Exploring the relationship between infrastructural and coercive state capacity

Abstract

State power is usually defined as a concept encompassing two components: one is the infrastructural and administrative aspect of power; the other is the despotic or coercive power of the state. Hence, states can be strong in two different ways. Several scholars have emphasized the importance of infrastructural state capacity for democratization, and some even go so far as to suggest that infrastructural state capacity is a necessary condition for democracy. A different branch of literature has argued that coercive state capacity has been effective in sustaining autocracy and thwarting democratization. Despite mounting evidence supporting the roles of infrastructural and coercive state capacity to explain the emergence or the absence of democracy in various countries, no study to date has systematically considered the connection between these two types of state capacity. This article proposes to fill this gap by examining the relationship between infrastructural and coercive state capacity drawing on various measurements used in the literature. The findings presented in this article lend support to the claim that the two aspects of state capacity, infrastructural and coercive, can be both positively and negatively related, depending on which aspect of coercive power is considered.