Political scientist Joel Migdal explores the various kinds of formal and informal social institutions (ethnic, cultural, local etc) and how they interact with the formal state institutions. In particular, he views society as "a melange of social organisations" like family, clans, clubs, companies, and so on. The state is one such organisation.
These social organisations have their rules and norms and offer their incentives and sanctions. People submit to their "social control" based on what it offers and develop "strategies of survival - blueprints for action and belief".
Migdal writes, “State social control involves the successful subordination of people’s own inclinations of social behavior or behavior sought by other social organizations in favor of the behavior prescribed by state rulers.”
Contrary to conventional wisdom about the overwhelming presence of the state, Migdal's argument is that the state has a limited influence over most of society's institutions and practices, including within deep hinterland and rural areas in many developing countries. Rejecting the absolute statist and Marxist class structural foundations of state power, Migdal points to state as a distinct part of the society and being constantly shaped by each other. He describes this as a state-in-society approach to understanding the influence of both state and society.
Through this approach, Migdal argues that far from being ubiquitous actors, the state's sphere of influence is limited whereas the society exerts a surprisingly large influence on public and personal issues. This also runs contrary to the popular expectations from state to solve social and personal problems.
Migdal is not sympathetic to Weber's impersonalised bureaucratic state, even as an ideal. He concedes the point of seeing real world states in terms of "distance from the ideal type". But he argues that Weber's framework with its formally institutionalised omnipotent state does not provide much space for the rich set of social interactions involving the melange of social organisations.
“The assumption that only the state does, or should, create rules and that only it does, or should, maintain the violent means to bend people to obey those rules minimizes and trivializes the rich negotiation, interaction, and resistance that occur in every human society among multiple systems of rules. It posits a human society where one incredibly coherent and complex organization exercises an extraordinary hegemony of thought and action over all other social formations intersecting that territory. It provides no way to theorize about arenas of competing sets of rules, other than to cast these in the negative, as failures or weak states or even as non-states.”
As Daniel Lambach writes, Migdal may be misrepresenting Weber. Weber saw social relations as relations of power (formalised as dominance or authority) (Herrschaft) taking place in a framework of associations (verbande). Therefore, Weber, like Migdal, merely posts the state as a special case of Herrschaftsverband and not as the only association with a monopoly of rule creation. Weber and Migdal both acknowledge the important role of social organisations.
Lambach writes,
In Migdal’s terms, these associations prescribe certain modes of behavior which is then assimilated (or not) into people’s strategies of survival. In Weber’s model, associations represent different kinds of social order, embodying sets of rules that are enforced among its members through relationships of authority. Just as Migdal’s concept of social control, this Weberian kind of authority rests upon attitudes towards rule that range from rational compliance to emotional support and affirmation. So, where society is characterized as a mélange of social organizations by Migdal, it is presented as a set of overlapping and crosscutting orders by Weber. Furthermore, both of them see the state not as a structure that exists somehow outside, or even above, society. Instead, the state is thought of a distinctive entity that is, in principle, only one of a multitude of associations within society, even though it exhibits certain special characteristics that no other associations share.
In the context of European state formation, Lambach writes,
This (Weber and Migdal) model is borne out by the history of European state-building in the late Middle Ages and early modern times. Here, the old feudal structures were slowly replaced by centralized political authorities. This process of centralization had little in common with ‘state of nature’ assumptions – there were no voluntary acts of association, no social contract; in fact, the general population did not figure much into the equation. Instead, early modern rulers were confronted with alternative power centers (local lords, the rising city bourgeoisie, the clergy) that resisted their attempts to increase the state’s reach. Through conflict and accomodation, the state managed to accumulate the authority necessary to become the dominant structure that it is today. But as Charles Tilly emphasizes, the route it took was to a large extent determined by control over the means of violence: “Legitimacy is the probability that other authorities will act to confirm the decisions of a given authority. Other authorities, I might add, are much more likely to confirm the decisions of a challenged authority that controls substantial force; not only fear of retaliation, but also desire to maintain a stable environment recommend that general rule.”
A few observations:
1. Migdal's conceptualisation of state and society combines sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies's distinction between Gemeinschaft (traditional communal society with predominantly informal rules and norms) and Gesellschaft (legal/associational society with formal rules). The former arises from wesenwille (natural will, arising organically from social norms) and the latter from Kurwille (rational will, of impersonal and formal institutional arrangements).
Migdal thereby provides a far more comprehensive canvas for analysing state-society interaction and state capability.
2. Migdal points to social organisations exerting greater power and influence "when people do not simply follow the rules (compliance) but when they believe them to be right and good (legitimation)". This is just as much relevant to understanding state capacity in developing countries.
Far too often, the power of state is grounded on accounting based notions of accountability (compliance) and less on the account based notions (legitimation). The former deeply attenuates the true extent of state power.
3. A weak state is "one which is unable to exert itself into the strategies of survival of its citizens... Increased capabilities of state include and rest upon increased state social control". Daniel Lambach writes,
State capabilites “include the capacities to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways. Strong states are those with high capabilities to complete these tasks, while weak states are on the low end of a spectrum of capabilities.” Contemporary weak states are characterized by high capabilities in penetration and extraction while being markedly weaker when it comes to regulation and appropriation. This is a duality inherent in many postcolonial states who are present in all sectors of society but generally powerless to effect social changes.
The fragmentation of social control dents the mobilisational capabilities of state leaders and thereby prevents the state institutions from penetrating the society to further common causes.
4. Migdal argues that the reason for the weakness of these states lies in the particular structure of their societies. He writes that most developing country societies are decentralised collections of social units without a strong nationally unifying set of symbols or values. Kinship and other parochial ties over-ride any national consciousness. They are "weblike societies" made up of local organisations with local constituencies. This fragmentation of social control limited the growth of state's capabilities across post-independence third world countries.
This is in line with the mainstream literature in political science which highlight the role of kinship loyalties as being sand on the wheels of the emergence of capable states.
5. In the case of India, it is impossible to overlook the critical role of caste in the fragmentation of social control and in coming in the way of the state's ability to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, and appropriate resources in determined ways. In fact, the issue of debate may only be about the extent of social fragmentation exercised by caste.
Apart from fragmenting social control, caste ties also have the effect of penetrating state institutions and thereby weakening its universal character. In a deeply fragmented system, state leaders pursues the "political of survival" which seeks to exercise control by falling back on patrimonial relationships and convenient social organisations.
In other words, caste ties weaken the social mobilisational capabilities of state institutions, and where it penetrates the society, caste ends up eroding the legitimation of the state.
6. Finally, these relationships and their dynamics play out at the street-level bureaucracy with damaging consequences for state's capabilities,
At the micro level, local state officials (called ‘implementors’ by Migdal) have the task of implementing state policies. According to Migdal’s theory, these officials are caught in a web of pressures and demands from superiors, local politicians, strongmen, their bureaucrat peers and the intended clients of their programs. In weak state institutions hampered by frequent reshuffling of policy elites and little internal oversight, few implementors will put much effort into promoting state policies against local resistance. Instead, they will prefer to avoid open conflict so as not to jeopardize their career prospects.
Regarding local implementation, Migdal summarizes his argument as follows: “In brief, I argue that the structure of society has an important indirect effect on policy implementation. We have seen how a society with fragmented social control leads to the politics of survival. In turn, I hypothesize, the politics of survival lessens backing and threats of sanctions from supervisors, thus making the implementor more attentive to possible career costs involving strongmen and peer officials. The result is a further weakening of the state’s ability to make the rules governing people’s behavior.” In other words, a weblike society influences politics at the national level which in turn inhibits effective policy implementation at the local level.
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