State Building in Latin America

State Building in Latin America explores why some countries in the region developed effective governance while others did not.

Hillel David Soifer (Author)

9781107107878, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 June 2015

324 pages, 39 b/w illus. 29 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.59 kg

'Variations in state capacity in Latin America boil down to whether state agents, charged with implementing state policy, are recruited centrally and deployed rather than delegated or recruited among local elites. This, in short, is the argument that Temple University political scientist Hillel David Soifer puts forward in State Building in Latin America, an ambitious, wide-ranging, and well-written book.' Paulo Drinot, Current History

State Building in Latin America diverges from existing scholarship in developing explanations both for why state-building efforts in the region emerged and for their success or failure. First, Latin American state leaders chose to attempt concerted state-building only where they saw it as the means to political order and economic development. Fragmented regionalism led to the adoption of more laissez-faire ideas and the rejection of state-building. With dominant urban centers, developmentalist ideas and state-building efforts took hold, but not all state-building projects succeeded. The second plank of the book's argument centers on strategies of bureaucratic appointment to explain this variation. Filling administrative ranks with local elites caused even concerted state-building efforts to flounder, while appointing outsiders to serve as administrators underpinned success. Relying on extensive archival evidence, the book traces how these factors shaped the differential development of education, taxation, and conscription in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

Introduction: the origins of state capacity in Latin America
1. The emergence of state-building projects
2. A theory of state-building success and failure
3. Alternative historical explanations and initial conditions
4. State projects, institutions, and educational development
5. Political costs, infrastructural obstacles, and tax state development
6. Local administration, varieties of conscription, and the development of coercive capacity
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Public administration [JPP], Comparative politics [JPB]