State formation and the politics of regime survival
The project analyzes the conditions under which states become strong and effective as well as why some develop into weak and ineffective states.Participants
Stein Sundstøl Eriksen
Øyvind Eggen
The project will first of all study how a regime’s responds to various security threats affect state-building. State-building often take place through violent conflicts between the ruling regime and rivals within and outside the state territory. The two researchers make a distinction between two forms of security threats. The first form is violent threats from outside the state against the state itself or the ruling regime. The second form is a violent threat from within the state’s territory against the regime’s control over the state or against its control over a larger or smaller part of its territory. How is stat-building affected by external or internal security threats?
Secondly the researchers study how a regime’s social basis, defined as the groups that provide active or passive support to the regime affect state-building. They define regime as the incumbents of key national positions of political power. Does state-building assume that the social base of the regime needs to be comprised of strong social groups with interests in governing the state? Their hypotheses can be formulated as follows: The establishment of a strong state is facilitated by the existence of a (perceived) external security threat, the existence of a (perceived) internal class-based security threat directed against the ruling regime, constituency building with a powerful class or social group that has an interest in the establishment of a strong state, such as a capitalist class with an independent economic power base . The project is a comparative historical study of state-building in six countries – three in Africa (Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Congo/Zaïre, Botswana) and three in Asia (Malaya/Malaysia, South-Vietnam, South-Korea).
Funding
Norwegian Research Counsil