State Building in Boom Times: Commodities and Coalitions in Latin America and Africa - Hardcover

Saylor, Ryan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199364958 ISBN 13: 9780199364954

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Governments that preside over a capable state apparatus can better uphold the rule of law, ensure democratic accountability, stimulate economic development, and provide good governance. In the developing world, countries differ substantially in their levels of state capacity and ability to achieve these ends, leaving scholars and concerned citizens alike wondering about the origins of such inequalities.

In State Building in Boom Times, Ryan Saylor argues that commodity booms and coalitional politics are central to understanding variations in state building within and across Latin America and Africa. He shows how resource booms can trigger the provision of new public goods and institution building, thus helping countries expand their state capacity. But these possibilities hinge on coalitional politics, as he demonstrates through six cases. Countries ruled by export-oriented coalitions (Argentina, Chile, and Mauritius) expanded their state capacity as a direct result of commodity booms. Countries in which exporters were politically marginalized (Colombia, Ghana, and Nigeria) missed analogous state building opportunities because ruling coalitions preyed upon export wealth, rather than promoting export interests-which in turn undercut state building. The coalitional basis of these divergent outcomes suggests that, contrary to the prevailing belief in a "resource curse" natural resource wealth does not doom countries to low state capacity. Instead, export-oriented coalitions can harness boom times for developmental gains, even in the context of weak institutions.

Saylor's work encourages us to reexamine widespread assumptions about the relationship between resource wealth and state building, particularly the resource curse. State Building in Boom Times elucidates which public policies best serve developing countries trying manage their natural resource wealth.

About this title

About the Author:

Ryan Saylor is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Tulsa.

Review:

"In this wonderful new book, Saylor takes us away from Hegelian notions of state capacity as somehow divorced from plain old politics. He is very persuasive that states do not grow in a deterministic fashion, but reflect the societal distributions of power, demands from below, and the capacity of political institutions to address these. His selection of cases is unique in its breadth and depth and provides outstanding empirical support for his theoretical claims. Experts on Africa, Latin America, public governance, and politics in general will value this important contribution." --Miguel A. Centeno, Princeton University

"Saylor's book provides a useful counterweight to influential work on state building that has focused on extractive capacity and the need for revenue. He points to other kinds of state capacity, such as the ability to provide public goods, and argues that these capacities develop for reasons having more to do with coalitional politics than the fiscal dynamics that have long been at the center of state building theories. In documenting and explaining a wide range of capacity building outcomes during commodity booms in Latin America and Africa, his work should not only influence scholarship on the 'resource curse' but also fruitfully expand the set of dependent and independent variables in scholarship on state capacity." --Kevin M. Morrison, University of Pittsburgh

"Saylor's book makes an important contribution to our understanding of state formation, challenging dominant perspectives on the role of war and the resource curse. His careful conceptualization and comparative historical analysis illuminates the importance of bottom-up societal dynamics, specifically the contingency of coalitional politics in boom times in six developing countries in Africa and Latin America." --Lauren M. MacLean, Indiana University

"In State Building in Boom Times, Saylor joins a growing group of voices refuting a one-size-fits-all negative take on the politics of resource wealth. Saylor suggests instead that the nature of ruling coalitions during commodity booms drives elite decisions about investing in state capacity. He employs a nicely thought-out cross-regional comparison of a half dozen countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa to trace the lineages of strong states in some and weak ones in others. Saylor's is a new and smart voice in the comparative study of post-colonial state building and I welcome his entry into this ongoing scholarly debate." --Benjamin B. Smith, University of Florida

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0199364958
• ISBN 13: 9780199364954
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256