Joel Migdal’s Strong Societies, Weak States: A Summary

Why have some states struggled to fashion state-society relations, neutralize opposition, gain predominance,
and achieve social control, whereas others have been strong in this regard? This book presents a model for
understanding state capabilities in the Third World based on state-society relations. Its central premises are
that: i) the nature of the state cannot be separated from the nature of societies; and ii) the emergence
of a strong, capable state can occur only with a tremendous concentration of social control (to the
state).

The state’s struggle for social control is characterized by conflict between state leaders, who seek to mobilize
people and resources and impose a single set of rules, and other social organizations applying different rules
in parts of the society. The distribution of social control in society that emerges as a result of this conflict
(between societies and states) is the main determinant of whether states become strong or weak.

 Probably the most important factor in the state’s ability to survive is its ability to mobilize society.
Governments acquire the tools of political influence through the mobilization of human and material
resources for state action. States in Europe acquired a triad of ‘essential tentacles’ for this purpose: a
standing army, a vastly improved tax-collecting mechanism, and an expanded set of judicial courts.

 The state’s capacity to mobilize society rests on social control, defined as the ability to make the
operative rules of the game for people in society. The major struggles in many societies are over who
has the right and ability to make the rules that guide people’s social behavior (the state or other
organizations).

 Social control requires the state to become a real and symbolic aspect of people’s daily survival
strategies. Informal and formal organizations all have a variety of sanctions and rewards (systems of
rules) – both material and symbolic. Strategies for social control need to include both material
incentives and coercion, and the manipulation of symbols of how social life should be ordered.

 Lack of state social control means understanding resistance to social control. Societies are often
characterized by conflict among organizations offering different rules. Strong societies can be either
highly centralized (in state power) or fragmented (across several social organizations). Such conditions
can enfeeble the state.

 Where societies have been web-like and where social control has been fragmented among numerous
organizations, states have faced formidable barriers in seeing their policies through.

Levels of (state) social control are reflected in three indicators: compliance, participation and legitimation.
These are used by state and non-state organizations alike to seek social control.

 Strong states emerged only in the wake of severe social disruption. Social control cannot occur without
exogenous factors first creating catastrophic conditions that rapidly and deeply undermine existing
strategies of survival; the bases of social control. The two key exogenous factors are 1) spread of the
world economy and 2) colonial rule. War and revolution, closely related to mass migration, are 20th
century examples of dislocations that have weakened old forms of social control and allowed new ones
to emerge.

 The need to achieve social mobilization and at the same time a strong central state constitutes ‘the
rulers’ dilemma’: State leaders can only achieve political mobilization when they have proffered viable
strategies of survival to the populace. This requires an elaborate set of institutions, but creating strong
state agencies risks creating powerful sub-organizations which within the state itself can become an
oligopoly of mobilization capacity. State leaders therefore risk creating potential power centers they
cannot control.

 Fragmented social control, the rulers’ dilemma, and the difficulties of political mobilization have led to a
pathological style at the apex of the state – the ‘politics of survival’: State leaders have been concerned
with preventing leading officials in important agencies from using their own mobilization capacities
against the central state leadership, which has pulverized the very arms of the state that could achieve
their goal of mobilization.

 In situations of fragmented social control, the state has become an arena of accommodations: The local
social control of strongmen has led to a ‘triangle of accommodation’ between implementers, politicians
and strongmen.

 The legacy of fragmented social control continues to constrain states, and the prospects for the
consolidation of the state in parts of society which are fragmented are slim. The politics of survival at
the top and the triangle of accommodation at the bottom reinforce social fragmentation.