From the State to Institutions

From the State to Institutions Lane Chapter 5

Problem: What is the State?Where does it begin, and where does it end?How should we study the State empirically? (unit/s of analysis, variables?) Dissolution

The Right Unit of Analysis • “Every science must, if it is to make sustained progress, find its bottom, the basic unit of analysis from which it will work and upon which it will build.” (99) • Traditional political science  Government • Behavioralism  Individuals • The “Return of the State”  the State with people inside

Lane (Ch. 5) • “The return to the state... Led to the breaking of the state into analytic pieces—and once this was done, it was obvious the observer could no longer talk about the state, but only really about the various groups and coalitions that made it up.” (99)

The notion of State dissolvesin a multiplicity of practices, rituals, and institutions.

New Consensus Lane describes the existence of a general agreement today in the field about studying institutions (historical and rational choice approaches).

Timothy Mitchell: the State as a construct • “A construct like the state…” results from practices and “is represented and reproduced in visible, everyday forms, such as the language of legal practice, the architecture of public buildings, the wearing of military uniforms, or the marking out and policing of frontiers.” (81) • These mundane arrangements, most of them unkown two hundred or even one hundred years ago, help manufacture an almost transcendental entity, the nation state.”

Lane: Analytic Institutionalism... • “Defines institutions in terms of the people who make, sustain, or change them, and focuses on the political process by which this occurs.” (100) • Institutions consist of basic rules which define a “game” organizing a certain area (or even function) of society. • Pursued by a certain group of people, those rules frame social and political structures. • Formal/Informal Institutions

The Debate on Peasants Scott Vs. Popkin

Are Peasants in traditional societies “traditional”? • James Scott, “The Moral Economy of the Peasant.” • Rural populations are like “a man standing permanently up to the neck in water, so that even a ripple might drown him” (Tawney) • Fear of food shortages • “Safety-First” principle: organizes peasants’ practices.

The “Moral Economy” • Network of “help” and reciprocity (self-help, relatives, neighbors, landlords) • Forced generosity, communal land, and work-sharing. • “Every service received, solicited or not, demands a return” (168) • Exchange of comparable goods. • “The peasant’s idea of justice and legitimacy... Is provided by the norm of reciprocity and the consequent elite obligation (that is, peasant right) to guarantee...the subsistence claims and arrangements of the peasantry.” (188)

Scott: Modern entrepreneurial spirit -Individual Profit maximizer -Taking risks is rational if it increases the chances of gain. -Aspiration to equality in the chances for individuals to gain. Main question: Who makes more profits and accumulates more. Peasants -Family Risk-averse/ “minimun income” -Taking risks may signify starvation and death of the peasant family -Inequality is tolerable, to the extent that the principles of “moral economy” are respected. Main problem:“Whose income is stabilized at the expense of whom.”

When and why do peasants rebel? • Scott: When in times of crisis the principles of reciprocity are not respected. • In South East Asia, the Colonial State developed a modern bureaucratic machine that systematically overlooked principles of “moral economy.” • Fixed taxes • Loss of crops • Famine • Capitalism also undermines the “moral economy” • The aftereffects of the 1929 crisis made the rest Rebellions (Burma, the Nghe-Tinh Soviets in Central Vietnam)

Alternatives to rebellion • Migration • Theft

According to Scott... • This logic of “safety-first” affect ALL peasants and poor. • Consequences for comparative research?

Popkin: The Rational Peasant. • “Some representations of preindustrial society idealize life in peasant villages”(xi) (Popkin contests Scott’s theses) • Popkin argues “moral economists” are wrong (“myth of the village”).

Popkin: • Fieldwork in Vietnam from 1966 to 1970. • Popkin advances “a view of the peasant as a rational problem-solver, with a sense both of his own interests and of the need to bargain with others to achieve mutually acceptable outcomes.” (ix)

Popkin: • “…peasants are continuously striving not merely to protect but to raise their subsistence level through long- and short-term investments, both public and private” (4) • Ex: children, animals, land (private) • Village improvements (public)

Popkin • The investment logic applies to both market and non-market exchanges. • All of us are “maximizers”

Popkin: • There is no harmonious relationship between landlords and peasants. The peasants negotiate their conditions with different groups (State, parties, churches, etc.) seeking to improve their conditions of living.

Lane: • The debate between Popkin and Scott fostered the shift towards institutions. Yet, their positions are not that different: both of them argue for the peasants’ rationality, although they focus on different situations. • The debate contributed to highlight the complexity of strategic behavior and rationality in different contexts.

March and Olsen • Politics creates identity and materializes institutions. • Institutions are not just “arenas” but influential structures that frame identities and interests. • History is “encoded into rules” and institutions embody such a history. • Individuals belong to different institutions at the same time, and all of them contend to shape their political life.

New Institutionalism • Rational Choice: Sees institutions as efficient solutions to problems of collective action, that reduce costs and enhance efficiency (Douglas North). • Historical: Develops hypotheses “inductively, in the course of interpreting the empirical material itself” (Thelen & Steinmo)

RC -Institutions define the strategic context of choice and solve problems of collective action -Actors: rational maximizers -Universal “toolkit” (deductive logical system with highly restrictive assumptions) HI -Institutions shape politics, identities, and goals. Patterned relations. -Actors: rule followers “satisficers.” -Middle-range theoretical models based on induction Thelen & Steinmo: Rational Choice vs. Historical Institutionalism

RC Ostrom’s comparative study on the commons (small groups may overcome the problem of the “free rider”) Douglas North (on property rights) Hernando de Soto HI Migdal’s study on “strategies of survival” (state/society, determinations/contingency) -Steinmo’s study on tax policy in the US, the UK, and Sweden Examples

Focus on intermediate-level institutions • Allows us to understand how general patterns (capitalism, liberal democracy) developed in different specific forms in different counties. Different Policies (taxes, education, health). • Contingency and “path dependency”

The Institutional Model • Individual actors have many goals • People create institutions (historical) • Every human act is conditioned by institutions • Actors are political • Search for theoretical models with explanatory (and predictive) reach.

Our Journey (Lane) Neo-Institutionalism (Institutions+real people + theory) RC & HI Traditional Political Science Old Institutionalism (Historico-Normative approach) Descriptive Behavioral Revolution: Between Behavior & Beliefs (Descriptive) and Grand-Theorizing (flat) The “Return of the State” Development Theory (Modernization) Dependency Theory (Center/Periphery)

Curtis Systems Theory Communication Theory Structural Functionalism Behavioralism Rational Choice Institutional Analysis Statistical Analysis Political Development Dependency Theory Political Culture Political Attitudes Political Cleavages Globalization Lane Behavioral Revolution Developmentalism/Dependency The Return of the State (Historical and Rational Choice) New Institutionalism Main Approaches They differ in the way of posing problems, the choice of relevant dimensions, and their methodological orientations

From the State to Institutions