State in Society

The essays in this book trace the development of Joel Migdal’s state-in-society approach. That approach illuminates how power is exercised around the world, and how and when patterns of power change. Despite the triumph of concept of state in social science literature, actual states have had great difficulty in turning public policies into planned social change. The state-in-society approach points observers to the ongoing struggles over which rules dictating how people will lead their daily lives. These struggles, which ally parts of the state and groups in society against other such coalitions, determine how societies and states create and maintain distinct ways of structuring day-to-day life - the nature of the rules that govern people’s behavior, whom they benefit and whom they disadvantage, which sorts of elements unite people and which divide them, what shared meaning people hold about their relations with others and their place in the world.

• A new social science approach for understanding state-society relations, particularly, who dominates in society? • A new definition of the state • A process-oriented approach, emphasizing the effects of ongoing struggles over whose rules, and which rules, will predominate

Part I. Introduction: 1. The state-in-society approach: a new definition of the state and transcending the narrowly constructed world of Rigor; Part II. Rethinking Social and Political Change: 2. A model of state-society relations; 3. Strong states, weak states: power and accommodation; Part III. A Process-Oriented Approach - Constituting States and Societies: 4. The state in society: an approach to struggles for domination; 5. Why do so many states stay intact; Part IV. Linking Micro- and Macro-Level Change: 6. Individual change in the midst of social and political change; Part V. Studying the State: 7. Studying the politics of development and change: the state of the art; 8. Studying the state.