Marc Russell

THE STATE IN SOCIETY APPROACH
Marc T. Russell IS 716-Presentation March 15, 2005 Joel S. Migdal “The State in Society.” In Howard Wiarda, New Directions in Comparative Politics. Chapter 8.
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Vivien Shue The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic.
The major arguments of Migdal and Shue originate from a shared dissatisfaction with existing notions and theories within the statist approach. The central theme of each of their individual arguments is a challenge to the Center-Periphery Model presented by Edward Shils. Migdal goes into greater detail than Shue regarding the Center-Periphery Model and in fact Migdal presents the State-in-Society Model as an improvement on Shils’ work; Whereas Shue not only identifies the shortcomings of statist modeling, but also attempts to redirect the understanding of State-Society relations by using an illustration of the Chinese state.
Joel Migdal begins his argument by describing the emerging states of the third world in the post-WWII era. He contrasts the potential of states in the third world to reshape their respective societies with the actual feasibility to achieve that potential. Migdal presents two contrasting views regarding the third world within the Statist school. The first view was that third world states would be able to “move their economies from agriculture to industry, create a skilled workforce and induce the population to abandon all outdated models” (63). This view believed that third world states would be able to bring order and structure to chaos through western conventions of state authority. Migdal neither cites nor provides any indication as to why third world states would not chose to exercise state authority through their own traditional and/or cultural models. The second view within the Statist school represents the reservations scholars had regarding the
abilities of the third world to achieve their potential for authority. According to Migdal “potential strength infrequently translates into effective action”, essentially emerging states rarely live up to their potential. He goes on to say there was a severely limited capability within third world states to regulate and transform their societies as had been expected by scholars (64). Migdal’s argument here is that there were questions regarding the effectiveness of the statist approach even within the school.
Migdal then goes on to talk about the Center-Periphery Model as developed by Edward Shils. According to Shils there are 3 aspects to the Center: (1) a central value system comprised of the values and beliefs of the state (2) institutions that are the realm of action and exercise authority and (3) elites that are equated with authority. Shils explains that these 3 components are “combined in a seamless weave” (65). In the Center-Periphery Model authority is described as “being able to enforce decisions despite differing tendencies and preferences in other parts of society” (65). Lastly Migdal summarizes that Shils believed that rewards and sanctions are used to push the Periphery to accept the Center. Migdal’s critique of the Center-Periphery Model is two fold. First Migdal observes that this model is one directional, the Center affects/coerces/controls the Periphery but the Periphery seemingly has no influence on the Center. Secondly Migdal returns to the third world example and says that since the third world has not yet developed a center that the Center-Periphery Model is “inadequate to depict the here and now” (68).
Migdal presents his own model dubbed: State-in-Society which views society as a mélange (mixture) of social organizations rather than the dichotomous Center-Periphery Model. The State-in-Society Model says that societies are not static formations but are
constantly becoming as a result of constant struggles over social control. In this model authority can be delegated to other organizations peacefully as opposed to organizations vying for authority resulting in conflict. According to Migdal there are 3 levels of social control: (1) compliance: which is how a population responds to state demands1 (2) participation: leaders organize the population for specialized tasks through institutions (3) legitimacy: the acceptance of the symbolic order associated with the idea of a state as people’s own system of meaning. Where the Center-Periphery Model presented the idea that states act of their own authority and then coerce the Periphery to accept decisions either through rewards or sanctions, the State-in-Society Model presents the idea that the state acts with the will and support of the Periphery/society.
Migdal goes on to say that the Periphery is more important than previously imagined and can use resources to gain authority. He says there are pockets of social control outside the domain of state leaders that shape how the state acts or at least part of the state acts.2 Migdal concludes with two comments on society: (1) society constrains the state & transforms it through internal forces and (2) society is transformed by the state.
State ÅÆ Society/Periphery
The main argument for Vivien Shue is the ineffectual nature of existing models to effectively describe socio-political processes. Shue insinuates that Chinese political life defies conventional models. Most scholars would more than likely regard China as a “perfect” example of the Center-Periphery Model. To much of the Western world China is a textbook example of a state (the Center) exercising authority over society (the
1 Migdal says that compliance can be compelled by the use of force, i.e. the state has control over the local police.
2 A notion that Vivien Shue elaborates and even demonstrates in her work.
Periphery) through a precarious imbalanced series of few rewards and many sanctions. In the four essays presented in Shue’s work she attempts to clarify the misconceptions of the exact influence of state authority, or the “reach of the state.” Shue believes that there is an innate uniqueness to Chinese social formations and that the complexity of Chinese socialism stems from the vast peasant social base. Her main focus is on the “honeycomb” like and internally focused structure of rural society.
In the first essay, “State, Society & Politics under Mao”, her thesis is that political evolution occurs simultaneously along many different dimensions and at different paces. It is in this essay that she makes the observation that an approach is needed that puts the analysis of process at the center of research efforts & details the relationships between such “dichotomous abstractions” as state & society and structure & culture. In the second essay, “Peasant Localism & the Chinese Sate”, she attests that the state’s penetration and control of rural society under Mao was uneven and less complete than is believed by scholars and even Mao’s followers and critics. In this essay Shue discusses that the state penetration into rural society was not one sided because peasant society left its “imprint” on modern Chinese state organizations and routines.
The third essay, ‘The Reach of the State”, provides a comparative look between the evolution of state-society relations in the West to those in China. According to Shue the socio-economic organization of rural China prevented the penetration of the state from substantially influencing the “peasant periphery” under Mao Zedong. In the later half of this essay as well as in the next essay, “Honeycomb & Web”, Shue presents the notion that the reforms of Deng Xiao-Ping, which were meant to modernize rural society and correct the “failures” of the Cultural Revolution, actually initiated a farther
penetration into rural Chinese society by the state than any policy under Mao. According to Shue the reforms under Deng Xiao-ping were ultimately state-strengthening and wanted to do away with the rural “honeycomb.” In these last two chapters Shue really demonstrates what she calls the “intertexture” of China’s evolution polity. Meaning the influence rural society had on the state and the influence the state had on rural society.
The most interesting aspect of the two works is that they both call-into-question the universal application of theory. Neither Migdal nor Shue explicitly say that the Center-Periphery Model is completely wrong, but rather explicitly question whether this, and possibly other Western models, can be practically applied to the third world and places like China. This implies that theories and models may not be wrong, but cannot be applied everywhere, are not universal and that there is a need for individual and unique applications of theories to different parts of the world. One irritating aspect is that Vivien Shue cites the failure of previous research to fully understand the state-society relationship in China and this begets the question: How can theories make effective or correct assumptions/generalizations about a society that is not fully understood or even studied?
The significance of both these works are the attempts to redirect theoretical approaches in such a way that combines two different approaches: the top down approach, which views the state having an influence on society and the bottom up approach, which views society having an influence on the state. The message each of these authors is sending is that the world is complex and innately different and in order to understand the way the world works theories need to be devised and/or changed to reflect the complex, unique natures of societies around the world.。