Role Of State Capacity Research Articles

The ties that don’t bind: trading state debates and role of state capacity in Turkish foreign policy

ABSTRACT The literature on trading states has advanced our understanding of foreign economic policy dynamics, but what constitutes a proper trading state and determines its resilience remains somewhat unclear. This article contributes to the literature by developing a political economy framework to assess the role of ‘state capacity’ in conditioning Turkey’s foreign economic policies. Using Turkey as a case, we argue that states are more likely to show suboptimal economic engagement in case of weak state capacity, as (i) they fail to pursue effective industrial policy resulting in low exit costs, (ii) business elites cannot put pressure on the political leadership for the preservation of existing trade ties in the event of an external shock, and (iii) weak financial support mechanisms lead to insufficient assistance to national firms operating abroad.

Do natural disasters fuel terrorism? The role of state capacity

Natural disasters create a fertile environment for terrorists by creating or exacerbating vulnerabilities within a state. Previous research has found mixed evidence regarding the effect of natural disasters on terrorist activity. In the present paper, we reconcile these views by putting state capacity in the spotlight using a dataset of 165 countries from 1970 to 2018 and an iterative Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator. We show that states with high military capacity experience increased domestic attacks, whereas states with high bureaucratic capacity experience fewer attacks. This dichotomy arises as different actors are involved in disaster-relief in the two types of states. These findings indicate that in a world that experiences more natural disasters, investment in bureaucratic capacity can serve as an efficient policy against terrorism. In contrast, in the same setting, excessive investment in military capacity increases terrorist incidents.

State capacity and termination of terror campaigns: a qualitative evidence from PKK

ABSTRACT This study addresses the following puzzle: Why did the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) manage to sustain its terror campaign when Turkey increased its state capacity, yet ended its campaign of violence when Turkey’s state capacity significantly declined? The effect of counter-responses of violent groups to increases in state capacity and how those responses affect the chance of their survival, however, has not been adequately considered in studying the link between state capacity and intrastate conflict. We argue that increasing state capacity to penetrate the society and provide public services will threaten the survival of the terror group, thereby incentivizing the group to develop coercive and non-coercive strategies to secure its survival, such as coercive recruitment and fundraising, and providing public goods. We hypothesize that developing such strategies will increase the chances of survival of terror groups. Using the process tracing technique to analyse the history of the PKK’s terror campaign (1984–2013), we test these arguments and hypotheses. The qualitative evidence supports the theory, which opens avenues for future research to reconsider the role of state capacity, particularly in non-military measures, on terrorism and civil conflict by incorporating the role of counter-responses of violent groups to changes in state capacity.

The role of state capacity and socio-economic determinants on health quality and its access in Pakistan (1990–2019)

Quality of Healthcare and accessibility is one of the vital Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For achieving this goal, the United Nations focuses on state capacity development and associated determinants in emerging and developing countries. By focusing on this objective, this study evaluates and examines the liaison of state capacity, socio-economic conditions, private health expenditures, and demographic pressure to the quality of health and its accessibility in Pakistan from 1990 to 2019. This study investigates the policy implications and their consequences on Pakistan's health conditions during the last three decades. Moreover, during COVID-19, pandemic health governs policies in the year 2020 have also been considered by using the Health Containment Index and analyzed policy implication on combating COVID-19. By applied Ordinary Least Square and Fixed Effect estimations, results show that Pakistan's health conditions have been showing sluggish improvement in the last three decades. Prudent policy-making and adequate health spending have a strong significant impact on health quality and accessibility, while institutional corruption and demographic pressure have adversely affected Pakistan's health outcomes. This proposed study analyzed that policy enforcement has been fragile in Pakistan from 1990 to 2010. Furthermore, this study concludes that from the year 2010 to date with the 18th constitutional amendment to administration and public policies have fractionally improved Pakistan's health conditions. However, Pakistan still lacks the International standards and minimum criteria of health measures a far behind Sustainable Development. The present study concludes that a sound and effective policy enforcement by enhancing resource capacity, quality of institutional practices, and controlling socio-economic conditions will promote SDG of health quality in Pakistan.

STATE-BUILDING AND NON-STATE CONFLICTS IN AFRICA

Contemporary state building intervention in weak states is based on the assumption that once a capable state is instituted, it will be able to ensure peace. Extant literature on state capacity and civil war onset tends to confirm this assumption. However, the relation between state capacity and the onset of non-state conflict is not adequately examined in this literature. This article, which is based on findings from research undertaken by the author at the African Leadership Centre, aims to extend the existing knowledge on state capacity and civil conflict by examining the relation between state capacity and non-state conflict in subSaharan Africa using mixed methodological approaches. A statistical analysis of the correlation between three aspects of state capacity and non-state conflict is supplemented with a detailed qualitative analysis of selected states that experience non-state conflicts and those that did not. State capacity is dissected into state effectiveness, legitimacy and monopoly of the means of coercion. The result reveals that the legitimacy and effectiveness of the state are negatively correlated with nonstate conflicts in a statistically significant way. However, the qualitative analysis indicates that the role of state capacity in reducing non-state conflicts should not be over-stated. The occurrence or absence of nonstate conflicts is influenced by the interplay of multi-faceted factors related to the level of resource scarcity, the strength of customary dispute resolution mechanisms, patterns of intercommunity interaction, nature of state policies and political actors' stake in a conflict.

Industrial policy and automotive development: a comparative study of Thailand and Czechia

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the effectiveness of industrial policy, and the role of state capacity to implement it, by making a comparison of automotive development in Thailand and Czechia, the largest vehicle producers in Southeast Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, respectively. The development of the industry in both countries primarily relied on foreign investment, despite Czechia’s long earlier history of domestic automotive development. The countries, however, have used very different types of industrial policy. Thailand introduced a series of vertical (sector-specific) industrial policies, pursuing a proactive industrial development strategy with state intervention, continuing even under the restrictions on trade-related policy measures imposed by the WTO since 2000. In contrast, Czechia has employed mostly horizontal (non-sector-specific) industrial policies with less state intervention, influenced by the restrictions of the European Union. Although both countries achieved considerable output and export growth, Thailand has a deeper and more locally owned supply chain. Thailand’s imaginative use of de facto local content requirements in connection with its product champion policy is instructive.

Institutions and Urban Concentration: The Role of State Capacity

Previous research has argued that non-democratic institutions tend to facilitate high levels of urban concentration due to government policies that favor primate cities. However, the mechanisms by which governments favor their large cities are still unclear, and whether favoritism predominately takes the form of lower extraction rates or more public goods. Differences in mechanism are important because disparities in public goods have different consequences for country-level growth than differences in extraction rates. We present a simple model where non-democratic governments are incentivized by rents to provide public goods. In this model, government favoritism to a specific region will take the form of superior public goods, when government coercive capacity is generally low and lower extraction rates when coercive capacity is high. Consequently, the model predicts that cities which are small/less productive will be favored in low capacity countries, but these results will be attenuated as capacity increases. Results from a panel data analysis of urban concentration for most of the large cities in the world for the period 1955-2010 are consistent with the model’s predictions. A calibrated version of our model implies that the effect of favoritism on urban concentration is negative for most countries of the world due to most countries having low capacity, resulting in favoritism towards small cities. Our results imply that under non-democratic governments, primate capital cities tend to grow faster than other large cities due to an increase in the provision of public goods. Using city level estimates of developed land per capita as a measure of public goods, we find evidence consistent with this public goods channel.

The Role of State Capacity in Development Studies

AbstractThe role that state capacity plays in development has been the subject of growing cross-disciplinary research. The state capacity concept has faced criticism on numerous fronts, with scholars recently devoting serious efforts to overcome it. This article offers a rich overview of the concepts’ journey in terms of its theoretical roots, its uses by different disciplines, its definitions and measurements, and the empirical evidence around the impact of state capacity on development outcomes. It argues in favor of an optimistic view of the field’s advances by showing: (a) convergence in conceptualizations and (b) high-quality innovations in measurements. The article also contributes to the field by offering a definition of state capacity that consolidates all elements of the dominant strand and further tackles a number of issues that remain weak and should take priority in a future agenda.

Bridging Economics and International Relations to Understand State Capacity and War in Sub-Saharan Africa

AbstractThis paper explores the role of state capacity in affecting the probability of being attacked by another country. We measure state capacity as the effectiveness of state sovereignty over its territory (from the Variety of Democracy dataset) and focus on high intensity episodes of Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID). The analysis is performed through a logit model, investigating 42 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the period 1954–2010. The paper shows that higher levels of state capacity increase the probability of suffering from external attacks. This result may appear counterintuitive, since countries having full control of their own territory are expected to be stronger, therefore suggesting that a would-be invader may be defeated. However, our result is consistent with balance-of-power theories in international relations, where countries that perceive a threat set up a process of balancing that could ultimately tend towards an armed conflict.

State Capacity and China's Economic Performance

This study attempts a first causal examination of the role of state capacity in China’s economic performance. Effective state capacity connotes not just ability to extract tax from citizens but also the ability to convert taxes into public investment. Equally importantly, these capacities must be combined with the ability to induce citizens and firms to make private investment that complement government’s public investment in the production of economic output. State capacity therefore combines extractive, productive and incentive-provision abilities. We use historical variation to identify the effect of state capacity at the level of county governments in modern China. Our estimates indicate that state capacity significantly impacts economic output. A mediation analysis indicates the public investment channels that deliver this impact. We also find that bureaucratic capacity measured by the number of public employees does not necessarily deliver better economic outcomes in China. We suggest that social stability objectives, rather than economic growth, drive public sector over-staffing.

Banking Union and banking nationalism – Explaining opt-out choices of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic

The purpose of this study is to understand Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland's opt out position from the Banking Union (BU). The Banking Union is compulsory for Eurozone member states and optional for non-Eurozone member states. From the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region only Romania and Bulgaria decided to join. First, we attempt to explain this fact based on structural characteristics of the CEE banking sectors, but we find no substantial difference between the opt-in and opt-out countries’ banking sectors. Second, we look at the role of state capacity in maintaining a stable banking sector, and find that state capacity is a necessary condition for opting out. Finally, using Hungary as a case study, and the Czech Republic and Poland as further examples, we argue that these countries opted out because their governments’ policy preference of banking nationalism conflicts with the BU's ideals.

Anti-Poverty Programs Can Reduce Violence: India's Rural Employment Guarantee and Maoist Conflict

Theory and extensive evidence connect poverty and underdevelopment to civil conflict, yet evidence on the impact of development programs on violence is surprisingly mixed. To break this impasse, we exploit a within-country policy experiment to examine the conditions under which anti-poverty programs reduce violence. The roll-out of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme caused a large long-run reduction in Maoist conflict violence, as measured with an original data set based on local language press sources. These pacifying effects were not uniform, however, but overwhelmingly concentrated in districts with sufficient pre-existing local state capacity to implement the program effectively. The results demonstrate the potential for anti-poverty programs to mitigate violent civil conflict by improving livelihoods, but also highlight the crucial role of state capacity in shaping these effects.

State, civil society and natural resource rents: a theoretical outline

This paper aims to outline the influence of natural resource rents on the state and civil society in resource-rich nations. It discusses the virtues and deficiencies of the two main theoretical approaches to the problem, the 'state capacity approach' and the 'resource curse approach', and argues that both frameworks are useful and complementary, but insufficient to fully understand the phenomenon. They are useful and complementary because they focus on the central role of state capacity while identifying a connection with the presence of relatively-abundant natural resource rents. They are insufficient, however, because they fail to explore the causes and consequences of such connection, particularly those around the relationship between state capacity and developmental outcomes. Although only preliminary elements are provided, the paper concludes, focusing on the case of the oil economy, that non-developmental configurations of the state and civil society are contingent on the reproduction of elites in power and decisively shaped by the uncontrolled and volatile flow of natural-resource rents.

Is There a Necessary Condition for Democracy? The Role of State Capacity in Postcommunist Countries

Although postcommunist countries share a common past, the variability of outcomes in both democracy and economic reform is very large in the region. Only a few countries have become Western-type democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic. By contrast, the norm is clearly not democracy for other Soviet successor states. In this article, the author attributes this variation to differences in the infrastructural capacity of the state. Using both quantitative and qualitative analyses within 26 postcommunist countries, the author argues that for democracy to flourish, the state must first possess the necessary means to maintain law and order and to protect the rights of citizens, in other words, to ensure the maintenance and delivery of essential public goods. The results show that the links between a strong state that has been able to apply a definitive set of rules and democratic institutions are clear.

Why Do Civil Wars Occur? Understanding the Importance of Institutional Quality

As states get stronger, they are expected to be more successful in preventing insurgency and, in turn, the occurrence of civil wars. While intuitively appealing, the theoretical and empirical understanding of the linkage between state capacity and civil war onset remains at an early stage of development. To date, the role of state capacity has been conceptualised and measured in limited ways that focus mainly on the repressive ability of the state. In this paper, we broaden the understanding of state capacity by incorporating an important but neglected dimension; institutional quality. We examine the relationship between institutional quality and civil war onset and argue that states characterised with high institutional quality are less likely to experience civil war. Analysis of cross-national time-series data from 1984 to 1999 reveals that the quality of institutions, defined as freedom from corruption in government, rule of law, and bureaucratic quality, plays a significant role in explaining the likelihood of civil war onset.

Masters of their domains: The role of state capacity in civil wars

Civil wars are complex events affected by numerous factors. Recent research, however, seems to have concentrated on the rebels and their motivations to the exclusion of how the state can affect the onset and outcome of civil wars. This special issue addresses this lacuna by looking at the role of state capacity. In particular, state capacity is a multi-dimensional concept that encompasses not only the extractive abilities of a state but also economic development and bureaucratic quality. Despite the various ways in which state capacity can be measured, the articles clearly show that strong states have a decreased risk of experiencing a civil war, although there is evidence that civil violence decreases state capacity, implying a reverse causality. In addition, it appears that the capable states that do experience civil violence are more able to credibly commit to a negotiated solution, which increases the possibility of a bargained end to the violence. While these articles do not represent the last word on the subject, they do provide convincing evidence that state capacity plays a critical role in the onset and conduct of civil violence.

Civil war peace agreement implementation and state capacity

Negotiated civil war terminations differ from their interstate war counterparts in that one side must disarm and cease to exist as a fighting entity. While termination through military victory provides a relatively more enduring peace, many civil wars end with peace agreements signed after negotiations. However, research has shown that the implementation of civil war peace agreements is difficult and prone to collapse. Often these failures are followed by recurrence of the conflict. In some cases, the agreements break down before key provisions are implemented. This article adds to this topic by focusing on the role of state capacity in peace agreement success. We argue that peace agreements and state capacity are necessary but not sufficient conditions for sustainable peace. The article employs a case study approach to explore the importance of state capacity in implementing civil war peace agreements. The role of third-party interventions is also considered. The cases (United Kingdom—Northern Ireland, Indonesia—Aceh, Burundi, Mali, and Somalia) include 14 peace agreements that vary by war type (secessionist or control over government), type of agreement (comprehensive or partial), levels of state capacity (high or low), and peace success (success, partial or failure), and each experienced third-party involvement in the peace process.