POL 2: Intro to Comparative Politics - Order and Disorder

POL 2: Intro to Comparative Politics

Lecture 4: Order and Disorder

Instructor: Lauren Young, UC Davis

Lecture Objectives

By the end of these lectures, you should be able to:

1. Explain the contractarian theory of state formation.

2. Explain the predatory theory of state formation.

3. Solve the "state of nature" and "civil society" games.

4. Explain two critiques of the predatory theory of state formation.

What is a State?

Definitions

• Weber (1918): A state is defined as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

• Tilly (1985): A state is described as “relatively centralized, differentiated organizations, the officials of which, more or less, successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of violence within a population inhabiting a large contiguous territory.”

• North (1981): He described a state as “an organization with a comparative advantage in violence, extending over a geographic area whose boundaries are determined by its power to tax constituents.”

• CGG Definition: A state can also be defined as “a centralized political entity that uses coercion and the threat of force to rule in a given territory.” (p. 90)

Criminal Governance, Violence, and State Building

Instructor: Haley Daarstad, UC Davis

What is Criminal Governance?

• Criminal Governance: Defined as the enforcement of rules or restrictions on behavior by criminal organizations over members, non-member criminal actors, and non-criminal civilians (Lessing, 2021).

Functions of Criminal Organizations

• Can provide state-like functions, such as:

  • Tax collection (extortion).

  • Resolving disputes.

  • Enforcing property rights and social codes.

  • Providing loans or food.

• However, these organizations do not operate in a vacuum; they exist alongside the state, ignoring, cooperating, or conflicting with it.

Criminal vs. State Governance

Clarification on State Formation

• Criminal organizations do not engage in state formation.

  • They operate in contexts where officials from the state exist and typically face repression.

  • Rarely challenge existing state authority.

• Lessing (2021): Criminal governance cannot be understood apart from the state, its policies, coercive apparatus, and its relations to citizens.

Criminal Governance and State Control

Policy Influence of Cartels

• A variety of strategies reflect how cartels exert influence:

  • Fighting: Violent Corruption strategies like the Medellín Cartel's “The bullet or the bribe?”

  • Formulation: Violent Lobbying and Narco-Terrorism.

  • Hiding: Corruption techniques adopted by the Cali Cartel, e.g., “We don't kill judges; we buy them.”

  • Involves (Illicit) Lobbying and Narco-Politics (Lessing, 2015).

The Sinaloa Cartel: A Case Study on Governance

Current Struggle for Control

• Examines the dynamics surrounding the Sinaloa Cartel amidst a government crackdown and internal war post the arrest of a prominent drug lord.

• Statistics highlighting the rise in regional homicides (400%) following the fall of 'El Mayo'.

• Reports indicate a significant jump in disappearances, particularly among young males in Culiacán during the cartel conflict.

Theories on Why States Form

Two Competing Explanations

1. Social Contract (Contractarian) Theory:

   • Proposes that states form because citizens are better off with a third-party enforcer who provides security in exchange for obedience.

2. Predatory Theory:

   • Suggests that states emerge as leaders act as stationary bandits, seeking to maximize revenues through protection and services in return for taxes.

Contractarian (Social Contract) Theory

Understanding the State of Nature

• Defined as a state of anarchy where “war of every man against every man” prevails, leading to a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 1651).

Game Theory in Contractarian Theory

Key Components of Game Theory

• Game Theory: Fundamental tool for analyzing strategic situations where one actor’s choices depend on others’ decisions.

• Elements of a Game:

  1. Players: Identifies who is involved.

  2. Strategies: Describes available actions.

  3. Payoffs: Specifies outcomes based on strategy sets.

• In standard form games, players make choices simultaneously (CGG, p. 95).

State of Nature Game

Example Analysis

• Consider two farmers (A, B) who want a piece of land.

Strategies Available

• Steal or Refrain.

Payoffs Structure

• If I steal, and you refrain (Steal, Refrain): J, J

• If we both refrain (Refrain, Refrain): J

• If both steal (Steal, Steal): L

• If you steal and I refrain (Refrain, Steal): L, L

Payoff Types

• Ordinal Payoffs: Rank possible outcomes.

• Cardinal Payoffs: Quantify preferences for one outcome over another.

Strategic Game Representation

Payoff Table

• Represent the outcomes graphically within a strategic or normal form game.

• Each cell in the table should display both players' payoffs accordingly.

Solving the State of Nature Game

Best Responses and Strategies

• Best Response: The highest payoff choice based on the other player's potential moves.

• Dominant Strategy: Strategy that yields the best response against all of the other player’s strategies.

• Nash Equilibrium: A scenario in which each player has selected a strategy where neither player desires to unilaterally change their strategy.

• Dominant-strategy Nash Equilibrium: Occurs when both players possess a dominant strategy.

Outcome Analysis

Dilemma of Stealing

• Stealing emerges as a dominant strategy, resulting in a Nash Equilibrium of (Steal, Steal).

• This situation leads to a loss for both players, indicating a suboptimal relationship: both players are worse off in this equilibrium (Steal, Steal) than if they had both refrained (Refrain, Refrain).

• This dynamic can be characterized as a Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Avoiding the Less Preferred Outcome

Strategies to Improve Outcomes

1. Third-party enforcement: The state deters theft by imposing punishment (Hobbes’s “Sword of Leviathan”).

2. Cooperative culture (moral suasion): Informal or internalized norms inflict punishment via guilt or shame.

3. Shadow of the future (Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981): Repeated play means that refraining from theft yields future benefits; a “tit-for-tat” strategy emerges: “I refrain until you steal, then I punish.”

• Larger societies necessitate increasing third-party enforcement.

Civil Society Game Dynamics

Exploring Punishment in Civil Society

• Let p equal the punishment issued by the state to anyone who steals.

• Analyze conditions under which refraining becomes a rational choice when player B refrains or steals:

  1. Refrain if (3 > 4 - p) when B refrains.

  2. Refrain if (1 > 2 - p) when B steals.

• Solving gives the condition: Refrain if p > 1.

Decision-Making Between Two States

Equilibrium Preferences

1. State of Nature: Dominant strategy Nash equilibrium is (Steal, Steal).

2. Civil Society: Refrain if:

   • p > 1 and if 3 - t > 4 - p - t.

3. Simplified Conditions: If t < 1, A and B prefer (Refrain, Refrain) in Civil Society over (Steal, Steal) in State of Nature.

Social Contract Theory: Overview

Conditions for Choosing Civil Society

• Citizens opt for civil society when:

  • The punishment is sufficiently high to incentivize cooperative behavior.

  • Tax burdens are low enough that they do not negate cooperative gains.

• Critique: Assumes the presence of a benevolent third-party enforcer. This raises the question of self-interest among state representatives.

  • James Madison in Federalist 51 emphasizes checks and balances essential for controlling both the governed and governing forces.

Predatory Theory of State Formation

Overview of Rulers' Interests

• This theory posits that state formation must be examined from the rulers' perspective rather than average citizens.

• Questions arise regarding why rulers would stabilize a state during an anarchic period.

  • Reasons include border defense, tax revenue collection, and providing essential services.

  • State formation is seen as a survival strategy for rulers within historical contexts like early modern Europe.

Historical Context: Medieval Europe

Anarchic Conditions Post-Rome

• Following the collapse of the Roman Empire (late 5th century), a patchwork of local lords, kings, and emperors built governance structures.

• These entities collected taxes in response to providing varying degrees of protection while engaged in frequent conflicts over land and labor.

State Formation Dynamics

Political Consolidation Trends

• Political units began consolidating under changing military technologies during the late medieval period (10th-13th centuries), leading to the emergence of centralized authority.

• Factors facilitating consolidation included:

  • Higher fixed costs of violence made local governance more challenging.

  • Population growth diminished labor's marginal productivity, consolidating power into fewer lords and kings through violent conquest.

  • Such state-building efforts were often unintended consequences of conflicts with external forces.

Case Study: France in the 17th Century

Resource Acquisition Strategies

• In the early 17th century, the French king accessed resources through various local authorities, officeholders, and credit markets.

• However, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) strained these resource-gathering strategies, leading to local revenue collectors' reluctance to cooperate.

• In response, Chief Minister Richelieu sent agents to coerce or bypass local authority, establishing a permanent representation of state control.
  (Source: Tilly, 1992, p.26)

Steps of State Formation (Tilly, 1985)

Four Key Activities

1. War Making: Neutralizing external rivals.

2. State Making: Neutralizing internal rivals.

3. Protection: Neutralizing foes of allies.

4. Extraction: Securing resources necessary for the above activities.

The Role of War in State Creation

Economic Considerations

• To effectively wage war, rulers sought to amass capital through various means such as conquest or imposing taxation.

• They formed alliances with capital holders and established regular taxation mechanisms to sustain state functions.
  (Source: Tilly, 1985)

Historical Framework of State Formation

Four Phases of Development

1. Patrimonialism (990-1400): Warfare involved customary forces; monarchs extracted tributes.

2. Brokerage (1400-1700): Reliance on mercenaries and external capitalists for tax collection.

3. Nationalization (1700-1850): Establishment of mass armies and direct tax collection.

4. Specialization (mid-1800s to today): Increased specialization of state structures leading to expanded roles in regulation and redistribution. (Source: Tilly, 1992, p.29)

Critiques of the Predatory Theory

Examination of State-Building Accuracy

• Investigates whether the predatory theory accurately describes European state-building and its applicability to other global contexts.

War and States in Latin America

Centeno's Analysis

• Limitations of War: Argues that conflicts in Latin America differ from the total wars seen in Europe.

  • Limited wars tend to lack the capacity to generate institutional legacies and lead to a stabilization of weak state structures. (Source: Centeno, 2002)

State Impact of Limited Wars

Consequence Analysis

• Limited wars do not result in the increased fiscal capacity associated with European state-building efforts.

• Instead, they often produce high levels of debt without corresponding improvements in tax collection systems, described as states built from "blood and debt" rather than "blood and iron."

Comparative Analysis of Bellic Models

Distinctions Between Political Contexts

War and States in Africa

Herbst's Perspective

• Weak State Formation: Argues that wars in Africa are typically non-territorial.

  • Low population density makes territorial conflict less likely. - The post-colonial system reinforces existing boundaries, inhibiting state growth. (Source: Herbst, 2000)

Non-territorial Wars in Africa

Geophysical Influences

• The high cost of extending governmental authority in precolonial contexts limited state-building.

• An analysis of physical geography suggests the concentration of power within centers rather than expansive territorial boundaries was more viable under African conditions.

Colonial Boundaries and Their Effects

Lasting Consequences

• Colonial borders imposed without regard for social structures.

• Post-decolonization leaders refrain from aggressive expansion to avoid negative repercussions from existing international frameworks.

Predatory Theory in Global Context

European Wealth Acquisition

• European states benefitted from global trade dynamics, drawing resources from regions such as West Africa.

  • Engagements in the slave trade further augmented capital influx, notably with competition for slave territories impacting state strategies.

European Interimperial Conflicts

Broader Historical Implications

• Despite being significant events, these naval territories and land struggles during the 17th century were frequently overlooked in discussions of classical history (French, 2021).

Evaluating State Formation Theories

Comparative Theoretical Limitations

• Contractarian Theory: Fails to account for state incentives and tends to explain functional government rather than the reasons for state emergence.

• Predatory Theory: While it captures the interests of rulers, it overlooks the variance in state capacity globally, especially in regions like Africa and Latin America.

Suggested Readings

• Centeno, Miguel. 2002. Blood and Debt. Penn State University Press.

• Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton University Press.

• French, Howard. 2021. Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. Liveright.

• Levi, Margaret. 1988. Of Rule and Revenue. University of California Press.

• Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. 2016. “The long-run effects of the Scramble for Africa.” American Economic Review 106(7).

• Sanchez de la Sierra, Raul. 2020. “On the origins of states: Stationary bandits and taxation in Eastern Congo.” Journal of Political Economy.

• Tilly, Charles. 1992. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992. MA: Blackwell Publishers Inc.