Two Manea COIN Interviews at SWJ

VF-B: They will definitely stay and perhaps will intensify, partially for the reason that urbanization is taking place in a way and magnitude with which many governments struggle to cope. Much of Mexico City, a megacity of 20 millions people, for example, is really disconnected from the central government and the central business areas. Another example is Karachi: yes, the blood bath that we see there is partially instigated by state actors, but it is also a phenomenon of a very tenuous and limited control of the state in many areas of the city. I am intrigued by the Moises Naím’s suggestion of the decoupling of the effective exercising of power from the Weberian bureaucracy. I would say that the Weberian construct of power has never been as widespread as we imagine. Many areas in the world, Africa being the prime example, have had a different notion of the state, one much closer to the medieval conceptualization where the purpose of the state and the purpose of power competition for controlling the state apparatus is to make money for oneself as opposed to the public service state whose main raison d’etre is to deliver public goods to citizens in exchange for legitimacy and sustainability. In the end the social contract emerged because the self-interested elites understood that they need to offer something to the population. The notion that the state is weakening and collapsing might not be really appropriate for many parts of the world where the state has always been defined as a mafia bazaar. You take over the state so you can issue exceptions from law enforcement to your friends, so that you and your friends can make money.

In other parts of the world, the state might have also not been quite conceptualized in terms of social contract and Weber like notions.  For example, in parts of Latin America, the state lies somewhere in between the European/Western model and some of the Asian or African states. In Latin America, the state is often captured by and serves a very narrow elite. Many countries in Latin America are still highly exclusionary. Even in places like Colombia with all of its progress over the past decade, there is still a fundamental unequal society. Yes, the middle class is increasingly able to participate in state making, along with the political and economic elites, and being able to demand accountability. But still vast segments of population are really not experiencing the state in any positive manner or not experiencing the state at all. Much of Central America faces massive challenges: tax collection might be as low as 10%, and the political and economic power is enormously concentrated in the hands of narrow  elites.

All that said, the future, if troubling trends are not mitigated now, might bring some fundamental challenges. Imagine if in the long term, there is substantial global warming, major sea level rise, and large parts of Bangladesh, for example, are submerged. This will generate huge waves of immigrants, but also radically empower the non-state actors who are able to provide some sort of protection and public goods to the population.

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