The State of the State in Southeast Asia: Contention, Globalization, and State Capacity

Abstract

Delusions of Development: The World Bank and the Post-Washington Consensus in Southeast Asia. By Carroll Toby. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010. 288 pp., $85.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0230229556). No Man's Land: Globalization, Territory, and Clandestine Groups in Southeast Asia. By Hastings Justin V.. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. 256 pp., $22.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0801476792). Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. By Slater Dan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 342 pp., $28.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0521165457). Southeast Asia has been an extraordinarily fruitful region for building theory in comparative politics, inspiring for instance Furnivall's (1948) concept of plural society, Geertz' (1977) work on primordial sentiments and nationalism, Pye's (1962) formulation of political culture, the debate between Popkin's (1979) rational peasants and Scott's moral economy, Scott's (1977) later (1987) work on everyday forms of resistance, and Anderson's (1993) imagined communities. The region's exceptional diversity, both between and within countries, demands sophisticated comparisons. Scholars of Southeast Asia invariably are forced to be aware of dramatic variations found in the region, even when focusing on a single case or (as Anderson does) denying the possibility of comparative work altogether. The present volumes all fit within this comparative tradition. Each uses the comparative method to investigate variation in the effectiveness of Southeast Asian states, using it to address post-Cold War concerns about state capacity, state failure, and sovereignty. Dan Slater's Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia is an example of comparative historical sociology in the tradition of Reinhard Bendix (1980), Barrington Moore (1967), and Theda Skocpol (1979). Slater's central question is why some authoritarian countries in Southeast Asia developed strong states while others did not. His answer is that strong states developed where urban elites were threatened from below by strongly mobilized lower-class movements. Taking the literature on contentious politics as his starting point, Slater points out that mass mobilization from below can inspire defensive collective action among elites. When effective contentious politics unifies elites, they delegate to governments the authority and resources to crack down. Episodes of large-scale contentious politics thus have the effect of creating strong authoritarian states. Contentious politics can bring down authoritarian regimes only when the regime itself is perceived by elites as being responsible for provoking disorder and …