The Study of International Politics V: Comparative Politics Professor Sossie Kasbarian

1. The Study of International Politics V: Comparative Politics Professor Sossie Kasbarian Shane Markowitz 11 March 2010

2. History of the State • The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is widely regarded as the starting point for the modern state system. • Three principles: territorial integrity, internal sovereignty and non-interference in the affairs of other states, and equality of the law between states. • Question: Does the development of the European Union, as well as International Organizations and globalization, represent a shift in the Westphalian state system?

3. What is the Weberian state? According to the Weberian definition, a state is a “compulsory political association with continuous organization whose administrative staff successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of legitimate use of force in the enforcement of its order…within a given territorial area.”(Anderson, 2)

4. Attributes of a Weberian State 1. Legitimacy of government 2. Continuous administrative staff 3. Military establishment that monopolizes legitimate force 4. The collection of taxes to support the state apparatus 5. Territorial integrity

5. What makes a state legitimate? • The most basic states in modern society function to provide security for their citizens and themselves and services for the general welfare of their people. States are capable of setting rules of law over territory within their sovereignty that the people residing within must follow. Legitimization may include the security that is provided by a state to combat external forces, a common identity, or public goods and economic prosperity that citizens enjoy. • Weber identifies political correctness as a requirement of legitimacy. The bureaucratic administration is expected to consistently and fairly apply laws and policies, while at the same time officials should be willing to adjust to changes in law when politicians of different political ideologies come to power.

6. Two conceptualizations of a continuous administrative staff • Gustav Schmoller/Georg Hegel: Bureaucracy is a neutral force without bias, as compared with political parties and class. It is composed of political wisdom and acts to represent the universal interests of society. • Weber: The proper function of state bureaucracy “was essentially a technical instrument” of the state similar, although not exactly identical, to private industrial administration (Beetham, 66). The difference for Weber is that the civil service maintains the right to use coercion.

7. Weber’s bureaucratic objections Weber viewed bureaucracy as a potential arena for rational decision-making, with its focus on speed, precision, and supreme results, which he sums up as “rational bureaucracy.” (Gerth and Mills, 49). However, Weber outlined two major problems that he observed in the Prussian bureaucracy: • The civil service often becomes an independent force in society that sets its own goals. • Bureaucracy actually does reflect class structure, since the civil service officials are recruited from society (Junkers in Prussia, educated in modern democracies).

8. Weber’s bureaucratic objections cont. • Weber opposes socialism on the argument that it would simply transfer bureaucracy from the competitive private market to a government sphere that would have no need to be efficient. • Furthermore, Weber argues that public bureaucracy is worse for workers than private bureaucracy, since the state also has the power of coercion and its policies cannot be appealed to a higher authority.

9. Where did Weber go Wrong? • Weber’s weakness is his failure to account for different state models (comparative studies), which makes his critiques more of a criticism of the Prussian model than socialism itself. • While he attributes social class and political goals to the civil service, he does not consider how bureaucracies constituted of different social classes may change its functioning. (Paul Kompert) • Furthermore, Weber’s constitution of bureaucratic socialism is coherent with a Soviet or Prussian authoritarian model that does not contain the checks and balances, including elections of politicians, parliamentary oversight, and judicial review, that are found in many democratic systems of today.

10. A few diverging state models • Prussian state: Strong centralization with a conservative bureaucratic class constituted of Junkers, who determined policy for the monarch. • Roman and Egyptian states: Imperial bureaucracies • Current American state: A bureaucracy that is a mix of appointed and merit-based officials, who are responsible to changing political administrations, congressional oversight, and judicial review. Politicians represent social interests and can be held accountable in elections for lack of bureaucratic oversight.

11. Can the state be isolated from society? • Philippe Schmitter: A modern state is “an amorphous complex of agencies with ill-defined boundaries, performing a great variety of not very distinctive functions.” • The statist approach looks at either the action of the state or society to explain politics. • A political systems approach analyzes the interaction between society and government.

12. A political systems approach? • Gabriel Almond’s goal in looking at political systems was to separate political factors in society from society as a whole. • Timothy Mitchell identifies the problem: There are no clear boundaries, since political, economic, religious, and ethnic systems are mixed within the boundaries.

13. A new statist approach • J.P. Nettl: There is a clear distinction between society and the state, in which the society serves as an empirical realm with the state serving as a conceptual device. • The state, as understood by new statists, is not influenced by forces in society. • Separation is achieved by viewing the state simply as a decision-making unit in which policies are developed. • Problem: Lack of organization and process explaining how policies are developed. Both would require societal factors.

14. Can the State-Society Separation be Resolved? • Eric Nordlinger and Stephen Krasner seek to resolve the dilemma: • The focus of the state becomes the individual decision-makers or officials, who first initiate a policy. • Nordlinger acknowledges that officials may conceptualize societal interests. The interests then become features of the autonomous state. • The role of societal interests is particularly emphasized in the national interest. • Problem: How is the national interest formed?

15. Is the national interest based on societal factors? • Krasner argues that the state (in the United States) is represented by the President and the Department of State, which act on ideology and are isolated from societal pressures (Vietnam War, Anglo Iranian Oil Company). • Creates a similar situation to the Prussian bureaucrats. • Are different societal interests represented in officials in general or even the more narrow Krasner version of the Presidency?

16. ThedaSkocpol’s statist society model • While broadening the composition of Krasner’s state, Skocpol has a similar understanding of the state. She views the French involvement in foreign wars, trading route disputes, and colonialism as a national ideological interest of the monarch to defend French honor. • Mitchell argues that there is no basis for completely eliminating commercial interests or socioeconomic factors as a motivation. • Also missing: A theory to explain how the national interest of French honor, which could be a societal foundation as one explanation, is formed.

17. Mitchell’s Alternative Approach • Must look at societal history to explain the nature of the modern state. • Society formation occurs within the state rather than exterior to it. • State is an abstract entity, which is the sum of its structural effects, from the organization of a military to the issuing of passports.

18. Does Mitchell’s approach work? • Success: Mitchell is able to create a broader definition of the state than the new statists’ view of the state as simply a policy-making entity. • Problem: How are the structural effects imposed? Mitchell creates a conceptualization of the state, but avoids the political question of how practices, which have a similarity to policies, are developed.

19. An Alternative-Alternative Approach • Possible solution: Conceptualization of a government institution in Mitchell’s state and the separation of it from society, but accept societal impact as a whole. • In the case of the acceptance and rejection of various New Deal legislation proposed by Franklin Roosevelt, various societal factors beyond the political likely had an effect on the result, i.e. economic (the United States was coming out of a depression, ethnic/racial (welfare support for southern African-Americans and opposition by southern Whites), political (interest groups, labor and business organizations, etc…), religious (Catholic support for welfare programs). • To a certain extent depending on voter eligibility, political eligibility laws, and other political factors, through districting, legislative branches have represented societal attitudes as a whole.

20. Question • How do differences in the form of government (monarchy, European parliamentary systems, American political system) affect decision-making processes in a state?

21. The State in the Middle East • The region is defined by differences (ethnic, religious, language). • National identities did not develop in the Middle East in the same manner as in Europe. • While the formation of nation-states in Europe took place in the presence of local loyalties and economies and the absence of kinship groups, state formation in the Middle East occurred in a region where religion, long-distance trade, and nomadic pastoralism were prominent prior to the formation of states.

22. State Building in the Middle East Cont. • As a result of the historical relations of the region, the Ottoman Empire that governed the Middle East without state borders worked more efficiently in the past than defining states to particularly distinct geographic spaces. • Ottoman leaders sought to create a Weberian-style state with standing armies, a technical bureaucracy, and tax collection. • With the exceptions of Turkey, Egypt, and Tunisia, however, the military, bureaucratic, and financial establishment fell apart in Middle Eastern states after the breakdown of the Ottoman empire following World War I and the entrance of European colonial powers.

23. State Building in the Middle East Cont. • With subsequent revolutions against European colonial rule, the people of the Middle East accepted varying degrees of administrative units that turned into the modern states of the region. • The post-colonial arbitrarily-created borders did not fit social and economic systems. Tribes in Jordan were separated from their markets, and ethnic groups, including the Kurds and Pashtun, were split between states. As a result, the underlying problems for state building in the Middle East developed, particularly in states with higher levels of diversity. • Governments began reordering economic and social plans.

24. Ethnicity in the Middle East http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml

25. Religion in the Middle East http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml

26. State Building in the Middle East Cont. • Bureaucracy formation has seen the prevalence of the use of patronage to integrate rival ethnic and religious groups into state administrations (Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, and more recently Afghanistan); unlike Weber’s preferred system, politics and administration have mixed. • Governments took the lead in economic investments throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which also differed from the European private industrialization method.

27. State Building in the Middle East Cont. • States in the Middle East have relied on non-domestic economy financial collections, including petroleum rents, foreign aid, and borrowing from abroad. As a result, state administrations have become autonomous from typical taxation-representation relations with domestic society and instead face external constraints. • In terms of military structure, post-colonial development has varied. Turkey’s military has served as an enforcing institution for the civil administration, while in Syria the military has been divided between opposing ethnic groups.

28. Questions • Do the modern Middle Eastern states, with their reliance on external taxation and government-driven economic advancement, signal a different type of state from western states or simply a remodeling of the traditional state? • What are some of the techniques used in state building? How did the state building techniques of European states differ from that of states in the Middle East? • What is emcompassed in a “nation,”as compared to a state? Furthermore, can there be state without nation?

29. http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml

30. A Case Study: Afghanistan Afghanistan’s current geographic boundaries are established during the rule of Amir AbdurRahman (1880-1901). The borders were significantly influenced by the British and Russian empires, which clashed during ‘The Great Game.’ The colonial British India government and AbdurRahman negotiated the Durand Line Agreement, which set a mountainous border between what would become Pakistan and Afghanistan.

31. A problematic political history • Britain recognized Afghanistan as an independent monarch in 1921. • The elites that overthrew the British colonizers sought to establish their own rule over the Afghani state • Afghanistan has seen military revolts transform into governments with a variety of different beliefs and ethnic traditions. Instability has been a constant feature of post-British colonization. • Afghanistan has embraced the rule of various regimes, including King Muhammad Zahir Shah for four decades, a brief Afghan republic instituted by Mohammad Daud, a Soviet Union-inspired Marxist period, a Mujahideen government backed by the United States over the USSR, a Pakistani-supported Taliban administration, and finally the current Islamic Republic of Afghanistan that has been backed up by NATO forces and led by elected Pashtun President HamidKarzai.

32. Can Afghanistan be governed? • An important quality that has helped create legitimization in states has been the ability to form a single nation state or a government that can successfully combine the interests of various groups. • In Afghanistan, the division between various Afghani tribes and ethnic groups, including Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks, has made the functioning of a national government difficult. As a consequence, local tribal leaders have maintained considerable power over their territories of control.

33. State-building Challenges: Geography • Afghanistan’s nation-building problems can partly be traced to the international state system and its colonial history. It was Britain that split the Pashtun between Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as spurring the creation of a state with many ethnic groups. And Afghani leaders have been reluctant to alter state boundaries since the time of their artificial creations. In the Pashtun’s case alone, it would require the ceding of territory by Afghanistan, Pakistan, or both states. • Without clarity of how territory should be divided, former borders have been maintained.

34. From fragmentation to a lack of legitimacy • In terms of security, although Afghanistan has seen foreign military presence with the USSR and the United States, conflict has particularly been an internal phenomenon caused by fragmentation. • The Taliban have provoked an insurgency that has challenged the existence of an Afghani state. While state building was possible for European countries that could unite against foreign threats to protect their existing territory, it has been difficult for a fragmented Afghanistan.

35. To a lack of legitimacy cont. • Ethnic groups in Afghanistan have been documented to partner with groups in other states, as well as foreign governments. • After 1992, the Hazaras built a relationship with Iran, while Uzbeks turned to Uzbekistan for support, and from 1996-2001, the Pashtun Taliban relied on Pakistani support. • Prior to the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, Afghanistan remained divided between the Pashtun east and Tajik-dominated north, which formed part of the opposition Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. The alliance held control of up to 30% of Afghanistan and was recognized by most foreign governments as the legal government of Afghanistan. Furthermore, different regimes have prioritized relations with different world powers. With Afghanistan’s geopolitical importance and politically diverse ethnic ties and values, consistency between Afghani regimes is a rarity and neo-patrimonialism is a constant worry of groups without government representation. (Saikal, 2004: 6)

36. http://gulf2000.columbia.edu/maps.shtml

37. Does a state exist in Afghanistan? • Significant corruption in Afghanistan has signaled the existence of a shadow state. • Government officials have been documented to assist in providing transport routes for drug trafficking and helping Taliban members cross provinces. • Fears remain that the situation could become worse if the Taliban and other insurgent-minded groups take control of Afghani opium fields and reap the economic benefits that come with them. • A patronage system has marked current Afghani President HamidKarzai’s style of securing inter-regional cooperation in the Afghani government. Karzai has actually aided opium traffickers and warlords in exchange for cooperation; in this regard, the internal factors, which make a unified Afghani territory difficult and break down state institutions, are allowed to continue for the sake of stability.

38. Is there a path to state building for Afghanistan? • Afghanistan, as a developing country that lacks homogeneity, has struggled in its ability to successfully transition to multi-party democracy before and after the NATO-military presence. • The post-World War II international order expects states to follow human rights norms and forbids the destructive policies that took place in earlier state building periods of other states. Afghani governments, therefore, have allowed autonomy to troubled provinces and relied on Western military powers, to provide stability. Without NATO support, secure elections (despite the fraud that tarnished them) would not have likely even been a possibility in 2009. • Afghanistan will need to reduce ethnic conflict for state building to begin. At the same time, bureaucratic legitimacy must be restored in zones outside current governance (opium regions).

39. Discussion Questions • What are differences between the conceptualization of the state in International Relations and Comparative Politics? • What is encompassed in a “nation,” as compared to a state? Furthermore, can there be state without nation? • What are some of the techniques used in state building? How did the state building techniques of European states differ from that of states in the Middle East? • Does the development of the European Union, as well as International Organizations and globalization, represent a shift in the Westphalian state system? • Do the contemporary states in the Middle East, with their reliance on external taxation and government-driven economic advancement, signal a different type of state from western states or simply a remodeling of the traditional state? • How do differences in the form of government (monarchy, European parliamentary systems, American political system) affect decision-making processes in a state?