There was, however, a notable bifurcation with Singapore and Vietnam scoring in band two while the scores for Indonesia and Malaysia fell into band three. Indonesia and Malaysia revealed institutional weaknesses in all the other indicators with scores falling in band three. These indicators include: steering capacity, evidence-based instruments, societal consultation, policy communication, effective policy implementation, adaptability, and organization reform capacity.

Management Index: Executive accountability Executive accountability was disaggregated into three categories: citizens, legislature, and intermediary organizations. According to the SGI 2011 Codebook: Executive accountability is disaggregated into three categories corresponding to important actors [. . .] that are considered to be key accountability providers in theories of democracy and governance. We investigate to what extent citizens are informed of government policies, whether the parliament is capable of evaluating and controlling the executive, and whether intermediary organizations (media, parties, and interest associations) are characterized by policy know-how and relevance.21 Unfortunately, due to insufficient data, no scores on executive accountability were entered in the country reports for Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The country reports for these countries, however, do contain some descriptive analysis that supports qualitative judgments about state–society interaction.

Singapore Singapore has been under the dominance of a single-party, PAP, since independence in 1965. PAP has held tight social control over society through strict – some would say draconian – enforcement of the rule of law (in Migdal’s terms, the rules of behavior): Frequent infringements of citizens’ civil rights take place despite the presence of formal protection. While outright censorship is

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rare, the city-state maintains a large number of laws that lead to self-censorship and self-monitoring. Selective but harsh enforcement of strict legislation has insured that political activity has come to be associated with considerable risk.22 For example, electoral laws are used to restrict fair political competition between the ruling PAP and the opposition. Only a tiny minority of opposition candidates are able to win a parliamentary seat.23 The incumbent prime minister, in electoral speeches to the public, stresses that a vote for PAP is linked with the provision of government benefits such as housing upgrades and social services. While Singapore may be classified as a strong state, the nature of state– society interaction since 2006 has witnessed the loosening of some of Singapore’s tight laws and regulations due to pressure from society. For example, the Internet and social networks have facilitated increased political activity and greater involvement of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in social activity. The general elections of 2006 and 2011 witnessed thousands of citizens participating in rallies sponsored by the opposition. Prior to the 2011 general election, the government removed the ban on the use of online videos. According to the “Country Report Singapore,” “the change in Internet regulations also resulted in somewhat more favorable coverage of opposition parties in the mainstream media.”24 Channel News Asia, for example, began to publish reports on opposition rallies on its website. The 2011 election results saw PAP’s electoral margin drop markedly, while the opposition gained the highest number of seats since independence. In November 2013, when Singapore’s Media Development Authority issued new restrictions on websites that attracted more than 50,000 Singapore-based visitors, various government websites came under cyberattack by a hactivist collective known as Anonymous. The cyberattack reflected public unease that the “government seeks a position of power and authority in cyberspace similar to what it already enjoys in the offline world.”25 In summary, societal pressures in Singapore have resulted in greater transparency by the government. For example, the Singapore government now releases figures on the number of death penalties. The mainstream media now publishes articles on topics that were

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previously considered too sensitive. Government officials have become more responsive to feedback from the public.

Malaysia Malaysia’s political system is heavily influenced by the communal/racial nature of society: Malays (50.1 percent), Chinese (22.6 percent), Indigenous (11.8 percent), Indians (6.7 percent), and others (8.9 percent).26 Malaysia is classified as an electoral authoritarian regime. The key to the success of the ruling party coalition has been Malay political supremacy. On the one hand, Malaysia permits multiple political parties to register and contest national and state elections. Although the ruling coalition (Alliance/National Front) has never lost a general election, opposition parties have gained power at the state level. On the other hand, government leaders routinely use a bundle of legislative measures to repress the opposition such as the Internal Security Act, Official Secrets Act, Sedition Act, and Printing Presses and Publications Act. The Malaysian government has raised allegations of sodomy to try and convict the leader of the opposition, Anwar Ibrahim. Government officials also use patronage networks to win political support. State – society interaction in recent years has shaped the contours of politics in Malaysia. In 2008, the ruling National Alliance (currently a coalition of 13 political parties) suffered a setback when three opposition parties won 80 parliamentary seats and gained power in five states, including Penang and Selangor. After the election, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, the Democratic Action Party, and the People’s Justice Party formed a coalition under the name Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Alliance). The opposition coalition represents Malay Muslim adherents, ethnic Chinese, and Malay elites. In addition, Malaysia has witnessed the rise of political activism by a variety of civil society groups loosely grouped under the umbrella of Bersih 2.0 (Walk for Democracy) which is now a coalition of over 60 NGOs. In July 2011, Bersih 2.0 attracted a crowd of 50,000 to a rally calling for free and fair elections. The state responded by ordering the police to forcibly break up the rally. Bersih 2.0 directs its energies to changing the rules and regulations used by the government to maintain itself in power. It demands “a cleanup of the electoral roll, a reform of

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the postal ballot system, the use of indelible ink, longer campaign periods, free and fair access to mass media for all parties, a strengthening of public institutions, and a fight against corruption.”27 In 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak advocated a New Economic Model to promote inclusiveness and a needs-based policy. In September 2010, he launched the “1 Malaysia” campaign to promote improved governance, ethnic harmony, and national unity. Both of these initiatives lost traction due to opposition from within his ruling party and from right-wing conservative groups such as the Indigenous Empowerment Organization (Perkasa). A year later Najib announced his intention to repeal the Internal Security Act and three emergency proclamations that had served as the legal basis for state repression of opposition activists. But faced with continued opposition from within his own ranks and from conservative Malays, the prime minister backtracked. Under Article 149 of the Federal Constitution, he introduced two new laws designed to curb the opposition – the Special Laws Against Subversion and the Peaceful Assembly Bill.

Indonesia The nature of state –society relations in Indonesia is a work in progress as Indonesia consolidates its shift from authoritarian rule to a democratic policy: Despite some flaws, the quality of democracy in Indonesia is generally quite high and stable. Free and fair electoral processes, combined with freedoms of opinion and media, provide a solid base for pluralism and competition in the political field.28 Indonesia is a sprawling archipelagic state with over 17,500 islands of which 6,000 are populated. Indonesia is home to over 253 million inhabitants of diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. For example, according to the 2010 census, Indonesian society may be classified into eight major ethno-linguistic groups: Javanese (40.1 percent), Sundanese (15.5 percent), Madurese (3 percent), Minangkabau (2.7 percent), Betawi (2.9 percent), Bugis (2.7 percent), Banten (2 percent), and Banjar (1.7 percent), with the remaining population belonging to other or unspecified categories.29

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Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world with an estimated 87 percent of its population declaring adherence to Islam. These adherents represent broad streams (aliran) of faith ranging from the santri (orthodox believers) to the abangan (rural Muslims with syncretic beliefs). Approximately 5.7 percent of Indonesians are Protestants and 2.9 percent are Catholics.30 At independence, Indonesia opted to become a secular state. One of the drafts of the Jakarta Charter containing the principles of the new Republic of Indonesia included the clause: “Belief in Almighty God with the obligation for its Muslim adherents to carry out Islamic law [Syari’ah ].” This was revised and only “Belief in Almighty God” was retained in the founding principles, the Panca Sila (Five Principles).31 However, a leitmotif of postindependence Indonesian political history has been the contestation between the defenders of the secular state and Muslims who argue for the introduction of Syari’ah (shari’a) law and the creation of an Islamic state (Darul Islam). This contestation has sometimes taken a violent form. State – society relations in contemporary Indonesia are shaped by its political geography and the ethnic diversity of its population. Indonesia is divided into 31 provinces, one autonomous province, one special region, and the Jakarta capital district: Indonesia is currently one of the most decentralized countries in the world. The districts (kabupaten) and cities (kota) enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Local government units at these levels thus have considerable scope of discretion in nearly all policy fields.32 Local units may raise their own taxes. The “Country Report Indonesia” also observed: Since the start of decentralization in 1999, Indonesia turned into a complex system of multilevel governance. Even if the president and the government may initiate a reasonable policy with the support of the parliament and the consent of the judiciary, the implementation at the local level in the vast archipelago might be quite different. Corruption, red tape, and bureaucratic incapability can transform rules and policies to a great extent. The reality on

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the ground usually looks different than the national decisionmakers have intended. The implementation of any rules is still a difficult task in Indonesia.33 State–society relations are also affected by challenges and resistance from religious and ethnic minority groups to the state’s proclaimed “rules of behavior.” Local government authorities often issue decrees and regulations directed against religious minorities, while regional authorities have adopted Islamist by-laws. Religious and ethnic minorities have been subject “to discrimination, intimidation, and violence.”34

Vietnam At first glance, Vietnam should be classified as a strong state.35 Its political system has been described as an example of “mono-organizational socialism” in which a single party – the Vietnam Communist Party – controls the state bureaucracy through dual-role elites who are both party members and state cadres.36 The recently amended state Constitution (2013) reiterates that the party is the leading force in state and society. The highest leadership positions in the Vietnamese state, including ministers in the Cabinet, are held by either members of the party Central Committee or its executive, the Politburo. A similar system of dual-role elites controls the armed forces and mass organizations. To all intents and purposes, the Vietnam Communist Party appears to be the hegemonic party par excellence. Yet Vietnam’s image as a “strong state” is belied by the Bertelsmann SGI data discussed above. Vietnam is a weak state on three counts. First, the organs of state at subnational level historically have exhibited a measure of autonomy if not resistance to imposition by the central government. This was captured by the adage in Vietnam’s imperial precolonial past that “the Emperor’s writ stops at the village gate.” In more modern times, the autonomy of subnational units has been described by central authorities as “independent kingdoms.” This tension between the central state and local organs is captured in the Bertelsmann “Country Report Vietnam”: The central state-party apparatus no longer seems to be in full control of development at the provincial and local levels. The relatively high degree of actual autonomy at the subcentral levels

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of government has intensified conflicts between the central government and subcentral agencies, and has also created a competition for resources, especially private and foreign investment capital. Although local government autonomy is not acknowledged in the constitution, it is substantial in practice and is supported by a high degree of fiscal decentralization.37 Second, the party elite is divided over the pace and scope of economic, political, and social reform. Political reforms have proceeded in fits and starts, and include an empowered National Assembly, votes of confidence for high-ranking government leaders, experimental direct elections of local officials, and the retention of party members who formerly directed state-owned enterprises that have been privatized. However, in 2013, when Vietnam solicited public comment on draft amendments to the state Constitution, the party Central Committee quickly intervened to control the process. At issue was a draft counter constitution drawn up by leading intellectuals and retired party and state cadres that called for the abolishment of one-party rule. There is clear contestation between the prime minister and the party secretary general supported by the state president.38 All three leaders are members of the Politburo. The prime minister’s power and influence over the state bureaucracy has grown as a concomitant of Vietnam’s economic growth. This has resulted in a diminution of the party’s power. Vietnam’s relatively poor economic performance during the global financial crisis led the party secretary general and his supporters to seek to claw back power from the prime minister. The prime minister was removed as head of the anti-corruption steering committee and the Central Committee’s Economic Commission was revived to provide oversight over economic policy. Both initiatives have stalled (Vietnam ranked 116th of 175 countries surveyed by the Corruption Perceptions Index in 2013; see Table 8.3). Internal party-infighting can be expected to intensify as preparations are made for the next national party congress scheduled for early 2016. Third, in the mid-1980s, Vietnam adopted a number of economic reforms to create a market economy with socialist orientations, and opened its economy to the outside world. High economic growth led to many changes, perhaps none more significant than the revolution in communications technology through the introduction of mobile phones, satellite television reception, and the Internet. Tens of thousands of

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Vietnamese study abroad each year. In sum, state –society relations have become more contested. The most serious challenges to the state come from peasant farmers who confront local authorities over abuses in land access rights. Peasant farmers have engaged in prolonged public demonstrations outside government buildings and in several notable incidents have resorted to force against the police. This matter is a ticking time bomb as most land access certificates are about to expire. A draft Law on Land has been slowly crawling through the legislative process. There have also been a growing number of urban wildcat strikes by workers in the garment industry. Although these strikes are illegal, the state has refrained from outright intervention. Most of the garment factories are joint ventures with foreign partners. The state is also confronted by a variety of religious groups, environmental associations, and political activists that are loosely grouped together under the category “civil society.”39 The Vietnamese state has tried to impose controls over religious groups through a variety of restrictive regulations including what is in effect a long probationary period. Over time, the state has gradually recognized the autonomy of an increasing number of religious groups. Nonetheless there is still resistance, most notably by the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam that insists on its autonomy, and by “house churches” formed by small cells of Christian religious believers. The Vietnamese state has also had to face repeated mass confrontations by Roman Catholic parishioners and their diocesan priests who have agitated for the return of land and property seized by the Communist regime in the 1950s after partition and after reunification in 1975. The growth of the Internet has led to the emergence of an incredibly diverse grouping of individuals who come together in cyberspace to advocate change across a number of economic, environmental, social, and political issues. The response by the state has been contradictory. For example, state authorities have been generally tolerant of most of these activities; but at the same time the state keeps promulgating new regulations designed to restrict the use of the Internet. The state has drawn a red line, however, over political expression that touches on highlevel corruption by party and state leaders, advocacy of political pluralism and a multiparty system, and criticism of China for its assertive territorial claims in the South China Sea, especially if any of these activities involve connections with overseas Vietnamese.

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Conclusion The Bertelsmann SGI provides an initial empirical basis for comparing state capacity in Southeast Asia. The Status Index offers an assessment of the quality of democracy and policy performance. The indicators used in the survey of Southeast Asian states were originally drawn up for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on the assumption that “a high quality of democratic standards is considered crucial for long-term system stability.”40 The Management Index focused on indicators of how effective state governments are in implementing and enforcing their policies. Unfortunately, the indicators for executive accountability (participation by citizens, the role of legislatures and legislative accountability, and the role of intermediary organizations such as the media, political parties, and interest groups) were not scored due to insufficient data. Scores on these indicators would have provided a means to judge the other side of the state– society coin. However, the Bertelsmann country reports did provide qualitative analysis of inputs from society. This chapter was set in the framework of “strong societies, weak states” popularized by Migdal. The preliminary analysis of four case studies in this chapter confirms that with the exception of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam are medium weak states on most indicators (see Table 8.7). Weakness on the state side may be attributed to lack of cohesion among the political elites that impacts on the efficiency of state institutions. More telling, however, is the continued resistance mounted by “weblike societies” to state efforts to implement social control. Even a strong state like Singapore has accommodated to these pressures. The cases of Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam indicate that weblike societies play a prominent role in challenging the state. Table 8.7

SGI ranking by aggregate scores

Country

Aggregate score

Band

Singapore Indonesia Malaysia Vietnam

7.3 4.6 4.4 3.8

2 3 3 3

Description Medium Medium Medium Medium

high low low low

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Notes 1. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 2. Ibid., p. 33. 3. Ibid., p. 19. 4. Ibid., p. 4. 5. Ibid., pp. 4 – 5. 6. Ibid., p. 9. 7. Ibid., p. 9. 8. Ibid., p. 28. 9. Ibid., p. 29. 10. Ibid., p. 31. 11. Ibid., p. 31. 12. Ibid., pp. 32 – 3. 13. Ibid., p. 40. 14. Bertelsmann Stiftung, SGI 2011 Codebook: Sustainable Governance Indicators 2011. Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2011, pp. 8 – 9. 15. Ibid., pp. 10 – 11. 16. Ibid., p. 10. 17. Aurel Croissant, Patrick Ziegenhain and Vedi Hadiz, “Need for reform and governance capacities in Asia: country report Indonesia.” Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation, 2013; Aurel Croissant, Andreas Ufen and Edmund Terence Gomez, “Need for reform and governance capacities in Asia: country report Malaysia.” Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation, 2013; Aurel Croissant, Stephan Ortmann and Jon S. T. Quah, “Need for reform and governance capacities in Asia: country report Singapore.” Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation, 2013; Aurel Croissant, Jo¨rn Dosch and Carlyle A. Thayer, “Need for reform and governance capacities in Asia: country report Vietnam.” Gu¨tersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation, 2013. 18. Croissant, Ortmann and Quah, “Country report Singapore,” p. 4; Croissant, Ufen and Gomez, “Country report Malaysia,” p. 5. 19. Carlyle A. Thayer, “Recent political developments: constitutional change and the 1992 elections.” In Vietnam and the Rule of Law, edited by Carlyle A. Thayer and David G. Marr. Canberra: Department of Political and Social Change, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1993. 20. This term was coined by William Case, Politics in Southeast Asia: Democracy or Less. Richmond: Curzon, 2002. 21. Bertelsmann Stiftung, SGI 2011 Codebook, p. 10. 22. Croissant, Ortmann and Quah, “Country report Singapore,” p. 4. 23. Ibid., p. 8. 24. Ibid., p. 10. 25. ISEAS, “The region: geopolitical overview,” ISEAS Monitor, 1 (2014), p. 7. 26. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook: Malaysia (2010 estimates).

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27. Croissant, Ufen and Gomez, “Country report Malaysia.” www.cia.gov/library/ publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html/ (updated June 20, 2014), p. 6. Malaysia ranked 53rd out of 175 countries surveyed by the Corruption Perceptions Index in 2013 (see Table 8.6). 28. Croissant, Ziegenhain and Hadiz, “Country report Indonesia,” p. 4. 29. Figures in this paragraph are taken from Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook: Indonesia. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/i d.html (updated June 22, 2014). 30. Ibid. 31. Variously translated as “belief in one god” or “belief in the divinity of god” (Ketuhanan Yang Maha Esa). 32. Croissant, Ziegenhain and Hadiz, “Country report Indonesia,” p. 5. 33. Ibid., p. 6. Indonesia ranked 114th out of 175 countries surveyed by the Corruption Perceptions Index in 2013 (see Table 8.6). 34. Croissant, Ziegenhain, and Hadiz, “Country report Indonesia,” pp. 4, 6. 35. Carlyle A. Thayer, “The apparatus of authoritarian rule in Vietnam.” In Politics in Contemporary Vietnam: Party, State, and Authority Relations, edited by Jonathan London. London: Palgrave, 2014. 36. Carlyle A. Thayer, “Mono-organizational socialism and the state.” In Vietnam’s Rural Transformation, edited by Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet and Doug J. Porter. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995; Carlyle A. Thayer, “Political reform in Vietnam: Doi Moi and the emergence of civil society.” In The Developments of Civil Society in Communist Systems, edited by Robert F. Miller. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992. 37. Croissant, Dosch and Thayer, “Country report Vietnam,” p. 5. 38. Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam in 2013: domestic contestation and foreign policy success.” In Southeast Asian Affairs 2014, edited by Daljit Singh. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2014. 39. The discussion here draws on Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam’s conflicted human rights policy.” Asian Currents 91, August (2013); Carlyle A. Thayer, “Political legitimacy in Vietnam under challenge.” In Political Legitimacy in Asia: New Leadership Challenges, edited by John Kane, Hui Chieh Loy and Haig Patapan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; Carlyle A. Thayer, “Political legitimacy in Vietnam: challenge and response.” Politics & Policy 38, no. 3 (2010), pp. 423 – 44; Carlyle A. Thayer, “The trial of Le Cong Dinh: new challenges to the legitimacy of Vietnam’s party-state.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 5, no. 3 (2010), pp. 196–207; Carlyle A. Thayer, “Vietnam’s crackdown on prodemocracy activists.” Asian Currents, 63, February (2010); and Carlyle A. Thayer, “Political legitimacy of Vietnam’s one party-state: challenges and responses.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 28, no. 4 (2009). 40. Bertelsmann Stiftung, SGI 2011 Codebook, p. 8.

CHAPTER 9 THE CRISIS OF THE STATE IN AFRICA AND THE UNENDING SEARCH FOR THE REINVENTION OF THE STATE IN SOMALIA Jide Martyns Okeke

Introduction The history of the state in Africa differs significantly from the Westphalian paradigm, which was the basis of the European experience. Unlike the latter, the African state developed primarily out of the continent’s colonial and immediate postcolonial encounters. As a result, many of the characteristics and functions of the Westphalian state, such as its ability to provide public goods and the strong relationship between the state and civil society, have been absent in the creation and reproduction of the state in Africa. Rather, African states have been overwhelmingly militaristic in character and lacking in any form of social contract between the state or government and the people. The practice of “colonialism on the cheap” entailed a lack of engagement by colonial systems in the promotion of political and economic development. This pattern of colonial structure of the state was unfortunately reproduced in the postcolonial context and formed the basis of the postcolonial state in Africa. The gatekeepers of the post-

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colonial state have thus perpetuated authoritarianism, focusing their efforts on achieving domination and lifetime rule rather than the longterm strengthening of both state structures and society.1 This historical heritage explains why the state in Africa has been frequently construed, in academic and popular discourse, as concomitant with crisis. Conflicts, insurgencies, and other forms of political violence have indeed been some of the main characteristics of the postindependence state in Africa. While the number of these conflicts, especially interstate conflicts, has drastically declined since the end of the Cold War, the contemporary state in Africa is nevertheless characterized by important continuities in traditional forms of violence as well as the emergence of what have often been referred to as “new” forms of security challenges, such as insurgencies, electoral violence, popular uprisings and transnational crimes, and others. While these forms of crisis are not entirely new, their increasing prominence has attracted growing attention in policy discourse. Given the continuity in these political, security, and economic issues, it is not surprising that Africa tops the list of regions with the highest number of “weak” states in the world.2 This chapter interrogates the relationship between the crisis of the state and the question of how a “positive peace” is promoted by African actors and non-African stakeholders. Using the case of Somalia, it argues that the unending search for stability is concomitantly linked to the inability of the African state to reinvent itself by promoting an organic relationship between the state and civil society. This failure has been reinforced by the African and non-African stakeholders’ response to the crisis in Somalia, which privileges security and short-term stabilization measures over long-term state-building policies. During the Cold War, attempts to address Africa’s security dilemmas were made predominantly by external actors and shaped by the geostrategic considerations of superpower rivals. The altered nature of world politics, both in the immediate post-Cold War era and following the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, led external powers to adopt a guarded and more strategic approach to interventions in African crises. This shift in the approach of external powers has fuelled and shaped the role of African actors in addressing the continent’s crises. This approach is often described as “African solutions to African problems,” or renewed regional interventionism in Africa. One of the main developments

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through which this trend has been legitimized has been the transformation of African institutions through the introduction of new normative and legal frameworks for peace operations. These innovations represent a departure from earlier principles of sacrosanct sovereignty and noninterference in the domestic affairs of states. This chapter addresses the above issues in five sections. The first examines the nature of the state in Africa and its linkage with crisis. This analysis provides a foundation for understanding the historic roots, structural causes, and nature of crisis in the African state. The second provides a brief historical overview of the crisis of the Somali state and examines the ways in which this case is illustrative of the important characteristics of the crisis of the postcolonial state in Africa more generally. In section three, I provide an explanation of the dominant response to the Somali crisis by interrogating the role of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in addressing it. Section four provides a critique of the current pattern of external intervention in Somalia as characteristic of a broader approach that privileges stabilization over state-building measures. The fifth and final section offers a concluding analysis of the historical and structural issues contributing to the ongoing crisis of the state in Africa.

The crisis of the state and the emergence of contemporary security challenges in Africa The (mis)construction of Africa, especially in the Western imagination, has been largely negative. On October 2, 2001, Tony Blair, erstwhile prime minister of the United Kingdom, gave a speech to the Labour Party in which he described Africa as a “scar on the conscience of the world.”3 Such representations of Africa are not new, particularly in the literature, both scholarly and otherwise, about complex emergencies in the continent. It is not unusual for Africa to top the rankings in studies of regions experiencing wars, drought, poverty, and diseases like HIV/ AIDS and malaria. Although the reductionist construction of Africa as a “Dark Continent” has been criticized as “slovenly, hypocritical or even racist,”4 it provides a powerful illustration of how the state in Africa is perceived as being in conditions of opprobrium. The cause of Africa’s crisis is often ascribed to state practices of corruption, military dictatorship, and “lifetime” presidency and other forms of political

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decay.5 This section challenges this simplistic narrative about the origins and causes of the crisis of the state in Africa by locating the problems of the state in Africa within the context of colonial and postcolonial continuities. At the same time, it provides an account of the transformation of the nature of the crises in Africa in the form of the socalled “new” security threats.

Colonial and postcolonial continuities The colonial state in Africa was controlled, administered, and dominated by the European imperial powers, notably France and Britain.6 There were differences in the styles of colonial rule, as evidenced in the indirect and direct systems pursued by Britain and France respectively. In fact, some scholars have argued that these contrasting styles have contributed to different patterns of political development and ethnic conflicts in contemporary African states.7 With the exception of the artificial construction of borders, which has mirrored the European experience, the legacy of colonialism in Africa has resulted in the emergence of a state that differs radically, in nature and function, from the European model. The introduction and administration of the colonial state following the partitioning of African states between European powers assumed an essentially military character.8 In several African states, the introduction of the colonial state was the direct result of military conquest. The military character of the colonial state was reflected in its administration. As noted by Ruth First, the “chain of authority from top downwards was untouched by any principle of representation and consultation.”9 This state of affairs was justified by the colonial administrators as inherently “good” because of the misguided assumption that their “subjects neither understood nor wanted self-government and independence.”10 Despite this rhetoric, it is more plausible to characterize such a pattern of administration as an effective occupation intended to secure authority through a multi-faceted domination over subjects. One aspect of this domination, as Basil Davidson argued, was the colonial administration’s adoption of bureaucratic rule, with bureaucracy “behaving as though it were the boss.”11 The coercive nature of the colonial state in Africa, as Crawford Young has shown, found expression in the metaphor Bula Matari (crusher of rocks), which, while initially specific to the Belgian imperial experience, was later broadly adopted to describe the colonial

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state.12 Bula Matari signifies terror and became associated with European administrators in their irresistible quest for domination over territory and subjects.13 In analyses of the colonial state in Africa, economic exploitation is mostly underscored as the primary motivation of the colonial administration. As First argued, “colonialism was trade, investment and enterprise for the benefit of an alien society.”14 Other scholars have also highlighted the ways in which the development of colonial authoritarian bureaucracies was shaped by the imperatives of resource extraction.15 Nevertheless, there are deeper historical precedents for the successes of alien powers in obtaining economic gains in Africa, particularly in the histories of slavery and missionary activities in the continent.16 In attempting to explain this history of exploitation, therefore, it seems important to address other specific characteristics of the colonial state, including the weak link between the state and society. The military character of the colonial state in Africa contributed to the entrenchment of a political system in which authority was derived primarily from coercion. As a result, there developed hardly any social contract between the state government and the people. As Alex Thomson has argued, the “colonial administrators were not accountable to the people they ruled.”17 The failure to develop mechanisms of accountability and social legitimacy resulted partly from the practice of “colonialism on the cheap,” which reflected the colonial powers’ lack of interest in advancing the political and economic development of colonized states. These various features of colonial rule in Africa resulted in a weak link between the state and society. Whereas Western capitalist states have tended to be shaped and influenced by their societies, African colonial states have evinced the opposite tendency, with the state imposing its rules and obligations on its subjects. Public “goods” – that is, the provision of welfare and public services to citizens as practised in Western states – have been absent in the colonial state. This outcome has been attributed to the lack, in colonial states, of any civil society representation in the state, resulting in the absence of trust and shared political values between the government and the people.18 Colonial systems made it impossible for the colonial state in Africa to be imagined and organized in a manner similar to Western capitalist states. The weak link between the state and society was perpetuated in the

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post-colonial context, which witnessed the almost wholesale transplantation of colonial systems into postindependence African states. The colonial state thus formed the basis for the emergence of the postcolonial African state:19 “formal agencies transferred to African hands were alien in derivation, functionally conceived, bureaucratically designed, authoritarian in nature and primarily concerned with issues of domination.”20 Nevertheless, numerous accounts suggest that the post-colonial African state has not been static, but rather has steadily degenerated from a relatively strong and centralized system into a situation of crisis. For instance, Young has argued that inherited colonial statism or what he refers to as “perfected hegemony” – that is, the overwhelming concentration of political and economic power within the state – has declined since the emergence of the postcolonial African state.21 One such weakness, as emphasized by Young, is the increased deficit of state-owned parastatals owing to huge debts and poor performance. Another problem highlighted by Young is the magnitude of corruption among African rulers. With respect to this issue, Young emphasized the steady increase in the cost of patrimonial politics by African leaders and how the “venality surrounding patrimonial politics led to huge sums being diverted and secreted abroad, and trickled down through the state apparatus to make even petty transactions with the state subject to side payments.”22 This pattern of primitive accumulation has led to the failure of the state to maintain the social reproduction of labor and to the decline or absence of public services. Rather than deriving its legitimacy from the society it governs, therefore, the state has continued to rely on centralization and authoritarianism in order to exercise power.23 The aforementioned description provides a synopsis of the underlying historical roots of crisis manifested in the (post)colonial inheritance of the state in Africa. The following section provides a broad account of the contemporary manifestation of these crises in Africa.

“New” and emerging security threats The discourse on human security challenges in Africa has expanded over time to include what has been referred to as “new” and emerging security threats. Examples of these threats include: terrorism, environmental problems (such as climate change, deforestation, and land degradation), electoral violence, drug and human trafficking, and maritime insecurity

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(e.g., piracy and unregulated/unreported fishing). The African Peace and Security Architecture of the African Union (AU) Roadmap (2011– 2013) represents one recent attempt to recognize this series of issues as some of the latest and most important drivers of human conflicts. This growing focus on “new” and emerging security threats in Africa departs from traditional post-Cold War frameworks for analyzing security challenges, which focused on phenomena such as unconstitutional changes of government (primarily through military coups) and the threat and proliferation of mainly intrastate armed conflicts. The latter were often described as “new” wars because they featured disproportionate violence against civilian populations, massive displacement, refugee crises, and the persistence of war economies.24 Since the late 1990s, there has been a rapid decline of “new” wars, but their continued existence (notably in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and Sudan/South Sudan) continues to challenge Africa’s security landscape. The recognition of “new,” emerging, and imagined security threats in Africa reflects two main developments. First, the conceptual underpinning of human security has increasingly assumed an elastic character which functions to securitize the realms of human life (both biological and bare life) not previously considered to be within the purview of security.25 This re-characterization has been heightened, sustained, and reinforced in the post-September 11 global security environment. A major consequence of the expanded conception of human security is that environmental and social problems that were previously perceived by policymakers as peripheral concerns are now being described as significant threats to international and regional security. Within this recalibration of human security, Africa is most often described as the worst affected continent. While there is no doubt that such threats exist in Africa, these descriptions sometimes reflect persistent misconceptions about Africa, especially in the minds of influential external actors (broadly defined). Second, the changed and changing political context in most African states has led to the prominence of other security challenges such as electoral violence and popular uprisings. Since the late 1990s, there has been a rising wave of democratization across African states. Unfortunately, these democratic gains have sometimes been tainted by electoral violence. Countries such as Zimbabwe (2008), Kenya (2007–

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2008), Nigeria (2011), and the Ivory Coast (2011) provide some examples of democratic transitions that have been marred by varying scales of electoral violence. In addition, popular uprisings in some North African states (Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya) have helped to shatter the myth of authoritarian stability in the region.26 Furthermore, politically motivated violent extremism (such as terrorist attacks) with huge losses of civilian lives has become more prominent. For instance, the upscaling relative success of Boko Haram’s clandestine terrorist activities in Nigeria represents a new dimension in the history of political violence in that country. The historical specificities, patterns, and manifestations of traditional and non-traditional security threats differ between and within each context. Nevertheless, three features can be identified in the case of Somalia which are illustrative for the broader African context. First, there is a widening of alternatively governed spaces, which have contributed to and interacted with the emergence of certain nontraditional security threats. In most Western discourse, “ungoverned spaces” refers to the absence of formal governance structures.27 It is however more appropriate to conceive of this phenomenon in terms of alternative (informal) governed spaces used as safe havens or potential safe havens for financial gain (such as narcotics, arms trafficking, and human trafficking) or political aims (such as insurgency, terrorism, or violent extremism). Somalia and the Sahel are often referred to as archetypal of unconventionally governed areas. The potential for increased instability, fuelled by climate change and maritime insecurities, could contribute to the expansion of these alternatively governed spaces in Africa. Already there are suggestions that instability in Mali, Southern Libya, and Nigeria (through Niger) are partly the outcome of the logistical links of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.28 Second, there is a spillover of some of these crises within and beyond Africa. While this has been a common feature across most conflicts and security threats, the fluidity of interaction prompted by globalization has also increased the real and potential effects of insecurity beyond its geographic source. Ethno-religious convergence between societies and across states has heightened the contagion effect of instability within and beyond Africa. Third, like traditional threats overwhelmingly connected with violent conflicts, these new and emerging threats exacerbate the stress on humanitarian efforts and disaster management. This is because of the

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real dangers posed by these new security threats to civilian populations, especially women and children. This brief narrative of security challenges in Africa provides a relevant foundation for understanding the response pattern of African actors to these crises.

Somalia: An archetype of the crisis of the state in Africa? The crisis in Somalia remains one of the most prolonged in the continent. Over a period of three decades, this crisis has evolved from a revolt against a dictator with a strong clan-based dimension to a war against Islamist and terrorist groups, notably al-Shabaab. Somalia experienced a period of repressive but stable rule under the dictatorial regime of Siad Barre until 1991. This trend of precarious stability was consistent with the pattern of political authority derived through coercion due to the military character of the colonial and postcolonial state. Nevertheless, the current crisis in Somalia reflects a contextspecific historical trajectory, in which three main phases are discernible. The first is a phase of revolt against a dictatorship which degenerated into an internecine clan war. After deposing Barre, the Somali people proved unable to transcend clan politics and remained divided within a political landscape dominated by shifting clan and subclan alliances. In addition, the country suffered from weak infrastructure and insecurity in the absence of a central government that could uphold Somalia’s sovereignty. It is against this background that the United Nations (UN) and the US embarked on an unsuccessful external intervention to restore the political authority of the state in the early 1990s. The second phase of the crisis was marked by growing efforts to establish an Islamist republic in Somalia capable of transcending clan and sub-clan alliances. The attempt to promote political Islam in the country was undertaken by a number of heterogeneous groups from within and outside Somalia, and through a variety of strategies. For example, al-Itihad al-Islami use both political and military strategies to promote political Islam. Unfortunately, the resilience of entrenched clan-based politics in Somalia meant that these Islamist groups had to cooperate with clan elders and subclan elders and warlords and their militias, thus compromising their ability to promote social unity and state stability. In addition, some of the Islamist groups that were from outside of Somalia were viewed with suspicion by clan leaders, and in

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some cases attempted to introduce a version of Islam that was in conflict with that of local Somali Muslims. The third phase constitutes part of the current discourse on the crisis in Somalia, which has witnessed a progressive shift from the narrative of civil war fuelled by clan-based politics or the promotion of an Islamist regime to a narrative of counterterrorism. This development has been fuelled by the changing pattern of global security threats and various forms of external interventions. The September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent declaration of war against terrorism by the George W. Bush administration created the possibility of unilateral intervention in Somalia. This, however, fuelled an already widespread suspicion of US foreign policy as motivated by imperialistic objectives, and consequently increased the likelihood of the radicalization of Islamist groups in various countries including Somalia. This dynamic was further reinforced by the United States’ conduct in pursuit of the “war on terror,” such as its support of the abduction and assassination of terrorists by “counterterrorist” allies. For example, Ethiopia and the United States encouraged and funded a group of warlords to establish the Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT) in Somalia, mainly in order to control and subjugate the Islamic courts based in Mogadishu. This repression subsequently prompted the formation of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which developed as an armed resistance to the ARPCT. In 2006, the ICU succeeded in defeating the ARPCT in Mogadishu with initial popular support, especially due to the growing unpopularity of the warlords, who were increasingly seen as fuelling insecurity and promoting their personalized interests in Somalia. The international community and regional powers like Ethiopia, in contrast, were concerned about the growing popularity of the ICU due to the group’s perceived similarity to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. As a result, the international community initially prioritized negotiation between the ICU and the Transitional Federal Government, but the political process failed to achieve a settlement. Given the continued dominance of the ICU in Somalia, regional and international actors, especially Ethiopia and the United States, favored a military rather than political solution. As a result Ethiopia, with close logistical support from the United States, undertook a military intervention in Somalia in December 2006. This intervention was followed by a peace support operation led by the AU in 2007. Since

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this intervention; however, militant Islamist groups have only remained potent in Somalia. Clan politics have also been deeply entrenched due to the structure of the Transitional Federal Government established following Ethiopian intervention. Despite the fact that the Hawiye clan is dominant in Mogadishu, the transitional government was led by Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed of the Darod clan, thus ensuring the continuation of the historical disputes that have occurred between the Darod and Hawiye clans since the early 1990s.

AMISOM and the prolonged search for peace On November 12, 2013, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2124 on Somalia, which expanded UN logistical support to AMISOM to a maximum of 22,126 uniformed personnel until October 31, 2014. This resolution also reiterated the outcomes of the joint AU – UN Benchmarking Exercise conducted in August 2013 and the UN Secretary-General report to the Security Council, which stated that conditions in Somalia were not yet appropriate for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping operation. Accordingly, while the UN remains engaged in Somalia through the provision of a logistical support package to AMISOM and the Somali National Security Forces (SNSF), and through the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia, the AU through AMISOM continues to be at the forefront of security operations aimed at the full restoration of state authority throughout Somalia. The AU engagement in Somalia commenced in 2007 following a decision by the Peace and Security Council, which is the primary decisionmaking organ of the AU. The Peace and Security Council established the deployment of AMISOM, for an initial six-month period, to achieve three main objectives: to provide support to the Transitional Federal Institutions in their efforts toward the stabilization of the situation in the country and the furtherance of dialogue and reconciliation; to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance; and to create conditions conducive to long-term stabilization, reconciliation, and development in Somalia. This decision by the AU was reinforced and supported by the Security Council through a number of resolutions including 1744, 1766, and 1772, all of which were adopted in 2007. Since this initial mandate, there has been repeated renewal of AMISOM’s mandate to reflect the changing political and security priorities in the country.

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At the political level, AMISOM provided support to the Transitional Federal Institutions in its electoral process in 2012, which led to the establishment of the Federal Government of Somalia. This was perceived as a significant step toward achieving AMISOM’s mandate. Nevertheless, there are ongoing political challenges in Somalia linked to the balance of political power within the executive, the constitutional process, decentralization, and the preparation of further elections scheduled in 2016. In addition, clan rivalries remain one of the most enduring challenges in the implementation of an enduring peace process in Somalia. These clan rivalries are also linked to security considerations in Somalia because, although al-Shabaab remains the main security threat across Somalia, the line between clans and al-Shabaab is becoming increasingly blurred. Moreover, it appears that the security threats posed by al-Shabaab have been significantly depleted since the deployment of AMISOM in 2007. This is evident in the political gains, and the increasing visibility and re-establishment of permanent missions of non-African countries. The security threat posed by al-Shabaab is manifested through insurgency operations and the execution of terrorist attacks against the Federal Government of Somalia, the SNSF, AMISOM, and civilians, both within Somalia and elsewhere in the region. This terrorist organization has conducted its activities in Mogadishu, Somalia’s political capital, and its outer regions such as Barawe, Jillib, Bardere, and Dinsoor, as well as in the rural areas of southern Somalia. The attacks by al-Shabaab have often been masterminded and operationally coordinated by its intelligence wing, Amniyat. Amniyat is comprised of hardliners loyal to al-Shabaab’s leadership and serves as a parallel governance structure, monitoring and regulating the entire organization. Amniyat is believed to be responsible for most of the attacks that have been carried out within Somalia and its region. Its members also provide counterintelligence functions for alShabaab and undertake widespread propaganda to win the hearts and minds of local populations. The ability of al-Shabaab to control and influence some rural areas of Somalia, and its capacity to infiltrate urban centers, including Mogadishu and Kismayo, means that the organization remains fluid and very difficult to defeat conclusively through military strategy alone. The character of AMISOM, discernible in its rules of engagement, gradualist multidimensionality, commitment of the troops-contributing countries and financial and logistical support, are some of the key factors

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that have contributed to its relative success in establishing state authority around Mogadishu and other regions (albeit precariously) such as Kismayo, Baidoa, and Beletweyne. AMISOM’s distinct posture as a peace support operation and, consequently, as an alternative to UN traditional peacekeeping models, is encapsulated in its Rules of Engagement which allows for the use of force beyond self-defense. In particular, AMISOM is allowed to use force to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence. Another important feature of AMISOM is the incremental multidimensional configuration of the mission from an initial militarydominated operation to an operation that incorporates more inclusive role for civilians and police as part of the mission components. It must be noted, however, that AMISOM continues to struggle to attain an integrated and coordinated mission operational structure. In terms of the troops-contributing countries, Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Uganda have contributed troops in the military operations in Somalia. These African troops have been at the forefront of combat operations in Somalia. Other African countries are represented in AMISOM’s police and civilian personnel. Yet despite these African human resources, the bulk of logistical and financial support has been drawn from non-African states and the UN. The ultimate outcome of AMISOM in Somalia will depend largely on its ability to significantly diminish the threats posed by al-Shabaab. This will create the possibility of a transfer of authority from AMISOM to a traditional UN peacekeeping mission or perhaps directly to the SNSF. AMISOM’s current official timeline provides for continued deployment until the next electoral transition in Somalia, scheduled in 2016.Jurists may continue to debate the overall performance, successes, and challenges of AMISOM as a counterinsurgency operation and as a symbol of the “Africanization” of peacekeeping.29 Yet the AU engagement in Somalia has considerably projected the regional organization as a potent actor in leading complex peace operations involving combat and counterinsurgency operations in Africa.

External interventions and the pursuit of “negative peace” in Somalia Current discourses and policy decisions on a model of peace for Somalia are grossly inadequate and at best focused on the attainment of what might be

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termed a “negative peace,” which privileges short-term stability over an enduring solution to the crisis of legitimacy and authority of the state. Five main trends may be cited as exemplary of these shortcomings. First, the discourse on the resolution of the crisis in Somalia has been skewed towards a reductionist focus on the military defeat of al-Shabaab concomitantly linked to the dissolution of its “governorates” and its forces.30 According to Matt Bryden, the “resumption of AMISOM offensive operations offers an opportunity to disrupt Al-Shabaab’s planning and to degrade its capacity to operate both inside and outside Somalia.”31 The political solution offered by this argument also reflects this reductionist preoccupation with defeating al-Shabaab. For example, Bryden notes that a political engagement as part of this effort to defeat alShabaab is linked to the ability of the Somali Federal Government to deny this terrorist group local support in southern Somalia and to collaborate closely with Somaliland, Puntland, and the Juba Interim Authority through coordinated intelligence operations.32 Without discounting the importance of this strategy, there are deeper, more complex and more multilayered issues related to state-building that are also critical ingredients to creating an enduring peace in Somalia. Paul Williams alludes to this gap in his observation that while the Somali Federal Government is attempting to develop a strong set of security institutions, the Somalis have continued to disagree over “basic political questions about the country’s governance structures.”33 The security–political nexus seems to be acknowledged but not adequately articulated in the current discourse on the stabilization of Somalia. Second, there is a myth associated with the progress made in the military offensive by AMISOM against al-Shabaab. Although AMISOM has officially announced the recovery of more than 25 districts in Somalia from al-Shabaab, the terrorist group has changed its tactics to sustain its potency by intimidating and driving out civilians in AMISOM controlled areas, blocking main supply routes to the recovered areas, limiting humanitarian access, and undertaking attacks against Mogadishu and Somali’s neighbors, notably Kenya. On May 24, 2014, al-Shabaab attacked Somalia’s parliament, killing at least 10 people. This was the latest attack against the Somali Federal Government in Mogadishu. In addition, there have also been repeated attacks by al-Shabaab in Kenya since the September 21, 2013 Westgate Mall massacre, in which over 67 people were killed. As a troop-contributing country, Kenya remains

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an important actor in the AMISOM offensive operations. Hence, the paradox of AMISOM offensive operations is that it is expanding its control of newly recovered areas, yet seemingly without reducing al-Shabaab’s insurgency capabilities. Third, the Somali Federal Government is developing a political process to build a sustainable peace in Sudan. In 2013, the Somali Federal Government, together with the international community, Somali civil society, and donor representatives, launched the Somali Compact. This compact provides a blueprint for promoting state-building in Somalia by identifying six priority areas for development, also known as the “Six Pillar” plan, with a timeframe for implementation from 2014 to 2016. Despite the comprehensiveness of this state-building blueprint, the Somali Federal Government continues to face serious challenges in terms of its implementation. For example, crisis persists in southern Somalia over the three-versus-six regional states question. On August 27, 2013, the Somali Federal Government and the Interim Juba Administration signed an agreement in Addis Ababa over the creation of three regional states. This agreement has been challenged by other groups who have increasingly agitated within the Interim Juba Administration for the creation of six regional states. Another dimension of the state formation crisis in Somalia is the government’s proposal to establish six federal states, which would include Puntland, Somaliland, and Somalia, as well as three new states. Unfortunately, the implementation of this proposal remains poorly articulated by the government. Fourth, and related to this problem of state formation, is the fact that international engagement has not been effectively tailored toward supporting the Somali government in developing a national blueprint for state formation and state-building. Rather, the international community, through the United Nations Assistance Office to Somalia and bilateral partners, has remained focused on building peacebuilding capacities. UN Assistant Secretary General for Peacebuilding Support to Somalia Judy Cheng Hopkins reiterated the UN’s commitment to providing continued support for Somalia’s various peacebuilding initiatives. Less emphasis was placed on state-building, which remains one of the most important aspects of resolving the crisis in Somalia. Finally, there seems to be a clear mismatch between the focus of external actor engagement in Somalia and the history of violence in Somalia. The roles of militias, Islamist groups, and clans in perpetuating

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patterns of violence in Somalia have been largely overlooked in the current pattern of engagement, which remains devoted to the unending aspiration of defeating al-Shabaab. Even if this strategic end-state is achieved, the security threats in Somalia will most likely degenerate into the old dynamics of clan-based conflicts and militia clashes. Peace in Somalia can never be devoid of an indigenous model of state-building designed, implemented, and fully developed by the complex composition of Somali society.

Conclusion The history and evolution of the conflict in Somalia reflects and expresses the broader pattern of concomitance between the state and crisis in Africa, and the ways in which the inadequate engagement of external actors, including African actors, has contributed to that concomitance. The structural causes of the contemporary crisis in Somalia, as in Africa more broadly, reflect a much longer history of colonial and immediate post-colonial experiences. At the same time, Somalia is also informative as an example of how the postcolonial crisis of the African state has been constructed in discourse. As in many other instances, the representation of the crisis in Somalia has been rooted in, yet inadequately expressive of, the history of violence in the country. Patterns of violence within Somalia, while sharing some characteristics with other African states, have assumed a variety of forms involving a multiplicity of local, regional, and international actors and reflecting the unique complexities of Somalia’s specific historical experience. The lack of understanding of the particular historical context and evolution of the crisis in Somalia, as well as its similarities with other examples of state crisis in Africa, has contributed to the inability of external actors to resolve this crisis. This failure is also discernible in the current discourse on Somalia, which is in turn reflected in intervention policies, such as AMISOM’s prioritization of short-term combat operations against a restricted yet nonetheless potent threat – alShabaab – over long-term efforts toward state-building. This pattern of engagement by external actors suggests that the promotion of “positive peace” in Somalia, capable of guaranteeing an enduring and satisfactory peace through the strengthening of ties between Somali society and the state, remains a distant reality.

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Notes 1. Naomi Chazan,“State and society in Africa: images and challenges.” In The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa, edited by Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988, pp. 325 – 42. 2. Susan E. Rice and Stewart Patrick, “Index of state weakness in the developing world.” Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2008. www.brookings.edu/ , /media/Research/Files/Reports/2008/2/weak%20states%20index/02_weak_ states_index.PDF. 3. Tony Blair, “Labour conference: full text: Tony Blair’s speech (part one).” October 2, 2007. Guardian. www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/oct/02/ labourconference.labour6. 4. Patrick Chabal, “The African crisis: context and interpretation.” In Postcolonial Identities in Africa, edited by R. Werbner and T. Ranger. London: Zed Books, 1996, cited in Claire Mercer, Giles Mohan and Marcus Power, “Towards a critical political geography of African development.” Geoforum 34, no. 4 (2003), p. 422. 5. Chris Allen, “Warfare, endemic violence and state collapse in Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 26, no. 81 (1999), pp. 367–84. 6. Claude Ake and Julius Ihonvbere, The Political Economy of Crisis and Underdevelopment in Africa: Selected Works of Claude Ake. Lagos: JAD Publishers, 1989. 7. Robert Blanton, T. David Mason and Brian Athow, “Colonial style and postcolonial ethnic conflict in Africa.” Journal of Peace Research 38, no. 4 (2001); Matthew Lange, “British colonial legacies and political development.” World Development 32, no. 6 (2004), pp. 905– 22; Ali A. Mazrui, Africa’s International Relations: The Diplomacy of Dependency and Change. London: Westview Press, 1977. 8. Claude Ake, “Explanatory notes on the political economy of Africa.” Journal of Modern African Studies 14, no. 1 (1976), pp. 1 – 23. 9. Ruth First, “Colonialism and the formation of African states.” In States and Societies, edited by David Held. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989, p. 208. 10. Ibid., p. 203. 11. Basil Davidson and Barry Munslow, “The crisis of the nation-state in Africa.” Review of African Political Economy 17, no. 49 (1990), p. 11. 12. Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994. 13. Ibid; Young, “Patterns of social conflict: state, class and ethnicity.” Daedalus 111, no. 2 (1982), pp. 71– 98. 14. First, “Colonialism and the formation of African states,” p. 208. 15. Bruce Berman, “Ethnicity, patronage and the African state: the politics of uncivil nationalism.” African Affairs 97, no. 388 (1998); Young, “Patterns of social conflict.” 16. Ake, “Explanatory notes on the political economy of Africa;” first, “Colonialism and the formation of African states;” Alex Thomson, An Introduction to African Politics. London: Routledge, 2004.

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17. Thomson, An Introduction to African Politics, p. 15. 18. Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective; Thomson, An Introduction to African Politics. 19. Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa. Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1981; Chazan, “State and society in Africa;” first, “Colonialism and the formation of African states;” John Saul, “South Africa: between ‘barbarism’ and ‘structural reform’.” New Left Review 188, July– August (1991). 20. Naomi Chazan et al., Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992, p. 43. 21. Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective; Crawford Young, “Zaire: The Shattered Illusion of the Integral State.” Journal of Modern African Studies 32, no. 2 (1994), pp. 247– 63; Crawford Young, “The end of the postcolonial state in Africa? Reflections on changing African political dynamics.” African Affairs 103, no. 410 (2004), pp. 23– 49. 22. Young, “The end of the post-colonial state in Africa?” p. 39. 23. Morris Szeftel, “Political crisis and democratic renewal in Africa.” In Voting for Democracy: Watershed Elections in Contemporary Anglophone Africa, edited by John Daniel, Roger Southall and Morris Szeftel. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999, p. 10. 24. Mary Kaldor, Human Security: Reflections on Globalization and Intervention. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007, p. 39. 25. Bruce Berman, “The ‘vital core’: from bare life to the biopolitics of human security.” In Protecting Human Security in a Post 9/11 World: Critical and Global Insights, edited by Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato and Mustapha Kamal Pasha. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2007. 26. F. Gregory Gause, “Why Middle East studies missed the Arab spring: the myth of authoritarian stability.” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (2011), pp. 81 – 90. 27. Robert Lamb, “Ungoverned areas and threats from safe havens.” Final Report of the Ungoverned Areas Project, 2008. www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/ugas h_report_final.pdf. 28. International Crisis Group, “Mali: avoiding escalation.” Africa Report, No. 189. July 18, 2012. 29. Marco Wyss and Thierry Tardy, Peacekeeping in Africa: The Evolving Security Architecture. London: Routledge, 2014. 30. Matt Bryden, “The reinvention of Al Shabaab: a strategy of choice or necessity?” Report of the CSIS Africa Program. Washington, DC: Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2014, p. 13. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Paul D. Williams, “Stabilising Somalia: the African Union Mission and the next stage in the war against Al-Shabaab.” RUSI Journal 159, no. 2 (2014), p. 54.

CHAPTER 10 STRONG STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES, WEAK DEMOCRACIES? ASSESSING STATE—SOCIETY RELATIONSHIPS IN LATIN AMERICA Pia Riggirozzi

Introduction The onset of third wave democratization in Latin America in the 1980s made it a laboratory for the study of the relationship between citizenship, states, and markets during and after democratic transition. Initially, it was assumed that as social and political life became increasingly stable and predictable, the new institutions associated with democracy would be able to process societal conflicts more effectively. Citizenship, it was thought, would become embedded, above all, in and through democratic institutions as civil rights were restored, civil society movements, which had played a vital role in pushing for democratization, pulled back from conflict with states in order not to destabilize fragile democratic transitions.1 A more quiescent model of citizenship seemed to emerge, especially in the larger Latin American countries, that offered inclusion based on consumption and individualism in the place of earlier ideas about collective responsibilities and public goods. More than 25 years later, however, the claim that

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democratization would lead to tame citizens in Latin America looks to be an increasingly hollow one. Latin America continues to confront significant challenges associated with democracy and inclusion. The consolidation of the New Left since the early 2000s is an indication that the more cautious, consensual and proelite democracies that characterized the early stages of democratization are at an end, yet the practice of democratic citizenship in a “postneoliberal” era is far from consolidated, as new episodes of social mobilization continue to express the continuation of unsettled democracies. This chapter explores what kinds of expressions of citizenship are being demonstrated and what form of state – society settlement is being proposed in the postneoliberal context. With a focus on Latin America, this chapter asks the following question: is democracy fundamentally about the struggle against social and economic exclusion and inequality, or is it about extending the terms of participation, the nature of the nation, and the space for deliberation and meaningful voice? In the search for answers, it is argued that state –society relations are moving away from strictly neoliberal models of growth and democratization. However, I also suggest that expectations of a closer alignment between (Left) governments and social movements need to be assessed in light of a new cycle of contention, which signals that inclusion and democracy must not be taken for granted in a postneoliberal scenario. The chapter proceeds in four parts. The first part offers a background for the study of democratic citizenship in Latin America. This is followed by an analysis of the crisis of neoliberalism and the opportunities for alternative state-building models. The third part offers an in-depth analysis of state–society relations in the context of Leftist political economies in Latin America. The final part explores what have emerged, in recent years, as unsettled democracies, as well as social demands for strengthening democratic projects in the South. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the prospects of strengthened societies and postneoliberal democratization.

Democratization and citizenship Historically, the nature and strength of democracy in Latin America has been tied up with fluctuations in weight and power in the relationship between the state and civil society.2 Latin American democracy has often

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been defined by tensions and contradictions between “government politics,” as the site of elites; and “street politics,” as the site of popular resistance.3 From this perspective, the terms of citizenship are inherently a matter of political bargaining and negotiation that take place in powerladen situations. At the same time, expressions of citizenship can have a profound impact on the state and democracy. While Anthony Giddens sees democratic citizenship as pivotal in holding communities together,4 citizenship can also be seen as contested and conflictual, even within democracies. Contending actors are bounded by socioeconomic and political institutions. They are also influenced by themes, symbols, and individual actions often resembling past practices of collective action. In Latin America, organized collective action and social demands have been articulated in relation to socioeconomic rights, including labor rights, wages, and social inclusion; political rights, including constitutional norms and institutional legitimacy; and cultural rights, often associated with the recognition of identities and concepts of cultural citizenship.5 While institutional settings and regime features have had a significant impact on the rhythms and episodes of contentious actions,6 the state’s capacity to respond, and more generally state – society relations, have also been shaped by the way nations participate in the international coordinates of economic exchange and power. That is, international factors can inhibit or maximize domestic opportunities for state– society relations and democratic citizenship. Patterns of citizenship, and state –society relations, have thus been shaped in distinctly national ways due to the fact that different institutional frames support different kinds of collective action, allowing different sorts of claims to be made, and engagement between states and social groups to take different forms. At the same time, these engagements are contingent upon the ways in which nations participate in the international political economy. Across a range of theoretical perspectives, the study of state – society relations as a field normally revolves around Weberian traditions of state efficiency, including the idea that society provides crucial elements of support necessary for a state to be effective, and that a state is critical to society as a provider of social and public goods.7 From its origins, work on state – society relations has inherited a propensity to state-centric analysis and thus key concepts such as state capacity and infrastructural

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power have emerged as dominant in the literature. As early as 1992, Peter Evans called for moving beyond a debate that focused on the state as the primary way out of economic crisis in developing countries, towards an intellectual reengagement with the concept of “state capacity” as a way of explaining, in policy terms, crisis management and economic growth.8 He defines state capacity as “an institutional structure that is durable and effective;” it is not, he insists, simply a matter of “the prowess and perspicacity of technocrats within the state apparatus.” 9 Joel Migdal’s 1988 study of state capabilities in the developing world defines state capacity as “the ability of state leaders to use the agencies of the state to get people in [their] society to do what they want them to do.”10 Migdal conceives of the state as a complex of organizations that should be at the disposal of government in order to compel social compliance and to carry out policies. The state, in Migdal’s definition, is thus is a set of instruments that can be used by government. For both Migdal and Evans, state capacity is an attribute built up (or not) over a considerable period of time; and it cannot be imported in any direct or simple way from the outside. State capacity rests on the development of legitimate institutional structures that provide the tools for states to intervene effectively in society without using overt coercion.11 This type of state capacity is frequently seen as the prerogative of developed or strong states or states with the capacity to enforce the rule of law, to promote growth effectively, to elicit the voluntary compliance of the citizens that live within the borders of the state, and to shape the allocation of societal resources.12 From this perspective, the strength of a state is determined by the way governments respond to citizenship claims, deliver public goods, and shape the nature, terrain, and opportunities for democratic citizenship. Yet these responses have often been filtered by institutional settings and governance regimes which have defined how governments foster and create opportunities for inclusion and activism of social actors within governance processes. Furthermore, in democratic settings, civil society organizations are also expected to play a vital role transforming the patterns of access to, and practices of, the state. In Latin America, the capacity of societies to articulate demands and the responsiveness of the state to these have been linked to contexts of political openness and repression. Short-lived democracies were usually followed quickly by authoritarianism.13 Tentative engagement with democratic ideas regularly gave way to struggles over economic resources

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or challenges from below to the social privilege of the elites.14 Enduring democracy often faltered as the twentieth century progressed. Democracy has been problematic in Latin America because of the economic conditions that sustain it and the restricted choices available to globalized (yet highly indebted and unstable) economies. As a result, patterns of state–society relationships followed a very difficult trajectory informed by traditions of elitism and uneven freedoms. Building citizenship in Latin America has therefore been part of a general struggle for broadening/deepening democracy in response to demands for fundamental rights and economic inclusion.15 Many of these historical struggles help to explain contentious politics today.

Questioning neoliberalism, reclaiming the state During the 1980s in Latin America, the transition to democracy coincided with a transition to market economies as highly indebted countries in the region embraced economic liberalism. In many ways, debt crisis and austerity dictated the terms of democratization in the 1980s and 1990s. For much of the 1980s, the standard prescriptions for development across the developing world was based on the transformation of the state in the direction of reducing the scope (and cost) of its activities to provide the basis for effective market-led governance.16 The primary goal of neoliberal orthodoxy was thus to reform the relationship between the state and the market. The reforms associated with the Washington Consensus set out to reduce the political and economic roles of the state and cut back state expenditures via a range of policies, from the privatization of public assets to a reduction in public services and deregulation of the labor market. The role of the state was reduced to the provision of the rule of law and core public goods; and, crucially, the state was seen as operating best in terms of policy decisions when it was insulated from “politics” and popular pressures, including interest groups. This assumption was reflected in limited participation opportunities for social actors claiming more than basic citizenship rights. Politically, neoliberal reforms played well at a time of conservative and timid democratization when the “excesses” of the Left were blamed for having provoked the extreme violence that engulfed much of the region in the 1960s and 1970s. There is some evidence to suggest that

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liberal economics did indeed limit (or at least shed light on) corrupt state practices.17 Overall, however, the immediate political (and economic) impact of the Washington Consensus on Latin America’s nascent democracies was largely negative. It led to the introduction of highly executive, undemocratic, and non-consultative procedures within government, reduced access to the state, and deepened poverty, heightening social and economic exclusion and increasing social tensions. The attempt to relocate state –society relations through market reforms proved particularly difficult in a region with strong traditions of both corporatist and social movement-based forms of citizenship.18 The difficulty of reconciling neoliberalism with popular expectations became manifest at the end of the 1990s when, despite the halting of decades of high and hyperinflation, and even some indicators of economic growth, poverty rates averaged 40 percent across the region while welfare and inclusion had been systematically reduced.19 Whether neoliberalism leads inevitably to, at best, impoverishing growth, or whether it did so in the Latin American context because of weak citizenship, authoritarian state legacies, low levels of capital formation, and fragile linkages to global markets, the Washington Consensus led to rising levels of poverty and inequality across the Latin American region. Cutbacks in state expenditure and the shift to safety-net welfare created vulnerabilities, unhappiness, and insecurity, especially among low income groups.20 As the problems associated with free markets spiraled, the difficulty of embedding the neoliberal state in a stable model of democracy and inclusive politics led ultimately to its unraveling. Protests and riots at the end of the 1990s expressed a generalized rejection of elite democracies and a self-serving and corrupt governing class. Just as importantly, it also indicated a loss of faith in a political economic model which was thought to have brought many countries in the region to the brink of chaos. Street protests in Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia forced democratically elected presidents to leave office before the end of their terms. New forms of social articulation, including among indigenous groups in Ecuador and Bolivia, the unemployed in Argentina, and others, emerged as the most important social forces opposed to the continuation of market policies.21 More moderate social demands, which were nevertheless also accompanied by disruptive scenes of land occupations, were part of the social reaction to Brazil’s economic crisis by the lower middle class,

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while ethnic minorities in the Andean countries also exercised voice and agency by claiming rights and making demands that were otherwise impossible during the period of austerity and open markets. Even in Chile, rising levels of unemployment and underemployment contributed to a growing questioning of neoliberalism.22 By the turn of the century, popular protests were not only protests against the neoliberal project, aided by the Washington Consensus, but also against the political class and governments that endorsed them. In response, communities reorganized to reclaim basic rights and social citizenship. Some popular protests went beyond proposing alternative views of state – society relationships by leading the formation of vocal neighborhood assemblies and creating new sites of social struggle such as barter clubs, neighborhood assemblies, and other forms of horizontal and autonomous social articulation.23 In this context, restoring trust and governance was not simply a matter of putting the economy right, but also required political renewal and contingent policies seeking to rebalance the relationship between the state and market. It is therefore not surprising that a new tide of Leftist leaders rapidly gained political terrain, winning presidential elections consecutively in Venezuela (1998), Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Uruguay (2004), Bolivia (2005), Ecuador (2006), Paraguay (2008), Chile (2006, 2013), and Peru (2011). The rise of the New Left was not simply an expression of partisan and symbolic politics, but a more profound acknowledgement that economic governance could not be delinked from the responsibilities of the state to deliver inclusive democracy and socially responsive political economies. Laura Macdonald and Anne Ruckert speak of the “developmentalist state” being back with a vengeance,24 and Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi identify “the return of the state” with the provision of public goods and distribution combined with a greater emphasis on the “people” and identity politics.25 In short, “postneoliberal” political economies in the region took shape in response to the need to revamp and renew what citizenship means while building state capacity to address social divisions and demands. It is now common to assert that, on the back of the resource boom beginning in the early 2000s, it became possible for well-resourced Leftist governments to develop novel tactics of social mobilization and instruments of state management to maintain social control while underpinning renewed state –society pacts. After years of slow growth

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and recession, Latin American economies were expanding in a genuinely unprecedented fashion in response to rising global demand for minerals, energy, and agricultural products led mainly by emerging markets in Asia.26 For instance, between 2000 and 2008, the volume of regional exports rose by a remarkable 42.4 percent, allowing states to accumulate sufficient resources for redistribution and the design of new social policies.27 In contrast to the pressures on developing countries’ policy choices during the 1980s and 1990s, the shifts in power, authority, and resources at the global level far from diminished the autonomy of national states. On the contrary, the rapid growth of the export market and the accumulation of reserves created new opportunities for statebuilding and expansive public spending. At the same time, new institutional forms of representation and participation were adopted, although these were largely led by the state. Indeed, as neoliberalism loses momentum as an organizing principle of political economy in the region, expectations about more responsive states and inclusive forms of citizenship grow higher. The question that emerges is therefore whether new forms of state – society relations meet those expectations.

Governing from the Left: Strengthening states and (state-led) societies The crisis of neoliberalism in Latin America was not simply an economic crisis – that is, the consequence of a mismanaged and excessively ideological market opening. It was also a political crisis, characterized by a profound disenchantment both with the governance processes that accompanied the intensification of the market and with the old generation of political leaders. This disenchantment was felt widely not only among the poor or indigenous communities but also among important sectors of the middle classes. Changes in the political economy of two-thirds of the continent’s countries since the opening of the 2000s were led by a double movement: new social movements challenging the shallowness of neoliberal democracies, and a sequence of electoral victories by Left-leaning political leaders, with grassroots membership and close ties to labor unions and social organizations.28 Despite their diversity, the Leftists’ project shared common objectives of reducing social and economic inequality, increasing openness to civil society, and developing new forms of political representation. At the

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same time, the international context acted as an opportunity structure for new leaders who capitalized on new corridors of financial and ideological power. This trend was epitomized by the emergence of Venezuela’s participation in the region and China’s role in the global political economy, and in particular as a trading partner in South America. In contrast to the pressures on developing countries’ policy choices during the 1980s and 1990s, the current shifts in power, authority, and resources at the global level have not diminished the autonomy of national states, but rather have fostered new modalities of insertion in the world economy and spaces for engagement with markets and civil society. The international commodity boom provided governments with a timely boost in revenues, encouraging the rise of governments that allowed for expansive social expenditure and innovative programs of governance. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, for instance, a new attitude to nation-building was confirmed through constitutional reforms while community organizations consolidated their position as the key organizational mechanism for the governments’ model of “protagonistic democracy.”29 In these countries, new visions of “postneoliberalism” were inspired in popular mobilization and popular culture, where the “people” took centerstage against elites. Some of these changes have been codified in new constitutions. For instance, Venezuela’s proclamation of the “Fifth Republic” in 1999 explicitly set out to break with the past and enshrine sets of rights (many of which cannot immediately be implemented) and multicultural entitlements. Ecuador’s new constitution in 2008 also set out new rights and welfare entitlements, as well as asserting the importance of the state’s role in the economy. The same is true of Bolivia’s more contested constitution, which was finally approved in 2009. The focus of government action – and for this reason constitutional engineering was symbolically very important – is, in all three countries, squarely on historical reparation, redistribution of political and economic resources, and the importance of an unmediated “bottomup” voice which can sometimes involve new, more inventive strategies of political inclusion, as in Ecuador, where the voting age was lowered to 16 years of age. Roberto Laserna shows that new legislation to enhance representation of minorities, including indigenous territories and environmental and forestry laws, as well as reforms in the electoral system, have created further opportunities for the representation of

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citizens and their political empowerment.30 Resource reallocation towards poorer areas and extended coverage of basic services including health and education, have improved living conditions of neglected populations.31 In these Andean versions of postneoliberalism, the state became a referent and an instrument for national redemption as well as the source of social justice through redistribution and national integration. Renegotiations with foreign investors took particular significance in Bolivia and Ecuador, where natural resources have been privatized most extensively.32 The introduction of higher export taxes became another key as commodity prices increased. The same can be said of the introduction of price controls, increased levels of import protection, and subsidized credit, which are important tools to pump-rime local industrial production and manage demand-driven inflation.33 The case of Venezuela’s “twenty-first century socialism,” or “Bolivarian revolution,” resembles a more classical case of class and/or factional struggle within a process of democratization. As a result, a more encompassing approach to social empowerment and collective ownership was designed through a series of publicly funded and administered poverty alleviation programs and consejos communales (community councils). Innovative initiatives, Misiones (missions), became part of a larger participatory system designed to combat poverty and deliver social policies. The Misiones replaced funding through the ministries to implement resources directly from state-owned Petro´leos de Venezuela, setting up programs in the neighborhoods through a parallel set of institutions. This included Misio´n Ribas (adult education), Misio´n Sucre (university scholarships), Misio´n Vuelvan Caras (economic cooperatives), Misio´n Guaicaipuro (indigenous land titling), Misio´n Barrio Adentro (community health), Misio´n Mercal (subsidized food markets), and Misio´n Milagro (eye operations).34 Community organizations consolidated their position as an organizational alternative to neoliberalism and a key mechanism for the government’s model of “protagonistic democracy” as societies assumed responsibility for the coordination and delivery of the Misiones.35 In those countries that departed from a legacy of state-led development in the 1940s and 1950s, such as Argentina and Brazil, postneoliberalism took its shape from a redefinition of the old developmentalist model of growth that relied heavily on national industry and the domestic market into what appears to be the “return of

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the state.”36 One thing that becomes clear from the analysis of the neoliberal crisis in Argentina is that social mobilization was less an issue of culturally embedded identity politics, but rather a call for citizenship in terms of social equity. Postcrisis governance in Argentina has thus focused on recovering the steering role of the state in key productive sectors and strategies for growth based on the export of primary commodities, alongside nationalizations – of the national airline, Aerolı´neas Argentinas, natural resources provisions, and the pension system – price controls on energy and transport, and attempts to manage the internal market for some key household goods, including meat, milk, and wheat, and controlling exchange rates as a way of controlling inflation.37 A growing export sector helped to reconstruct stable governance arrangements. Just as importantly, it made possible new social investments which, although modest, helped calm the situation socially by means of food, health, and workfare programs, and other subsidies.38 In many ways, changes in the international coordinates of trade and power created new opportunities for “resource-based” democratic innovations, as taxes on sales and export revenues supported the introduction or extension of welfare programs. For some, this manifested as the “rentier state” as states emerged as regulators capable of capturing export rents deriving from the agricultural (or natural resources) boom while creating corporatist structures for the inclusion of social actors and new forms of intervention.39 Specifically, a heavily taxed export sector secures state wealth towards social programs that help the middle and working classes to exercise consumerism, while mitigating the traditional power of agricultural exporters as political veto powers. The governments of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2003-) in Argentina, for instance, have sought to recreate the alliance between industrialists, labor, and the public sector, while introducing new targeted programs, such as the Universal Child Benefit (Asignacio´n Universal por Hijo) since 2010,40 and extending welfare programs to non-unionized workers, groups that were particularly active in the protests of 2001.41 Further evidence of state mediation in welfare in Argentina includes the creation of a “reasonable” minimum wage for non-unionized workers (including domestic servants) in 2008 and pressure on the private health companies to extend their coverage and reduce their charges.42

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Chile and Brazil present something of a paradox. In both places, the emergence of the New Left was considered “cautious” or moderate compared to the “radical” regimes in Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and to a large extent Argentina.43 In Brazil, institutionalized state– private sector relationships have been key in the adoption of specific national competitive strategies while consolidating participatory forms of decision-making and entrenched welfare.44 New institutions have been designed within the state and in its interface with civil society in the form of participatory budgeting and other methods of social participation for the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies. Brazil has also increased the formalization of workers, increased minimum wage (and purchasing power which has grown over 70 percent in the last ten years), created 19.5 million jobs in the last decade, and extended the coverage of social policies to combat poverty such as the Bolsa Familia allowance. Brazil has also experienced an important rise in the average length of schooling.45 It has successfully reduced poverty from 37.5 percent in 2001 to 20.9 percent in 2011 while extreme poverty was reduced from 13.2 percent to 6.1 percent in the same period.46 In addition to social programs, innovative methods of inclusion such as participatory budgeting in major cities have been deemed successful in terms of generating greater equality through a more equitable redistribution of resources to, and increased participation of, disadvantaged groups. Chile was long regarded as a stable, successful, and consensual market democracy, and the extraordinary and rapid processes of privatization initially went unchallenged. The redemocratization process in the late 1980s saw a continuity of the legal and institutional structures in place since the time of Augusto Pinochet’s military rule and addressed the needs of communities without directly confronting national elites. The military dictatorship of General Pinochet introduced a combination of fierce repression of trade unions, the elimination of left-wing parties, and a violent policing of poor neighborhoods with the successful marketization of the economy in order to radically reshape the parameters and expectations of ordinary people for more than a generation.47 Democratization since 1989, and the election of a series of Centre-Left governments, was therefore articulated in terms of a commitment in theory to the full restoration of political, civic, and social citizenship, alongside an endorsement of growth through the market, largely based on

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the neoliberal market reform advanced during Pinochet’s rule. The persistence of the neoliberal paradigm set real limits on taxation, redistributive policies, and reform of key service sectors such as education, health, and pensions. Nonetheless, the Socialist administrations of Ricardo Lagos (2002) and Michelle Bachelet (2006, 2014) expanded targeted social programs, increased the minimum wage, put more resources into labor enforcement, and boosted enrolment across all levels of education by expanding access to poorer students, mainly through low interest loans. The scale of poverty alleviation in Chile is, in fact, enormous, almost exceptional, by regional standards. Chile reduced the number of people living in poverty from 20.2 percent in 2002 to 13.7 percent in 2008 – the second best record in Latin America. The coalition brought down poverty rates from 13.7 percent in 2006 to 11.5 percent in 2009,48 apart from having the lowest multidimensional poverty rates and lowest monetary poverty rates, leading Marcus Taylor to call this feat the “real miracle” of Chile.49 Similar to postcrisis Argentina, the “growth with social equality” program occurred thanks to the large transfer of copper rents towards health, education, and welfare entitlements.50 The economy has grown at an annual average of 5.2 percent a year over the past two decades, cutting the poverty rate from more than 38 percent of the population in 1990 to less than 15 percent in 2012.51 In recent years, Chile has attracted a huge influx of foreign investment and reduced unemployment to around 6 percent in 2012. This scenario has been echoed across the region. According to a 2013 World Bank report, despite falling growth rates, Latin America continues to successfully reduce poverty and promote shared prosperity.52 The proportion of the region’s 600 million people living in extreme poverty was cut in half between 2003 and 2012 to 12.3 percent. Poverty reduction was accompanied by strong income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population.53 Millions of people have moved out of poverty and into the middle class in Latin America. Between 2003 and 2011, the middle class grew 50 percent. Over the same period, the proportion of people in poverty fell from 44 percent to around 30 percent.54 The linkages between resource wealth and state policy in Latin America, particularly in the Southern Cone, thus served as organizing frames for new politics of inclusion beyond politics of protest or cooptation, providing recognition and agency through new policies and institutions to informal workers, the self-employed, and other groups

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traditionally at the margins of unionization and corporate politics. A new cycle of growth and democratization since the early 2000s produced varied, highly contextual, and even contrasting effects to contentious politics. For this reason, we can see the emergence of distinctive pathways of state– society relations in Latin America that are different from the past and from each other. The above figures undoubtedly represent a breakthrough in terms of Latin American social progress, development, and inclusion. For states, this meant that the resource boom has enabled the reallocation of muchneeded resources to reduce poverty and inequality and to create new grounds for governance after crisis through inclusion and representation in institutional spaces. For societies, pathways of citizenship across countries have been marked by state-led inclusion, social and workfare programs, and some public investment in services. Yet societies have changed as a consequence. State-led politics of inclusion since the early 2000s meant that people’s expectations have risen in terms of what democracy can deliver. There is little doubt of the success of the post-crisis governments in reasserting the command and capacity of the state in the new political economy. Effective and well-targeted policies combined with a nationalistic rhetoric captured the urgency and sensitivity of the crisis. Yet, effective policies after crisis do not equal sustainability over the long term. This reality poses the biggest challenge for the Left. What democracy in Latin America does and should mean in the new era of economic growth remains an unsettled question about the nature of democracy itself. Whether democracy is to be defined as the struggle against social and economic exclusion and inequality, or in terms of extending participation and expanding the space for deliberation and meaningful voice, remains to be seen. Nevertheless, Latin American politics suggests that these are questions of political and academic relevance.

Strong states, strong societies, unsettled (postneoliberal) democracies As democracies in Latin America, particularly the Southern Cone, have become better resourced and social mobilization within them has been advanced through redistribution and inclusion, governing from the Left in many cases has come to resemble populist politics centering on the

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“culture of the leader,” where intermediary mechanisms of negotiation and representation are coopted or suppressed.55 Confronted with the government’s inclusive strategy, the opportunity for social actors and opposition groups to articulate alternative politics, in the context of persistent levels of poverty and inequality, has been limited. This has left governments with an enormous power to articulate state–society relations, situating the state as the place for politics, redistribution, and development. As the state takes centerstage, opposition politics have lost ground and delegative forms of democracy have been consolidated.56 In this context, serious questions arise about the autonomy of social actors and the availability of political spaces in which social groups can negotiate political decisions with the state. Notwithstanding different sociopolitical contexts, current Leftist governments across Latin America evince certain tensions with democracy, particularly with respect to the value that the latter is conceived as placing upon pluralism. Increased state capacity to regulate political and economic resources has meant that governments tend to bend institutional safeguards toward developing more direct models of engagement with society and, consequently, also put strong pressure on independent civil society. In this context, political personalism and “hyperpresidentialism” seems to have emerged as an element of the new political culture that defines governance after crisis across the region, in particular in the Southern Cone. Personalistic leadership feeds on quasidirect links to followers, while intermediate institutions, such as organized parties, are bypassed and displaced as a mediating mechanism of political inclusion and conflict resolution. This is not a minor issue. In the past, the lack of channels of negotiation over economic policies and rights have resulted in significant socioeconomic and political exclusion. Economically, although postcrisis governments successfully secured economic recovery and reasserted the legitimacy of the state, they nevertheless remained a long way from having secured an institutionalized and coherent model of governance. While extractive and exportled economies provide the livelihood of many societies across the region, they also leave them perennially vulnerable to external fluctuations. The lessons from the 1990s suggest that there has to be an active public policy. Perhaps this explains the generalized acceptance of the role of the public sector in welfare spending as vital. Nevertheless, avoiding the poverty trap will demand that investment goes not only wider in society, but deeper in investments in education, science, and technology.57

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These criticisms gained momentum in the context of the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, as growth and social improvements decelerated, and as some of the groups who in the early 2000s successfully campaigned to change the course of policy have lost their radical edge. While socially, the reduction of poverty and inequality is undisputable, Latin America has entered a new cycle of mobilization and protest that for the last year has been led by conservative and reactionary segments as exporters, privatized utilities, and other economic interests associated with neoliberalism in the 1990s have begun to reassert their authority. Political contradictions in these countries have become more exposed and strained despite growth, providing clear confirmation that social polarization and class contradictions still affect democracy in the region. In Argentina, for instance, export-led growth helped the economy to bounce back since 2003, yet this has been accompanied by controversial forms of social and political incorporation. Like Carlos Menem in the 1990s, the Ne´stor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner administrations systematically concentrated executive authority and took timely yet bold initiatives, particularly in relation to tax policy, even at the cost of affecting consensual negotiations and weakening political institutions. Increasingly, inflationary pressures and augmented demand has put stress on the economy and created distributional pressures that at times led the executive to engage in arduous negotiations with business actors, such as supermarkets and agroindustrial representatives, to control prices and engage in other forms of government interventionism. Polarization has grown particularly severe, in line with historical trends, between the Peronist government and the agro-business sector. This relationship was tested to the extreme since 2008, when the Ministry of Economy under Cristina Kirchner’s administration tried to institute a scale of progressive taxation, with tax rates increasing alongside increases in commodity prices. This would have entailed, for instance, an increase in the rate of soybean exports from 35 percent to over 40 percent. The farming sector demanded that the government capitulate on its project to export the tax hike. Farm groups organized strikes and launched major protests and roadblocks, as well as organizing the destruction of crops bound for market. The farmers undertook continual demonstrations until the export tax was consolidated at 35 percent.58 As the tensions between the state and the farmers increased over tax disputes, one thing that became clear was that

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citizenship became part of a conflictive construction where the state played classes off against each other. Cristina Kirchner’s administration responded to the strikes and demonstrations, publicly referring to the farmers as “greedy” and “coup-plotters.”59 The government appealed to the urban working class, pointing out the relative prosperity of the farmers and their capacity to eliminate popular social programs if the taxes were rescinded.60 This picture is complicated by the undeniable fact that rural conservative and reactionary factions continue to play an influential role in shaping political events while supporting government opposition.61 Meanwhile, in Chile, for the last few years, the push for new expressions of citizenship reflects, perhaps above all, a rejection of consensual politics and technocratic governance that delimited quite significantly the terms of citizenship since 1989. On the one side, democratization and the changes in the Left meant that the state managed popular demands through the full restoration of political and civic rights whilst the distance between left parties and popular classes widened. On the other, the specific endorsement of market-led growth set real limits on root-and-branch reforms on taxation and across key service sectors, including education, health, and pensions. The result, despite massive reductions in poverty through the 1990s, was elitist, highly technocratic policymaking that was also evasive of deeply political questions (such as social inequality). It is also the case that civil society groups in Chile often found themselves ignored, if not coopted, in decision-making processes, which perhaps makes it unsurprising that by 2010, only 12 percent of Chileans thought that income distribution was “just.”62 As the patterns of contentious politics in Chile unraveled, it became clear that protests were not only about distributional conflicts of material resources in times of plenty but attempts to create new political spaces for democratic engagement in an otherwise technocratic polity. This became clear in the collective organizing by students and their radical critique against the education system, which is mostly privately controlled, resulting in poorer students receiving poorer education, graduating under debt, and therefore, ineffective as a vehicle of social mobility.63 The protests which were first led by school students in 2006 later snowballed into massive university student protests aimed at changing the basis of the education system and public spending on education while seeking alternative expressions of social belonging

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beyond class politics. As such, protests were about education as much as manifestations against injustice and the need for more substantive forms of participation alongside a redistributive agenda. Whilst in the case of Chile the students emerged as novel actors carving out new democratic spaces and reclaiming citizenship rights, Brazil has posed one of the most puzzling dilemmas for politicians and academics alike: how is it possible that in a country where growth has been sustained for the last decade, where inflation levels have been kept under control, where purchasing power of the average wage has grown in real terms, where unemployment remains at a minimum, and where 50 million Brazilians were lifted out of poverty to join the ranks of the “new middle class,”64 a massive popular protest has taken to the streets of the main cities since June 2013? Moreover, this was the biggest popular protest since 1992, with hundreds of thousands of young people taking to the streets to demand the departure of President Fernando Collor de Mello, accused of corruption. These developments have some resonance with the events of 1984, when millions of Brazilians took the streets to demand democratic elections. On both occasions, political parties, leaders, and social movements came together in pursuit of what was framed and expressed as a common goal. How is it possible that neither the government nor the opposition recognized the latent discontent? How can such discontent occur in a country that has consistently expressed high levels of support to and satisfaction with the moderate and internationalist Leftists project? The protests witnessed in 2013 were led by spontaneous movements, born mainly out of small groups of middle class students with unstated support of opposition political parties. They were defined by specific claims triggered by an increase in the price of an already overwhelmed and poorly maintained public transport system, particularly in times of colossal spending in preparation for the World Cup in 2014. Increasingly, other issues and other groups have joined in what has become a widespread popular reaction – particularly as repression has been issued by military police in states like Sao Paulo. In the face of this current wave of social mobilization, it became clear that no authorities, political actors, or academics, anticipated it. The focus on Brazil as a regional and global success is not misleading: nationally, Brazil has increased the formalization of workers, increased the minimum wage, expanded social programs, created millions of jobs,

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and achieved a dramatic reduction in poverty rates over the last ten years.65 Regionally, it has been the motor behind integration processes and South– South cooperation with a focus on health, energy, and infrastructure. Globally, it has been recognized as a rising power with a protagonist role in forums such as the G20 (Group of Twenty), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa), and in many organizations of the United Nations system. Much is made of the milestone of becoming the fifth-largest economy on the planet, which Brazil is expected to reach within the decade. Nevertheless, there are still 16 million people living in extreme poverty in Brazil. Furthermore, one of the major specific challenges still facing Brazil is how to reduce its high levels of income inequality. Broadly, the income share of the four poorest deciles averages less than 15 percent of total income, with the wealthiest decile accounting for about one-third of the total income.66 This level of inequality, aggravated by widespread levels of corruption, is inconsistent with an economy with the size and international presence of that of Brazil. This creates a gap between glory and hell for millions of Brazilians. In this context, deep questions about the quality of democracy and inclusion may not be so puzzling after all, and these are becoming a political platform of civic opposition in demand for further political, and social reforms to enhance infrastructure and well-being.67 Finally, Venezuela, a focal point in the continental geopolitics, is also experiencing a social uprising challenging the stability of the revolutionary Left. It was in Venezuela where, at the end of the 1990s, the fault lines of the neoliberal model began to spread, opening new possibilities, in theory and practice, for postneoliberal and socialist experiments across the region. For more than a decade, these experiments seemed to work. Poverty reduction was accompanied by strong income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population. In the case of Venezuela, a total transformation of the country’s social, political, and economic system led to a 50 percent reduction of poverty and a 65 percent drop in extreme poverty from the end of 1998 to the end of 2012.68 While socially this is undisputable, Venezuela entered a dangerous path of social protest and state repression that recently has put its troubles in the spotlight. What will result when the political dust settles in Venezuela is still uncertain – not only in terms of state – society relations but also for the regional processes it advances such as the

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Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and blocs such as Petrocaribe, which are significant for many Caribbean states. Just as in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, the practice of democratic citizenship in a “postneoliberal” era is far from consolidated in Venezuela. New episodes of social mobilization express unsettled citizenship and contested democracy. In many ways, this is a case where political contradictions act as a reminder of a political malady of the Left: social polarization and (class) contradictions affecting “postneoliberal” political experiences in the region. In Venezuela, the attitudes between uncompromising opponents and hardcore supporters of the (Chavista) government led by President Nicola´s Maduro are well entrenched, with structural and ideological roots that predate the Hugo Cha´vez era. High poverty and inequality due to the misdistribution of oil wealth in the decades prior to Cha´vez created conditions for a deep class divide.69 Current protests in Venezuela reflect discontent with inflation, consumer product shortages, and a high crime rate. But they also speak of subjacent causes held by a deeply polarized society, split in half not because of partisan claims – although certainly elections have strengthened polarization by institutionalizing a zero-sum, winnertake-all political culture – but because of a social fracture amongst Venezuelans who identify only weakly with each (class-anchored) side. Addressing political and social polarization is key in Venezuela, although not exclusively in that nation, as conservative forces are emerging as a real challenge to current Leftist experiments. Ultimately, it is the ability of democracy to combine new forces of transformation and resistance which is, once again, at stake in Latin America.

Conclusion The background to, and the emergence of, “postneoliberalism” in Latin America has been defined by state-led attempts to incorporate socially and economically excluded communities and groups with policies that sought to rebalance the relationship between states, markets, and societies. Economic growth and resource booms are highly consequential for contentious politics. In Latin America, progressive governments in the Left came into office in the early 2000s supported by social movements that questioned politics of exclusion and the morality of marketized democracies. Leftist leaders initiated participatory processes, rebuilding

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the state towards a postneoliberal model of governance in which natural resources would be key state sources of income in support of social programs for the poor. Unlike the 1980s, when export-led strategies were determined by a swift change from protectionist to open market economies and the retreat of the state, economic patterns “in times of plenty” supported statist, nationalist, redistributive political projects with enormous implications for state–society relations and the strengthening of civil society. Politics of inclusion and participatory practices build new collective identities and shared values, strengthening societies in the thrust of democratization. Likewise, experiments of economic nationalism and expansionary public spending lifted segments out of poverty fostering, as a consequence, social mobility and the consolidation of new middle classes. Politically, those who have been skeptical about the Left’s ability to deliver reforms of political and economic significance may find real grounds to argue that there are limits to social transformation. Risk of cooptation and corporatist practices – typical of populist regimes – have increased as civil society has been brought closer to the state. Even when governments have responded positively to societal demands, the quality of representation in state decision-making processes and via political parties remains low. Economically, questions also arise from real challenges of satisfying working and lower middle class demands for greater equality in the context of economies that remain driven by integration into global markets and external investment. In this context, it is less evident how pressures for further democratizing postneoliberal order will be met by current institutional settings, particularly if the economy slows down. What is certain is that civil society protests were critical in derailing neoliberal economic reforms, and reclaiming the state as an instrument for the delivery of new modalities of responsive democracy. Strong societies in Latin America mobilized against the military governments of the 1980s, neoliberal reforms and economic crisis in the 1990s and early 2000s, and now are demanding more transparent and deliberative forms of democracy of the new Leftist governments. There is a sense of a democratic vacuum, which has been perceived by societal actors as a strong opportunity to advance further demands for democratization. Popular mobilization by strong societies became paramount as the debate over how best to deliver growth and wellbeing, while strengthening democracy, has been reopened in Latin American states.

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Notes 1. Jean Grugel and Matthew Bishop, Democratization: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 2. Philip Oxhorn, Sustaining Civil Society: Economic Change, Democracy, and the Social Construction of Citizenship in Latin America. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. 3. Fernando Caldero´n and Alicia Szmukler, La Polı´tica en las Calles. La Paz: CERES-PLURAL-UASB, 2000. 4. Anthony Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998. 5. See UNDP/Fundacio´n UNIR Bolivia, “Understanding Social Conflict in Latin America.” Bolivia: UNDP, UNIR, 2013. 6. Sidney Tarrow, Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 7. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State – Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988; Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 8. Peter Evans, “The state as problem and solution: predation, embedded autonomy, and structural change.” In The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflicts, and the State, edited by Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. 9. Evans, “The state as problem and solution,” p. 141. 10. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, p. xiii. 11. See also Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power. Volume 2: The Rise of Classes and Nation States 1760– 1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 12. Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State–Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. 13. Jean Grugel and Matthew Bishop, Democratization: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 14. Ibid. 15. Evelina Dagnino, The Meanings of Citizenship in Latin America. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2005. 16. Robert Gwynne and Cristobal Kay, “Views from the periphery: futures of neoliberalism in Latin America.” Third World Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2000), pp. 141– 56. 17. Carol Wise, “Introduction: Latin American politics in the era of market reform.” In Post-Stabilization Politics in Latin America: Competition, Transition, Collapse, edited by Carol Wise and Riordan Roett. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 18. Jean Grugel, “‘Basta de realidades, queremos promesas’: democracy after the Washington consensus.” In Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America,

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19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2011. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC, 2011, p. 11. Douglas S. Massey, Magaly Sanchez R. and Jere R. Behrman, eds, Chronicle of a Myth Foretold: The Washington Consensus in Latin America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Moises Arce and Paul T. Bellinger Jr, “Low-intensity democracy revisited: the effects of economic liberalization on political activity in Latin America.” World Politics 60, no. 1 (2007), pp. 97 – 121. Patricio Silva, In the Name of Reason: Technocrats and Politics in Chile. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Steffen Bo¨hm, Ana C. Dinerstein and Andre´ Spicer, “(Im)possibilities of autonomy: social movements in and beyond capital, the state and development.” Social Movement Studies 9, No. 1 (2010), pp. 17 – 32; Oxhorn, Sustaining Civil Society; Marina Sitrin, Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina. London: Zed Books, 2012. Laura Macdonald and Anne Ruckert, Post-Neoliberalism in the Americas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi, “The return of the state in Argentina.” International Affairs 83, no. 1 (2007), pp. 87 – 107. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2011, p. 77. Ibid; see also Rhys Jenkins and Enrique Dussel Peters, eds., China and Latin America: Economic Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Bonn: German Development Institute, 2009. Francisco Panizza, Contemporary Latin America: Development and Democracy Beyond the Washington Consensus. London: Zed Books, 2009; Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi, “Post-neoliberalism in Latin America: rebuilding and reclaiming the state after crisis.” Development and Change 43, no. 1 (2012), pp. 1 – 21. Nikolas Kozloff, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; Julia Buxton, “The Bolivarian revolution as Venezuela’s post-crisis alternative.” In Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America, edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 172. Roberto Laserna, “Decentralization, local initiatives, and citizenship in Bolivia, 1994– 2004.” In Participatory Innovation and Representative Democracy in Latin America, edited by Andrew Selee and Eduardo Peruzzotti. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2009. Ibid., p. 148. James Rochlin, “Latin America’s turn to the left and the new strategic landscape: the case of Bolivia.” Third World Quarterly 8, no. 7 (2007), pp. 1327–42. Jason Tockman, “Varieties of post-neoliberalism: ecuador and Bolivia’s divergent paths of citizenship, participation, and natural resource policy.”

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36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41.

42.

43. 44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES Paper presented at the 2010 Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Toronto, Canada, October 6 –9, 2010. Nikolas Kozloff, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Julia Buxton, “The Bolivarian revolution as Venezuela’s post-crisis alternative.” In Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America, edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 172. Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi, “The return of the state in Argentina.” International Affairs 83, no. 1 (2007), pp. 87– 107. Pia Riggirozzi, “After neoliberalism in Argentina: reasserting nationalism in an open economy.” In Governance After Neoliberalism in Latin America, edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Juan Piscetta, “Tres An˜os del Plan ‘Argentina Trabaja’: Impacto y Asignaturas Pendientes.” Infobae, February 28, 2012. www.infobae.com/notas/666735-.html. Kurt Weyland, “The rise of Latin America’s two lefts: insights from rentier state theory.” Comparative Politics 41, no. 2 (2009), pp. 145–64; also Neal Richardson, “Export-oriented populism: commodities and coalitions in Argentina.” Studies on Comparative International Development 44, no. 3 (2009), pp. 228–55. Gisell Cogliandro, “El Programa Asignacio´n Universal por Hijo para Proteccio´n Social y los Cambios en los Programas de Transferencias Condicionadas.” Buenos Aires: Fundacio´n Siena, 2010. Javier Lewkowicz, “La Asignacio´n Llego´ a los Hijos de los Temporario.” [Universal Allowance Reaches Temporary Workers’ Children]. Pa´gina 12, December 2, 2010. www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-157916-2010-12-02.html. Silvia Stang, “Las Claves de los Cambios Salariales del Servicio Dome´stico.” [Key Changes in Domestic Service Salaries]. La Nacio´n. December 18, 2008. www.lanacion.com.ar/1082065-lasclaves-de-los-cambios-salariales-del-serviciodomestico. Jorge G. Castan˜eda, “Latin America’s Left Turn,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 85, no. 3 (2006), pp. 28– 43. Kurt Weyland, “The rise of Latin America’s two lefts: insights from rentier state theory.” Comparative Politics 41, no. 2 (2009), pp. 145 – 64. Nora Lustig, Luis F. Lo´pez-Calva and Eduardo Ortiz-Juarez, “Declining inequality in Latin America: the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico in the 2000s.” Policy Research Working Paper 6248. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2013. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC, 2013. Peter Winn, ed., Victims of the Chilean Miracle: Workers and Neoliberalism in the Pinochet Era, 1973– 2002. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2011. Marcus Taylor, From Pinochet to the “Third Way”: Neoliberalism and Social Transformation in Chile. London: Pluto Press, 2006.

STRONG STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES, WEAK DEMOCRACIES? 215 50. Jojo Nem Singh, “Towards post-neoliberal resource politics? The international political economy of oil and copper in Brazil and Chile.” New Political Economy 19, no. 3 (2014), pp. 329–58. 51. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2013, p. 19. 52. World Bank, “Shifting gears to accelerate shared prosperity.” Latin America and Caribbean Poverty and Labor Brief, June 2013. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013. 53. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2013, p. 15. 54. Luis F. Lo´pez-Calva, Maria Ana Lugo and Renos Vakis, Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013. 55. Kurt Weyland, “The rise of Latin America’s two lefts: insights from rentier state theory.” Comparative Politics 41, no. 2 (2009), pp. 145– 64. 56. Steven Levitsky and James Loxton, “Populism and competitive authoritarianism in the Andes.” Democratization 20, no. 1 (2013), pp. 107–36; Rau´l L. Madrid, “The rise of ethnopopulism in Latin America.” World Politics 60, no. 3 (2008), pp. 475–508. 57. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2013. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC, 2013. 58. Alexei Barrionuevo, “Argentina blocks farm export tax.” New York Times. June 8, 2008. 59. Ibid. 60. Silvia Stang, “Las Claves de los Cambios Salariales del Servicio Dome´stico.” [Key Changes in Domestic Service Salaries]. La Nacio´n. December 18, 2008. www.lanacion.com.ar/1082065-lasclaves-de-los-cambios-salariales-del-serviciodomestico. 61. Richardson, “Export-oriented populism,” p. 238. 62. Sofia Donoso, “Dynamics of change in Chile: explaining the emergence of the 2006 Pingu¨ino movement.” Journal of Latin American Studies 45, no. 1 (2013), pp. 1 – 29. 63. Ibid. 64. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2013, p. 19. 65. ECLAC, Social Panorama of Latin America 2013, pp. 19–23. 66. Ibid., p. 23. 67. Catarina Alencastro and Luiza Dame, “Dilma Sanciona Lei que Garante 75% dos Royalties para Educac a˜o e 25% para Sau´de.” O Globo. September 9, 2013. 68. World Bank, “Shifting gears to accelerate shared prosperity.” online document available at: http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/ LAC/PLB%20Shared%20Prosperity%20FINAL.pdf. Accessed 24 August 2015. 69. Julia Buxton, “The Bolivarian revolution as Venezuela’s post-crisis alternative.” In Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America, edited by Jean Grugel and Pia Riggirozzi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

CONCLUSION Amin Saikal

The aim of this volume was to provide new insights into the phenomenon of “weak states, strong societies,” in world politics, across a range of political, historical, and regional contexts. In the process, the volume sought to examine the ways in which particular national or regional or global contexts (individually or in combination with one another) have played a critical role in the evolution of a wide variety of state–society relationships, and with what consequences. Reflecting different perspectives, the compilation has considered the ways in which emerging issues – from fast-moving and interconnected information technologies to foreign intervention to international terrorism – have altered and may continue to affect state–society relationships. In this, it has demonstrated the difficulty, if not impossibility, of making generalized predictions about the impact of specific developments on state–society relations in a given country as an example of possibly a category of states subjected to similar circumstances. Rather, this volume has suggested that anticipating the potential effects of any given phenomena within any state requires a deep appreciation of that state’s broader historical, political, economic, societal, and geographic landscape as well as the exogenous factors affecting this landscape in one way or another. Each of the contributions in the volume has emphasized in different ways the importance of such thoroughgoing contextualization. By grounding the phenomenon of “weak states, strong societies” in empirical and historical analysis, these chapters have shed light on the

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manifold and paradoxical processes that give rise to it. On the one hand, it is possible to perceive several instances where strong societies have emerged within a vacuum created by various kinds of state weaknesses. The cases of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia are exemplary. On the other hand, strong societies – such as in Belgium – can contribute to the production or reproduction of the weak state, at times to an extent that threatens the territorial or political integrity of the state itself. Elsewhere, the emergence of strong societies occurred in the context of, indeed in opposition to, ostensibly strong states – for instance, in Eastern Europe under communism, or in the context of anti-colonial nationalist movements. Beyond this, there are instances where state – society relationships are influenced by the membership of a state, whether democratic or authoritarian, of a larger network of states, such as the European Union; or where the phenomenon in a state is regulated through the state’s informal contracts with various societal groups or cooptation of such groups, as in the case of Central Asia and Southeast Asia and some North African countries; or where state – society relationships are affected by world political developments, as in relation to certain Eastern European countries; or where global economic paradigms such as neoliberalism have fostered the weakening of state – society relationships, as in the case of Latin America. These observations underscore the need not only to take into account the various factors that color the state –society relationship – including the influence of external actors – but also to think critically about the limitations of concepts such as “strong” and “weak” as applied to states and societies. The case of authoritarian states is pertinent. While seemingly strong in terms of hard power capacities, this volume has shown that authoritarian states are often weak in terms of their soft power capacities, including their ability to achieve legitimacy across wide segments of their populations (Morocco and Algeria). Similarly, low levels of formalized civil society in authoritarian states may belie the existence of strong but less formal social groups with which the state is forced to compromise in order to maintain its authority (Central Asia, Afghanistan). On the other hand, the state’s ability to coopt civil society for its own purposes (as in Morocco and Algeria), or to neutralize it politically (as, to some extent, in Bulgaria), provides empirical evidence for the blurring of the analytical categories represented in the “state –society” equation.

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It also raises the methodological problem of how to gauge the “strength” of society in authoritarian contexts or otherwise. The challenge posed by sub-state actors within the state apparatus (Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Belgium) also raises questions about the analytical limitations of the state – society dyad.

New directions While the formulation “weak states, strong societies” involves a number of theoretical and analytical issues, as outlined above, the chapters in this volume suggest the possibility of an alternative approach that focuses on the state –society relationship itself. Rather than focusing on the weakness or strength of states and societies, this approach would examine the weakening and strengthening of the state – society relationship as a focal question for political and social analysis. Such an approach would consider the consequences of the strengthening of the state– society relationship (including issues such as state accountability and democratization), or of its weakening (including questions of authoritarian government and manifestations of social discontent). It would also involve an examination of the factors that influence the strengthening or weakening of the state– society relationship – both internal and external, historical and contemporary. In this context, Richard Falk has suggested how the strength of the state might be understood through the strength of its relationship with society – that is, its legitimacy. He has also shown how different the state– society relationship has been across historical situations, and particularly between Western and postcolonial states, and how the colonial state’s policy of divide-and-rule made it difficult to maintain social unity in the postindependence state – itself a creation of colonialism. As a result, strong state – society relationships have been widely absent in postcolonial contexts. This has contributed to the inability of both states and societies to resist security threats from above and below, including new forms of external interventionism and transnational terrorism. In contrast to the postcolonial situation, Christopher Bickerton has shown how the state –society relationship in Western Europe began as a strong one within a paradigm of nation-states, but has progressively weakened in and through the transition to member statehood.

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Bickerton’s description of the evolution of the European state – society relationship from a tumultuous marriage to a divorce characterized by mutual suspicion and the keen preservation of distance casts some doubt on the direct relationship of technological progress to improved state accountability. Jan Wouters, Sven van Kerckhoven and Maarten Vidal complicate this picture further by demonstrating that even within Europe, the state– society relationship has evolved in different directions. They describe the opposing paths to federalization undertaken by Belgium and Switzerland. Whereas Belgium has transitioned from a centralized state to federal state through a process of “hollowing out,” Switzerland began as a federal state united from previously independent cantons, and has moved increasingly toward centralization. This finding reinforces the need for thoroughgoing contextualization in understanding the developments in state– society relationships across time. Vesselin Popovski’s chapter has considered more closely how the state– society relationship can be influenced by world political developments. Using the cases of Russia, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, Popovski explored the different ways in which international influence on internal societal developments in Eastern Europe impacted on the transition from activist to neoliberal models of civil society following the fall of communism in 1989. He has contended that while international influence can strengthen society through support for popular movements and human rights campaigns, it can also be absent, ambiguous or even detrimental, contributing to the emergence of a formalized civil society with weak relations to “society” at large. Thus, not only states, but societies can also be corrupted and abuse private financial or economic interests. Karima Laachir concludes that the establishment of state – society relations in Morocco and Algeria has been based on a form of antiimperialistic, anti-Western state nationalism emphasizing the absolute obedience of the masses to the state. Yet, while the majority of people within Moroccan and Algerian societies feel deeply estranged from the authoritarian state, the latter has nevertheless cultivated relations with secular elements of civil society as part of a strategy of divide-andrule and cooptation. Nonetheless, new forms of civil society activism employing cyberspace and social media may help to overcome the perceived ideological divide between Islamists and secularists and foster opportunities for a stronger state –society relationship.

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In Amin Saikal’s chapter on Iraq and Afghanistan, we encounter two examples of a fragile and embattled state – society relationship. Saikal has shown that while social, linguistic, religious, and tribal diversity have affected the development of a strong state –society relationship in both countries, there are nevertheless important historical differences between the two. However, possibilities for a strong and mutually responsive state – society relationship have been even further impeded by external funding of and involvement in state-building. This has sharpened the underlying conditions for the consolidation of multiple, conflicting societies that threaten the integrity of the state, giving legitimacy to a variety of extractive and non-representative political ideologies which attempt to harness legitimacy by presenting themselves as anti-imperialistic. The extent to which a strong state – society relationship is capable of guaranteeing democracy, however, is thrown into question in Kirill Nourzhanov’s chapter. Nourzhanov has demonstrated how, in Central Asia, a positive mutually transformative relationship between state and society has generated viable governance models, albeit not democratic ones. Instead of behaving as a hegemon, the state has negotiated with social groups and actors on issues of governance, national identity, security, and wealth distribution. The complexity of these relationships was also highlighted by Carlyle Thayer in his treatment of the state in Southeast Asia. Thayer has emphasized how the persistence of informally organized and “weblike” societies in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia continues to pose an obstacle to state efforts to regulate the rules of behavior in society. As a result, virtually all states in Southeast Asia confront serious challenges to their ability to dictate the “rules of behavior” to their societies, whatever the nature of their political system. As in Algeria and Morocco, the effects of the Internet and social media and globalization, particularly among the youth, have brought about greater state responsiveness to societal demands that could in some instances help to bring about a closer state – society relationship in the future. Jide Okeke’s analysis of Somalia and the crisis of the state in Africa has demonstrated the ways in which a weak state– society relationship is linked concomitantly to insecurity and instability. The transplantation of colonial systems into the postcolonial African states resulted in the reproduction of a weak state – society relationship in postindependence

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contexts. As in Afghanistan and Iraq, external actors in Somalia have failed to take into account the historical specificities of the countries in which they are involved. As a result, external intervention has aimed toward a “negative” peace, defined by the achievement of short-term stabilization and military goals, against a positive peace based on an organic relationship between state and society. On the other hand, Pia Riggirozzi analysis has articulated how the international economic paradigm of neoliberalism contributed to the weakening of the relationship between state and society in Latin America, resulting in growing societal dissatisfaction and ultimately the rise of the New Left. Riggirozzi has contended how, in the case of Latin America, a weak state – society relationship was linked to conditions of drastic socioeconomic inequality, as well as political repression. Although the emergence of the New Left at the turn of the twenty-first century allowed for a more inclusive participation of social actors in state programs, it has also limited possibilities for the articulation of alternative politics. While economic and political inclusivity has improved under the New Left over the past decade, the risk of cooptation and corporatist practices has increased as civil society has been brought closer to the state.

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INDEX

abuses, 64, 80, 89, 93, 98, 126, 169, 219 access to information, 152, 154 accountability, 7, 61, 64, 66, 74, 177 executive, 152, 157, 162, 170 activism, 5, 59 – 61, 66 – 7, 69, 73 – 5, 95 – 6, 98, 102– 3 civic, 131– 2 civil, 98, 102 civil society, 86– 8, 93 – 7, 102 emergence in Eastern Europe, 67 – 9 Islamist, 94 adaptability, 152, 157, 160– 2 Afghanistan, 5 – 6, 9, 15, 17, 107– 20, 138, 217, 220– 1 Africa, 7, 173– 89 colonial and postcolonial continuities, 176– 8 crisis of state and emergence of contemporary security challenges, 175– 6 new and emerging security threats, 178– 81 African states, 7, 173– 6, 178– 9, 181, 188, 220 African Union Mission in Somalia, see AMISOM Alaouite dynasty, 89

Algeria, 5, 14, 85 – 93, 95 – 103, 217, 219–20 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz, 99 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, 99 Algerians, 89, 91, 96, 99, 102 Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, see ARPCT America, see United States AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia), 175, 183– 7 amnesty, 99– 100 Amniyat, 184 Arab Spring, 11, 18 – 19, 60, 143 Arab uprisings, 89 – 90, 94 Arab World, 12, 14, 18, 91– 2, 125 Arab-speaking region, 86 – 7, 89– 90, 93– 5, 97 Argentina, 196– 7, 200– 1, 206, 210 ARPCT (Alliance for Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism), 182 associations, 53, 72, 74, 92, 96, 100–3 austerity, 23, 26, 30, 34, 195, 197 authoritarian governments, 65, 218 authoritarian regimes, 67 – 8, 86 – 7, 93– 5, 102– 3, 124, 128, 131, 140 electoral, 154, 164

242

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES

authoritarian rule, 61, 89, 109, 111, 127, 165 authoritarian stability, 123– 43, 180 authoritarian states, 18 – 19, 87, 90 – 1, 93 – 4, 102, 126, 217, 219 authoritarianism, 66, 88, 90, 93, 110, 126, 178, 194 political economy of, 140– 2 authority, 4 –5, 15, 33, 128, 136– 7, 176– 7, 185– 6, 198– 9 autonomy, 14, 20, 22, 26, 166– 7, 169, 198– 9, 205 Ayubi, N., 91 – 2 Badakhshon, 135 behavior, rules of, 7, 151, 167, 220 Belgians Dutch-speaking, 44 – 5 French-speaking, 44 – 5 Belgium, 4, 38 – 9, 41 – 4, 46 – 54, 217– 19 Brussels-Capital Region, 45 federalism and European Union, 48 Flanders, 42 –4, 47 Flemish Region, 45 French Community, 44 – 5 German-speaking Community, 44 political and legal realities of federalization, 41 –8 political parties, 46 – 7 rising regional powers, 42 – 4 structure and competences, 44 – 6 United States of, 42 Wallonia, 42, 45, 47 Bersih, 164 Bertelsmann SGI, 151, 153, 170 Blair, Tony, 175 Bolivarian revolution, 200 Bolivia, 196– 7, 199–200, 202 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz, 99 Brazil, 24, 196– 7, 200, 202, 208–10 Brunei, 154, 156 Brussels-Capital Region, 45

brutal oppression, 92 – 3 Bula Matari, 176– 7 Bulgaria, 5, 60 – 1, 68 – 75, 78, 81, 217, 219 Ruse, 73 cantons, 48 – 52, 54 capabilities, state, 24, 33, 149– 50, 194 capacity, 11 – 14, 19 – 20, 22, 128, 130, 152, 160, 194 state, 6 – 7, 24, 149, 151, 154, 170, 193– 4 Cavatorta, F., 87, 94 – 5, 97, 100 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 69, 73 Central Asia, 6, 123– 43, 217, 220 authoritarian state in, 126– 30 civic politics, 130– 3 clans, 134– 5 Islam, 138–40 nation building, 135– 8 political economy of authoritarianism, 140–2 central governments, 48, 128, 135, 167–8, 181 centralization, 4, 31, 39 – 41, 49 – 50, 54, 110, 178, 219 versus decentralization, 39 – 41 centralized state, 52, 219 chaos, 14, 18, 132– 3, 196 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, 99 Chile, 197, 202– 3, 207– 8, 210 China, 1, 18, 23 – 4, 137, 169, 209 citizens, 32 – 3, 62 – 3, 65, 67 – 9, 77– 80, 130, 152, 162– 3 citizenship, 8, 81, 136, 191– 3, 196– 8, 201, 204, 207 democratic, 7, 192– 4, 210 expressions of, 192– 3 social, 197, 202 civic activism, 131– 2 civil activism, 98, 102 civil rights, 152, 154, 162, 191

INDEX civil society, 4 – 8, 59 – 61, 63 – 71, 74, 77 – 81, 93 – 4, 96 – 9, 130 activism, 67, 86 – 8, 94 – 7, 102 divide-and-rule, 95 – 6 emergence in Eastern Europe, 67 – 9 new forms, 88, 219 under authoritarian states, 93 – 5 associations, 96, 98 – 100 dynamics, 85, 93 – 4 formalized, 217, 219 groups, 8, 72, 76, 86 – 7, 93 – 5, 97, 99, 101– 2 independent, 65, 67, 205 organizations, 64, 66, 76, 131, 133, 194 role, 66, 69, 86 strong, 69, 93 civil wars, 48, 60, 89, 92, 99 – 102, 129, 135, 137 clan politics, 134– 5, 183 clans, 6, 114, 134– 5, 151, 184, 187 clientelism, 30, 78 – 9 climate, 20, 93 coalition governments, 28, 154 coalitions, 126, 164, 203 coercion, 87, 89, 126, 177, 181 Cold War, 2, 16, 59, 62, 76, 123, 174, 179 colonial administrators, 176–7 colonial experience, 7, 10 – 11 colonial rule, 151, 176– 7 colonial states, 10 – 11, 174, 176– 8 colonial systems, 173, 177– 8, 220 colonialism, 176– 7, 218 Comaroff, J. and J., 74 communism, 60 – 1, 66 – 9, 71 – 3, 75, 124, 217, 219 communist governments, 67, 69 communist regimes, 60, 66, 72, 81, 169 communist states, 5, 60, 67 –9 community organizations, 199– 200 competences, 39, 42, 44 – 6, 49 – 50, 52 – 4

243

compliance, ministerial, 160– 1 compromise, 73, 132, 134– 5, 217 confederations, 42, 48 – 9 conscience, 67 – 8, 175 consent, 13 – 14, 166 consociationalism, institutionalized, 135 constitutional democracies, 11, 13 constitutions, 45, 50, 52, 74, 90, 92, 127, 168 new, 12, 69, 127, 199 continuity, 9, 88, 174, 176, 202 control, 86, 88, 101, 103, 111– 12, 126, 128, 167– 9 price, 30, 200– 1 social, 61, 129, 150– 1, 162, 170, 197 cooperation, 46, 98, 100, 102, 116, 139 cooptation, 5 – 6, 8, 89 – 90, 95, 110–11, 217, 219, 221 coordination, interministerial, 152– 3, 157, 160 corrupt politicians, 74 –5, 78 corruption, 17, 20, 66, 78 –80, 155– 6, 165–6, 168– 9, 208– 9 costs, 15, 40 – 1, 63, 109– 10, 178, 195, 206 fixed, 40 Crimea, 60 – 1, 77 crises, 7, 30, 35, 173– 81, 183, 185– 9, 192, 204– 5 economic, 30, 194, 196, 198, 211 financial, 140, 168, 206 cultural diversity, 43 cultures, 9– 10, 43, 45, 50, 88 Cummings, S., 135 cyberattack, 163 cyberspace, 88, 103, 163, 169, 219 Czech Republic, 60 debts, 22, 32, 178, 207 decentralization, 38 – 9, 42 – 3, 48, 54, 166, 184 versus centralization, 39 – 41

244

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES

decision-making, 30, 38 – 9, 41, 46, 52, 202 powers, 38 – 41, 48 – 9 processes, 207, 211 democracy, 78 – 9, 86 – 8, 131, 152, 191– 3, 195– 6, 204– 6, 209– 11 constitutional, 11, 13 direct, 53 – 4 elite, 196 inclusive, 12, 197 liberal, 79, 125, 131, 154 majoritarian, 28, 33 protagonistic, 199– 200 quality of, 154– 6 democratic change, 86, 90, 93 – 4, 96 democratic citizenship, 7, 192– 4, 210 democratic states, 87, 115, 131 democratic transition, 91, 109, 180, 191 democratization, 5, 7 –8, 90, 93– 4, 191– 2, 200, 202, 211 development, and modernity, 17 – 19 “developmentalist state”, 197 direct democracy, 53 – 4 discontent, 12, 31, 60, 77, 208, 210 discrimination, 72, 109, 136, 152, 156, 167 disenchantment, 86, 118, 198 disintegration, 2, 119, 136 Soviet Union, 78, 140 dissent, 64, 67 – 8, 72 – 3, 88, 97, 101– 2 dissident societies, 66 dissidents, political, 72, 92 – 3 diversity, 25, 136, 166, 198, 220 cultural, 43 divide-and-rule, 86 – 7, 90, 95 – 6, 98 – 100, 102, 218– 19 divisions, 1 – 2, 45 – 6, 66, 68, 96 – 8, 101– 2 domination, 13, 16, 174, 176– 8 dual-role elites, 167 Durac, V., 95, 100 Dutch-speaking Belgians, 44 – 5

dynamics civil society, 85, 93 – 4 of federalism, 38 – 54 state – society, 125, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139 Eastern Europe, 4 – 5, 59 – 81, 217, 219 emergence of civil society activism, 67 – 9 Eco-Glasnost, 73 economic crises, 30, 194, 196, 198, 211 economic exclusion, 192, 196, 204 economic growth, 44, 140, 142, 168, 194, 196, 204, 210 economic inclusion, 8, 195 economic interests, 64, 206, 219 economic policy, 30, 152, 168, 205 economic power, 54, 78, 93, 178 economic reforms, 141, 168, 211 economic resources, 89, 134, 194, 199, 205 economics, 39 – 40, 140 economies of scale, 39 – 40, 52 – 3 of scope, 40 Ecuador, 196–7, 199–200, 202 education, 43, 45 – 6, 50, 68, 200, 203, 205, 207– 8 Islamic, 139 effective policy implementation, 152, 157, 160, 162 Egypt, 12 – 13, 18 – 19, 180 elections, 28, 74 – 7, 91, 99, 127– 8, 154, 156, 163– 4 free, 13, 69 electoral process, 152, 154, 165, 184 electoral violence, 174, 178– 80 elite democracies, 196 elites, 24 – 5, 32 – 5, 46 – 7, 85 – 6, 89, 124–5, 128, 167 economic, 43, 93 governing/ruling, 15, 80, 85, 89, 91 – 2, 109, 111, 124– 5

INDEX national, 32, 34, 202 political, 24, 32 – 3, 35, 47, 170 state, 4, 24 elitist NGOs, 78 – 9 employment, 45 – 6, 80, 136, 152, 156– 7 empowerment, political, 200 engagement, 133, 139, 173, 183– 5, 193– 4, 199, 205 equality, 92, 100, 202, 211 legal, 100 Ethiopia, 182, 185 ethnicity, 13, 132– 3, 136, 167, 176, 197 European integration, 26 – 7, 31, 34, 48 European Monetary System, 30 –1 European Union, 22, 46, 78, 80, 91, 93, 217 evidence-based instruments, 152, 157, 160, 162 exclusion economic, 192, 196, 204 political, 205 executive accountability, 152, 157, 162, 170 executive capacity, 160 executives, 28 – 9, 33 – 4, 47, 86, 152 export taxes, 200– 1, 206 external actors, 2, 7, 14, 174, 179, 188, 217, 221 external interventions, 14 – 15, 175, 182, 185, 221 extreme poverty, 202– 3, 209 faith, 25, 30, 196 families, 47, 61, 63, 99 – 100, 141– 2, 151, 158 Family Code, 96, 99 – 100 family law, 98, 100– 1 federal democracy, 51 federal governments, 46 – 7, 50, 186– 7 federal states, 4, 38, 41 – 3, 46, 48 – 9, 53, 187, 219

245

federalism, 4, 38 – 9, 41, 43, 45, 47– 51, 53 dynamics of, 38 – 54 Swiss, 52, 54 federalization, 39, 47 – 8, 50, 52, 219 Belgium, 42 – 4 Switzerland, 48 – 9 theory and reality, 51 – 3 fierce states, 5 – 6, 91, 93, 128 financial crisis, 140, 168, 206 Flanders, 42 – 4, 47 Flemish Region, 45 FLN (National Liberation Front), 88– 9, 92 fluidity, 25, 180 foreign intervention, 107, 113, 115, 216 formalized civil society, 217, 219 Forum verite´ et justice, 97 – 8 France, 26, 30 – 1, 176 freedom, 33, 60, 64, 77, 92, 97, 131, 165 French-speaking Belgians, 44 – 5 fundamental rights, 46, 195 Gates, Robert, 119–20 GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), 116 Gellner, E., 124 Georgia, 65 Germany, 71, 113, 152 gerrymandering, 127, 136 Gharm, 135 global financial crisis, 140, 168, 206 global governance, 19, 64 globalization, 1, 22, 59, 62, 136, 180, 220 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 72, 75 – 6, 127, 133 governance, 11, 19 – 20, 63, 117, 119, 197, 199, 204– 5 global, 19, 64 processes, 70, 194, 198 governing elites, 15, 80, 85, 89, 91 – 2, 109, 111, 124– 5

246

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES

governments, 28 – 30, 63 – 5, 69 –72, 126–7, 129–32, 135, 163–4, 194 central, 48, 128, 135, 167– 8, 181 coalition, 28, 154 communist, 67, 69 efficiency, 160– 1 federal, 46 – 7, 50, 186– 7 national, 22, 30, 33, 59 transitional, 70, 183 gradualism, 69 grants, 17, 65, 79 Greece, 22, 26 growth, 115, 192, 194, 200– 2, 204, 206, 208, 211 economic, 44, 140, 142, 168, 194, 196, 204, 210 export-led, 206 impoverishing, 196 Grugel, J., 197 Gulf Cooperation Council, see GCC hard but hollow, 33– 4 hard power, 3, 5, 13, 15, 17 – 18, 217 resources, 3, 13 Havel, Va´clav, 67 – 8, 73 Hawiye clan, 183 health, 46, 50, 200– 1, 203, 207, 209 Heathershaw, J., 135, 138 hegemons, 142, 220 human rights, 72 – 4, 76, 86 – 7, 89, 91, 95 – 6, 98 – 9, 102 activism, 73, 97 – 8 discourse, 97 – 8 organizations, 97, 99 violations, 77, 96 – 8, 110 human security, 14, 20, 179 human trafficking, 178, 180 Hungary, 69 ICU (Islamic Courts Union), 182 identities, 13, 17, 20, 25, 32, 43, 193 national, 52 – 3, 139, 142, 220 ideological differences, 86 – 7, 95, 98, 100– 3

ideology, 13, 40, 67, 77 implementation, 41, 113, 129, 153, 166–7, 184, 187, 202 impoverishing growth, 196 inclusion, 47, 98, 191– 2, 194, 196, 201–4, 209, 211 economic, 8, 195 political, 199, 205 social, 141, 193 inclusive democracy, 12, 197 inclusivity, political, 8, 196, 221 incumbents, 6, 87, 124, 128, 163 independence, 26, 42 –3, 86, 88, 90, 138, 152, 162– 3 political, 11, 20 independent civil society, 65, 67, 205 India, 113, 115, 116, 209 Indonesia, 7, 14, 151, 154– 8, 160– 2, 165–7, 170, 220 inequality, 41, 192, 196, 204– 6, 209–10 inflation, 30, 200– 1, 210 information, access to, 152, 154 infrastructure, 46, 209 insecurity, 138, 180– 1, 196, 220 maritime, 178, 180 instability, 108, 123, 180, 220 institutional learning, 153, 157, 160–2 institutionalized consociationalism, 135 institutions, 28, 30, 32, 70 – 1, 123, 126, 200, 203 political, 25, 193, 206 insurrectionary violence, 13, 16 integration, European, 26 – 7, 31, 34, 48 intellectuals, 67 – 8, 71, 73, 98, 168 interests, economic, 64, 206, 219 intermediary organizations, 152, 162, 170 interministerial coordination, 152– 3, 157, 160 international actors, 5 –6, 93, 182, 188 international community, 90, 93, 95, 182, 187

INDEX international law, 16, 26, 62 international relations, 59, 75 Internet, 62, 103, 163, 168– 9, 220 intervention external, 14 – 15, 175, 182, 185, 221 foreign, 107, 113, 115, 216 military, 17, 182 investment, 139, 142, 177, 201, 203, 205, 211 Iran, 12, 113, 116, 141 Iraq, 1, 5 – 6, 9, 15 – 17, 107– 20, 141, 217, 220– 1 governments, 119– 20 western, 117– 18 Iraqis, 5, 113, 115, 117, 120 Ireland, 22, 33 IRPT (Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan), 140 ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), 1, 118– 19, 138, 166 Islam, 109, 114– 15, 166, 182 Central Asia, 138– 40 political, 140, 181 Islamic Courts Union, see ICU Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, see IRPT Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, see ISIS Islamism, 87, 94 – 5, 97– 102, 109, 140, 219 Islamist groups, 95–7, 102, 181–3, 187 radical, 89, 99 Italy, 30, 32, 34 Jans, M.T., 43, 45 Japan, 16, 113 Jews, 71 – 2 Juba Interim Authority, 186 justice, 45 – 6, 94, 97 – 100, 108, 110 Kaldor, Mary, 14 Karzai, President Hamid, 114, 116– 17 Kazakhs, 137, 139 Kazakhstan, 6, 123–4, 126 –37, 139– 42

247

Kenya, 179, 185–6 Kismayo, 184– 5 Kuwait, 112, 114, 141 Kyrgyzstan, 123, 125, 133– 5, 141 language, 4, 10, 31, 43 – 4, 49, 88 groups, 47, 51 languages, official, 41, 43 Latin America, 8, 191– 211, 217, 221 governing from the Left, 198– 204 questioning neoliberalism, reclaiming the state, 195– 8 Southern Cone, 203– 5 unsettled (postneoliberal) democracies, 204– 10 leaders, 27, 30, 117– 18, 124, 127, 130, 164, 168 regional, 125, 128 societal, 64 legitimacy, 2, 5, 10, 12, 17 – 18, 91– 2, 217– 18, 220 legitimate states, 3, 6, 13, 17 Lewis, David, 124 liberal democracy, 79, 125, 131, 154 Libya, 18 – 19, 180 local government, 45, 53, 166– 8 loyalty, 13 – 14, 43 Maastricht criteria, 32 mafia, 132– 3 Maidan Square, 60, 80 majoritarian democracy, 28, 33 Makhzen, 90 – 1, 96 – 8, 101 Malaysia, 7, 151, 154– 8, 160– 2, 164–5, 170, 218, 220 al-Maliki, Prime Minister Nouri, 117 Management Index, 152, 157, 160, 162, 170 maritime insecurities, 178, 180 markets, 22, 24, 31 – 2, 191, 195, 197–9, 202, 206 masses, 12, 60, 73, 85 – 6, 88, 124, 219 member statehood, 26 – 9, 32, 34, 218

248

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES

member states, 48, 51 legitimation problems in Europe, 33 –5 MENA, see Middle East and North Africa micro-societies, 110, 114 middle class, 43, 198, 203 Middle East, 11, 115, 126, 139 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 5, 11 – 12 Migdal, J.S., 23 – 5, 30, 61 – 2, 135, 138, 142, 149– 51, 194 military coups, 91, 99, 179 military intervention, 17, 182 ministerial compliance, 160– 1 mobilization, social, 192, 197, 201, 204, 208, 210 modernity, 11, 130, 138 and development, 17– 19 Mogadishu, 182– 6 Mohammed VI, 96 – 7 mono-organizational socialism, 167 Morocco, 5, 85 – 93, 95 – 103, 217, 219– 20 Makhzen, 90 – 1, 96 – 8, 101 Mohammed VI, 96 – 7 Mudawana, 96, 101 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 97 years of lead, 92 – 3, 97 – 8 Mudawana, 96, 101 Muslims, 124, 138, 166 national elites, 32, 34, 202 national governments, 22, 30, 33, 59 national identity, 52 – 3, 139, 142, 220 National Liberation Front, see FLN national unity, 13, 88, 136, 165 nationalism, 13 – 16, 26, 124, 137 nationalist resistance, 11, 15 nation-states, 4, 13, 23, 25 – 7, 29, 31, 33, 35 to member states, 22– 35 historical process, 29 – 33

natural resources, 141, 200– 1, 211 Nazarbaev, President Nursultan, 124, 127, 134, 136– 7, 139, 141 Nazi Germany, 71 Nazpary, J., 132– 3 negative peace, 185– 6, 221 negotiation, 193, 205 neoliberal civil society, 64, 69 – 70 neoliberal models, 74, 81, 192, 209, 219 neoliberal reforms, 195, 211 neoliberalism, 1, 7 –8, 59 – 60, 192, 195–8, 200, 217, 221 networks, 1, 19, 80, 93, 133, 217 patronage, 111, 124, 134, 164 patron – client, 111, 124 New Left, 8, 192, 197, 202, 221 NGO Watch, 64 NGOs (non-governmental organizations), 19, 63 – 5, 72, 76, 79 –80, 97, 132, 163– 4 elitist, 78 –9 Nigeria, 180 non-governmental organizations, see NGOs obscurantism, 95, 102 official languages, 41, 43 one-party state, 154, 157 opposition, 60, 65, 87 – 8, 95, 99, 103, 163–5, 208 parties, 127, 140, 154, 163– 4 oppression, brutal, 92 – 3 oralmans, 137 Orange Revolution, 78, 80 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, see OSCE organizational reform capacity, 152, 157, 162 organizations, 63 – 4, 76, 126, 128, 130–1, 149, 151–2, 184 civil society, 64, 66, 76, 131, 133, 194 community, 199– 200

INDEX intermediary, 152, 162, 170 social, 60 – 1, 128, 149– 51, 198 terrorist, 12, 184 OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), 72, 128 Pakistan, 113, 115– 16 PAP (People’s Action Party), 154, 162– 3 Paraguay, 197 parliaments, 70 – 2, 74, 78, 86, 90, 126– 8, 162, 166 bicameral, 127 federal, 47 parties, political, see political parties patronage, 89, 110– 11, 127 networks, 111, 124, 134, 164 peace, 59, 135, 183, 185, 188 negative, 185–6, 221 People’s Action Party, see PAP perceptions, 3, 9, 89, 124– 5 normative, 93 Peru, 197 Poland, 60, 69 polarization, 11 – 12, 206 social, 206, 210 police state, 87, 92 policy implementation, effective, 152, 157, 160, 162 policy performance, 152, 156– 7, 170 policymaking, 4, 28, 34, 43, 95, 98 political change, 35, 91, 102, 125 political developments, 78, 111, 126, 176, 217, 219 political dissidents, 72, 92 – 3 political economy, 69, 192, 197– 8 of authoritarianism, 140– 2 political elites, 24, 32 – 3, 35, 47, 170 political exclusion, 205 political inclusion, 199, 205 political inclusivity, 8, 196, 221 political institutions, 25, 193, 206 political Islam, 140, 181

249

political life, 23, 26, 89 – 90, 92, 191 political parties, 25, 28, 30, 74, 127– 8, 130–1, 208, 211 Belgium, 46 – 7 Switzerland, 50 – 1 political power, 49, 90, 137, 184 political processes, 19, 66, 78, 98, 102, 182, 187 political reforms, 85, 90, 130, 168 political systems, 89 – 90, 92, 124, 126, 151, 154, 157, 164 political violence, 174, 180 politicians, corrupt, 74 – 5, 78 politics, 4 –5, 28 – 9, 32 – 5, 74 – 5, 86, 88, 110–11, 205 contentious, 195, 204, 207, 210 Popovski, V., 5, 219 popular protests, 93, 197, 208 popular uprisings, 174, 179– 80 population, 50, 54, 62, 114, 135, 137, 165–6, 203 populism, 34 – 5 postcolonial state, 11, 86, 88, 92, 173, 175, 181, 218 postcommunist transition, 63, 69, 81 postneoliberalism, 199– 200, 210 poverty, 20, 63, 175, 196, 203– 9, 211 extreme, 202– 3, 209 rates, 196, 203, 209 reduction, 132, 142, 203, 209 power, 33 – 5, 45 –6, 75 – 7, 92 – 4, 96, 116–17, 125 –7, 163– 4 decision-making, 38 – 41, 48 – 9 economic, 54, 78, 93, 178 executive, 29, 86 hard, 3, 5, 13, 15, 17 – 18, 217 legislative, 39, 42 political, 49, 90, 137, 184 regional, 42, 182 social, 91 state, 6, 24 – 5, 35, 88, 92 structure, 67, 77, 109 price controls, 30, 200– 1

250

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES

prime ministers, 30, 76, 90, 163, 165, 168, 175 private sector, 64, 70, 80 privatization, 31, 62, 70, 195, 202 prosperity, 110, 141, 203, 207 protagonistic democracy, 199– 200 Protestants, 49, 166 protests, 65 – 6, 72, 74 – 6, 196– 7, 201, 203, 206– 8, 210 massive, 60, 74, 80, 207– 8 popular, 93, 197, 208 street, 77, 103, 196 public goods, 40 –1, 173, 191, 193– 5, 197 multiple, 40 – 1 public services, 177– 8, 195 Puntland, 186– 7 Putin, Vladimir, 75 – 8 al-Qaeda 1, 62, 112, 115, 180 quality, 130, 139, 141, 152– 4, 165, 209, 211 radicalization, 123, 182 Rahmon, President Emomali, 127, 129– 30, 135, 137, 140– 1 redistribution, 41, 198–200, 204– 5 referendums, 28, 50, 127 reforms, 29 – 33, 42, 90, 96, 98, 161, 164, 195 cosmetic, 91, 93 democratic, 101, 131 economic, 141, 168, 211 political, 85, 90, 130, 168 regime change, 15, 80 – 1, 112 regional actors, 113, 119 regional leaders, 125, 128 regional powers, 42, 182 regional security, 179 regional states, 2, 187 regionalism, 128, 134– 5 regions, 11 – 12, 39, 41 – 8, 125– 6, 131– 3, 184– 5, 195– 9, 205– 6

relationships state – society, 1 – 5, 24 – 6, 60 – 1, 63 – 7, 69 – 71, 165– 7, 192– 3, 216– 20 transformative, 125, 136, 140, 142, 220 religion, 9, 13, 54, 95, 109, 124 religious groups, 61, 95, 169 religious minorities, 138, 167 rentier income, 142 rentier states, 110, 201 representation, 7, 49, 175– 6, 188, 198–9, 204– 5, 211 repression, 90, 93, 103, 119, 127, 182, 194, 208 state, 8, 98, 110, 165, 209 resilient societies, 5, 86, 91 – 3 resistance, 2, 7, 14, 24 – 5, 134, 136, 167, 169– 70 nationalist, 11, 15 societal, 17, 24, 31 resources, 9, 17 –18, 130–1, 150, 152, 157, 198– 200, 202– 3 economic, 89, 134, 194, 199, 205 hard power, 3, 13 natural, 141, 200– 1, 211 retreat, 4, 22 – 3, 211 revolutions, 11, 16, 65 – 6, 68, 78, 80, 132, 134 riots, 86, 92– 3, 196 Romania, 66, 68 – 9, 73 rule of law, 20, 75, 77 – 9, 89, 152, 154, 162, 194– 5 rules of behavior, 7, 151, 167, 220 ruling elites, 80, 85, 89, 91 – 2, 109, 111 Ruse, 73 Russia, 60 – 1, 65, 67, 70, 75 – 81, 136, 139, 142 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 72, 75 – 6, 127, 133 sacrifices, 14 – 15, 18, 32 Saddam Hussein, 15, 110, 113, 115–16

INDEX sanctions, 77 – 8 Saudi Arabia, 113, 116 scale, economies of, 39 – 40, 52 – 3 Scotland, 26, 48 secularism, 96, 98, 102, 219 security, 14, 16, 18, 20, 152, 157, 174, 179 apparatus, 88 – 9, 109, 112, 135 challenges, 174, 178– 9, 181 human, 14, 20, 179 national, 13, 74 regional, 179 threats, 14, 116, 176, 178– 80, 184, 188, 218 self-determination, 10 services, 2, 40, 60, 63 – 5, 67, 69, 80, 204 public, 177– 8, 195 SGI (Sustainable Governance Indicators), 151, 151–4, 162, 167, 170 al-Shabaab, 181, 184– 6, 188 shock therapy, 69, 132 Singapore, 7, 151, 154– 8, 160– 4, 170, 218, 220 PAP (People’s Action Party), 154, 162– 3 SNSF (Somali National Security Forces), 183– 5 social actors, 2, 90, 142, 194, 201, 205, 221 social citizenship, 197, 202 social contract, 173, 177 social control, 61, 129, 150– 1, 162, 170, 197 social groups, 24, 30, 39 – 40, 86, 193, 205, 220 social inclusion, 141, 193 social media, 88, 103, 219–20 social mobilization, 192, 197, 201, 204, 208, 210 social movements, 64, 68, 95, 192, 198, 208, 210 social organizations, 60 – 1, 128, 149– 51, 198

251

social polarization, 206, 210 social policies, 91, 149, 200, 202 social power, 91 social security, 45 – 6 social transformation, 25, 90, 211 social unity, 181, 218 socialism, mono-organizational, 167 societal consultation, 152, 157, 162 societal resistance, 17, 24, 31 societies and states, 2 – 3, 17, 20, 25, 59, 62, 217– 18 weblike, 7, 25, 151, 170, 220 solidarity, 67, 75, 98, 133 Somali National Security Forces, see SNSF Somalia, 7, 173– 5, 179– 88, 217, 220–1 AMISOM and search for peace, 183– 8 Amniyat, 184 Federal Government, 186– 7 Hawiye clan, 183 Mogadishu, 182– 6 southern, 184, 186– 7 Somaliland, 186–7 Southeast Asia, 6– 7, 149– 71, 217, 220 Southern Cone, 203– 5 southern Somalia, 184, 186– 7 sovereignty, 14, 26, 59, 124– 5, 175, 181 Soviet Union, 71 – 2, 75 – 6, 78, 112, 124, 129– 30, 137, 139; see also Russia disintegration, 78, 140 Spain, 9, 26, 34 stability, 110, 112, 119, 170, 174, 209 authoritarian, 123– 43, 180 stabilization, 139, 183, 186, 221 Stalin, Joseph, 76, 130 state apparatus, 178, 194, 218 authoritarian, 18 – 19, 87, 90 – 1, 93 – 4, 102, 126, 217, 219

252

WEAK STATES, STRONG SOCIETIES

authorities, 72, 78, 102, 169, 183 capabilities, 24, 33, 149– 50, 194 capacity, 6 – 7, 24, 149, 151, 154, 170, 193– 4 centralized, 52, 219 colonial, 10 –11, 174, 176– 8 communist, 5, 60, 67 –9 democratic, 87, 115, 131 elites, 4, 24 federal, 4, 38, 41 – 3, 46, 48 – 9, 53, 187, 219 fierce, 5 – 6, 91, 93, 128 leaders, 62, 129, 149, 151, 169, 194 legitimate, 3, 6, 13, 17 one-party, 154, 157 police, 87, 92 postcolonial, 11, 86, 88, 92, 173, 175, 181, 218 power, 6, 24 – 5, 35, 88, 92 reform, 42 – 3, 46 – 7 rentier, 110, 201 repression, 8, 98, 110, 165, 209 structures, 9 – 10, 17, 38 – 9, 174 federal, 9, 38, 41, 53 transformation, 4, 23, 25, 29 state-building, 5 – 6, 107– 20, 186– 8, 198, 220 processes, 6, 118– 19 statehood, member, 26 – 7, 29, 32, 34, 218 state– society dynamics, 123– 43 state– society relationships, 1 – 5, 7 – 8, 24 – 6, 34 – 5, 59 – 81, 165– 7, 192– 3, 216– 20 strong, 218, 220 weak, 220– 1 Status Index, 152, 154, 156, 170 status quo, 28, 93 – 4, 102 political, 90, 92 strategies, 90, 129, 139, 181, 186, 201, 219 street protests, 77, 103, 196 structures, state, see state, structures students, 75, 203, 207– 8

subnational entities, 38 – 9, 41 Sunnis, 109, 116– 17 support, 65, 75 – 7, 91, 93, 96, 98, 115–17, 182 –4 Sustainable Governance Indicators, see SGI Sweden, 29 Swenden, W., 43, 45 Switzerland, 4, 38 –9, 41, 48 –9, 51– 4, 219 cantons, 48 – 52, 54 federalism and European Union, 51 federalization, 48 – 9 political parties, 50– 1 structure and competences, 49 – 50 traditional federalism, 48 – 54 Syari’ah, 166 Syria, 18, 113, 116 Tajikistan, 6, 123, 126– 33, 135– 7, 139–42 Tajiks, 114, 130, 137 Taliban, 113– 16, 118 taxation, 92, 203, 207 technocracy, 34 – 5, 194 territorial integrity, 13, 20, 39, 119 terror, war on, 92, 99, 115– 16, 182 terrorism, 89, 92, 128, 178, 180, 182 terrorist attacks, 98, 112, 180, 182, 184 terrorist organizations, 12, 184 Thatcher, Margaret, 31 – 2 third sector, 69 threats, 13 – 14, 20, 88, 99, 102, 115, 178–9, 185 time and space, 19 – 20 totalitarianism, 68, 71, 75, 124 trafficking, human, 178, 180 transformation, 5, 22 – 3, 35, 43, 175–6, 195, 210 social, 25, 90, 211 transformative relationship, 125, 136, 140, 142, 220

INDEX transition, 11, 14, 60, 62, 66, 69, 195, 218– 19 democratic, 91, 109, 180, 191 postcommunist, 63, 69 transitional governments, 70, 183 transparency, 64 – 5, 74, 86, 89, 126, 163 trust, 61, 63 – 4, 177 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 97 Tunisia, 19, 180 Turkey, 9, 12, 113 Turkmenistan, 123, 133, 137 UK, see United Kingdom Ukraine, 5, 60 – 1, 65 – 7, 70, 78 – 81, 219 civil society in, 78, 80 Maidan Square, 60, 80 Orange Revolution, 78, 80 unemployment, 17, 30, 63, 197, 208 unitary state, 39, 42 – 4 United Kingdom (UK), 24, 26 – 9, 32, 42, 175 United Nations, 16, 118, 181 United States, 5, 8, 10, 112– 13, 115– 20, 123, 138, 181– 2 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, 112– 18 United States of Belgium, 42 unity national, 13, 88, 136, 165 social, 181, 218 uprisings, popular, 174, 179– 80 Uruguay, 197 US, see United States, 1, 5, 107– 13, 115– 20, 123, 138, 141, 181– 2 Uzbekistan, 123, 125, 131, 133, 137 Uzbeks, 114, 137

253

Venezuela, 196– 7, 199– 200, 202, 209–10 Vietnam, 7, 10, 151, 154– 8, 160– 2, 167–70, 218, 220 Communist Party, 154, 167 Politburo, 167–8 violence, 86, 89, 92 – 3, 115, 119, 132, 138, 187– 8 electoral, 174, 178– 80 political, 174, 180 wages, 30, 193 Wallonia, 42, 45, 47 Walloon Region, 44 – 5 Walloons, 43, 45 war on terror, 92, 99, 115– 16, 182 warlords, 2, 14, 181– 2 wars, 16, 49, 59, 117, 120, 175, 179, 181 Washington Consensus, 1, 23, 69, 132, 196–7 watchdog functions, 60, 64, 66, 74 weak society, 12, 15, 18, 24 weak state – society relationship, 220–1 weblike societies, 7, 25, 151, 170, 220 western Iraq, 117– 18 Wheatley, J., 66 withdrawal, 108, 119 women, 96, 100– 1, 181 women’s rights, 86 – 7, 95 – 6, 98– 102, 138 work, 64 – 5, 70, 72 – 3, 79, 99, 101, 133, 165 world order, 16, 18 world politics, 2– 3, 59 – 61, 75, 108, 113, 120, 174, 216 Yanukovich, Viktor, 60, 80 years of lead, 92 – 3, 97 –8 Yemen, 18 – 19