Suchergebnisse

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.By James C. Scott. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. 464p. $35.00.The book under discussion is James C. Scott's latest contribution to the study of agrarian politics, culture, and society, and to the ways that marginalized communities evade or resist projects of state authority. The book offers a synoptic history of Upland Southeast Asia, a 2.5 million–kilometer region of hill country spanning Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, and China. It offers a kind of "area study." It also builds on Scott's earlier work on "hidden transcripts" of subaltern groups and on "seeing like a state." The book raises many important theoretical questions about research methods and social inquiry, the relationship between political science and anthropology, the nature of states, and of modernity more generally. The book is also deeply relevant to problems of "state-building" and "failed states" in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. As Scott writes, "The huge literature on state-making, contemporary and historic, pays virtually no attention to its obverse: the history of deliberate and reactive statelessness. This is the history of those who got away, and state-making cannot be understood apart from it. This is also what makes it an anarchist history" (p. x).In this symposium, I have invited a number of prominent political and social scientists to comment on the book, its historical narrative, and its broader theoretical implications for thinking about power, state failure, state-building, and foreign policy. How does the book shed light on the limits of states and the modes of resistance to state authority? Are there limits, theoretical and normative, to this "anarchist" understanding of governance and the "art of being governed"?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

In explaining the development of institutional structures within states, social science analysis has focused on autochthonous factors and paid less attention to the way in which external factors, especially purposive agent-directed as opposed to more general environmental factors, can influence domestic authority structures. For international relations scholarship, this lacunae is particularly troubling or perhaps, just weird. If the international system is anarchical, then political leaders can pursue any policy option. In some cases, the most attractive option would be conventional state to state interactions, diplomacy, or war. In other instances, however, changing the domestic authority structures of other states might be more appealing. In some cases, domestic authority structures have been influenced through bargaining, and in others through power. Power may reflect either explicit agent-oriented decisions or social processes that reflect the practices, values, and norms of more powerful entities.

Studies on development highlight the rational choice approach; this fact pushes theories of modernization and institutional capacity into the background. However, these theories still predominate in discussions on aid and in international aid agencies, both in words and in deeds. The reason is that the proposals of the theories used are more manageable or legible administratively. Thus, on reviewing recent studies, it can be seen that in the case of rational choice the perspectives and conclusions on international aid differ. This hinders its use by international aid agencies. Adapted from the source document.

Only policy makers in great-power nations can aspire to realize grand strategies. They rarely succeed. In the contemporary international environment, coherence is more likely to be achieved by aiming at something more modest, a principle around which foreign policy might be oriented. Responsible sovereignty is the most promising candidate. Responsible sovereignty focuses on the need to create states capable of governing effectively within their own borders and to realizing, where possible, mutually beneficial bargains with regard to global public goods. Irresponsible sovereigns and failing states threaten the well-being of their own populations and the security, domestic norms, and authority structures of even the world's most powerful countries. There is no alternative to responsible sovereigns; no regional much less global authority structure can replace the state. Adapted from the source document.

"Die Politik des Containment war eine Grand Strategy, die den USA und ihren Verbündeten Orientierung bot. Die dynamischen Machtverhältnisse dieses Jahrhunderts aber erlauben keine Grand Strategy mehr. Ein Konzept der 'verantwortlichen Souveränität', das sich auf effektive Regierungsführung konzentriert, wäre ein hilfreiches Orientierungsprinzip." (Autorenreferat)