1. 2-5-2012
It’s the State-Economy-Society stupid!
Contribution to seminar on rethinking state economy and society
Tom De Herdt
Governance is good for
development?
• Reflecting a respectable tradition on “getting
getting
institutions right”
- To achieve pacification and build an effective
administration
• Well functioning police and military
• Linking the state and the citizens
- To re-establish funding
• Efficient and transparent revenue collection
- To realise rule of law
• To protect its citizens
• To protect investors’ assets
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2. 2-5-2012
Development is good for
governance
• But recent literature takes precisely a “relative”
view on “rule of law”
• Institutions are viewed as malleable – as the product of
ongoing conflict, negotiation, and compromise among
powerful groups;
• “rolling agreements”
• Essentially because the state cannot discipline itself
 degree of state effectiveness is reflecting society and
eco o y
economy
good governance as a by-product of socio-economic
interests strong enough to press for it
• Points of divergence:
• “Leadership” vs LAO vs “political settlement”
2 Transitional or inevitable?
•
Leadership
• Booth: country ownership=
“a leadership with a long-term development vision and
p g p
some kind of machinery for managing well the rent
generation and utilization which are central to early
development processes” (Booth 2011)
Good governance may be by-product, development
is not
Tension with democracy
y
<-> electoral incentives focused on short-term interests
<-> elections to divert rents from productive destinations
Tension with pro-poor agenda:
development builds on capital accumulation and elite
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consensus
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3. 2-5-2012
Limited access orders
(North)
• Development as by-product of individual efforts by
leaders of contending organizations for not engaging
in violence.
- Importance of Peace Dividend
- State’s first role to strengthen intermediary social groups
<-> “statist” approaches to state reconstruction
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“Clientelist”
Political Settlements
(Khan)
• “political settlement” = Modus vivendi, realised as
long as the peace dividend is distributed more or less
according to the relative (perceived) holding power of
each group
• “clientelist” = relative importance of ‘non-formal
power’
• Development implies a gradual increase in the
importance of economic resources as d t
i t f i determinants of
i t f
holding power
increased importance of property rights & rule of law.
But initially developmentalism must be compatible with a
settlement based predominantly on informal holding power
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4. 2-5-2012
Back to Weber?
• State law&institutions not as pre-condition for development
 Gradual disappearance of legal pluralism in favour of state
 Gradual evolution of state law&institutions in the interests
of the economy
• Patrimonialism as one source of legitimate authority
• Besides others
• In ordinary settings: a mixture.
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Back to Weber?
• State law&institutions not as pre-condition for development
 Gradual disappearance of legal pluralism in favour of state
 Gradual evolution of state law&institutions in the interests
of the economy
• Patrimonialism as one source of legitimate authority
• Besides others
• In ordinary settings: a mixture.
Patrimonialism compatible with developmentalism
Our dealing with formal institutions is always evolving
Need of a (local) political economy analysis:
rising to the concrete!
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