States will also vary in the extent of their capacity to implement their
policies.Capacityis a key concept in this approach to state autonomy.
Capacity is affected by such factors as: an ability to control the state’s terri-
tory; the availability of human and financial resources; and the organiza-
tional instruments available for the achievement of the state’s objectives.
The quality of such factors will not necessarily be spread evenly across all
policy areas. The fact that historically and comparatively states are found to
have different capacities in different policy areas warns against the catego-
rization of states as either ‘strong’ or ‘weak’.
The capacity of a state to intervene internationally or domestically
depends not only on internal characteristics such as the resources at its dis-
posal. It also depends on the state’s relationships with the social, economic
and political environment. Capacity is affected by relationships between
state authorities and domestic socio-economic groups. For example, in the
international arena success militarily depends upon effective fiscal capacity
which in turn requires a willingness on the part of key sections of the popu-
lation to be taxed. In the domestic arena, successful state interventions, such
as in pursuit of economic objectives, equally depend on relationships with
economic interests. The successful pursuit of industrialization in a develop-
ing country, for example, may depend upon the state achieving autonomy
from agrarian interests, as in Taiwan.
The capacity of states is more or less balanced by the capacities of organ-
ized sections of civil society and the international economy. Analysis of the
state thus requires a method of inquiry that is relational. Effective policy
implementation may be as dependent on networks of support as much as on
the state’s own instruments of intervention. State and society consists of
actors in complementary as well as conflicting relationships.
Hence the importance of recognizing that states affect the development of
the political process. States are powerful and autonomous organizational
actors, capable of shaping society as well as being shaped by it. Such recog-
nition must extend to modern and emerging democracies, and not just total-
itarian and authoritarian states where the primacy of the state as an actor in
control of social and economic development is more obvious.
Through its administrative, legal and coercive systems the state structures
its relationships with civil society as well as relations within civil society.
First, state structures affect the political culture – on society’s perceptions
and judgements of political rules, roles and processes, rather than these just
being the product of cultural differences in political life.
Secondly, state structures affect the way collective action is mobilized
for political ends and the formation of political groups and movements.
The State in the Third World 125