dominance of a particular economic class, is close to the idea of the state as
something that can stand aloof from the immediate interests of even the
dominant economic class in society for a longer-term aim – that of moder-
ating class conflict and preserving the social and economic system. This
formulation is derived from Marx’s analysis of French history between
1848 and 1852 when the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup
d’étatand overthrew republican parliamentary government. Marx’s inter-
pretation of that episode was that different factions of the bourgeoisie were
in conflict with each other to such an extent that they were, particularly in
the context of republicanism and political liberty, making it possible for the
working class to win power through parliamentary institutions. The coup
d’étatwas to save capitalism from itself – from its own destructive faction-
alism and from the contradiction between a capitalist economic system and
a democratic polity. Capitalism was founded on the exploitation of man by
man, whereas the democratic polity was founded on the principle of politi-
cal equality, implying that the majority rule. In early capitalist society the
majority would want to redistribute wealth in their own favour, inevitably
harming the interests of capital.
Bonapartism is a model of the state that is not merely the product of
a dominant class and an instrument to be wielded by whichever socio-
economic group is dominant. It is not simply an executive committee of the
bourgeoisie. The state is, rather, almost autonomous and able to free itself to
a degree from civil society, not to manage it neutrally in the interests of all
sections, but in the long-term interests of a bourgeois class against the irrec-
oncilable interests of other classes.
This interpretation seemed to some social scientists examining the post-
colonial state to be enormously perceptive and resonant. Post-colonial soci-
ety equally appeared to have a number of competing bourgeois factions
whose conflicts needed to be managed in the long-term interest of capitalist
growth and the social institutions upon which such development depended,
in particular private property and the right of accumulation.
A paper published by the Pakistani sociologist Hamza Alavi in 1972
applied this model of the state to a particular episode in the history of
Pakistan which contained its first excursion into military government (see
also Alavi, 1990). It seemed to Alavi that Pakistan had experienced a form
of Bonapartism which, though very different in its social origins to the
Bonapartism of mid-nineteenth century France, nevertheless had some
parallels in terms of class and state structure.
Alavi conducted an analysis of what appeared to him to be a
military–bureaucratic oligarchy by reference to class interests rather than in
The State in the Third World 113