The nature and characteristics of the state within the Third World
The nature and characteristics of the state within the Third
World . Theories of 'the' state, especially 'the' Third World state, have
fallen faraway from their erstwhile theoretical pre-eminence. trapped within
the postulated dual 'impasse' of development theory' on the one hand, and of
the state in diplomacy theory on the opposite , and eroded by a growing corpus
of sub-state, and indeed extra-state theories, the idea of the Third World
state has not fared well within the half of the neo-classical nineties. Nor has
the discourse during which the Third World state has been framed.
If the mainstream development literature of the 1960s and
1970s presupposed a 'modernizing' or 'developmental' state and therefore the
Marxist approaches of an equivalent period invoked the 'strong,'
'overdeveloped' and (relatively) 'autonomous' postcolonial state; and if the
eighties produced rather more ambiguous concepts like the 'rentier state,' the
'peripheral state' or the 'bureaucratic-authoritarian state;' then within the
nineties the imagery has turned relentlessly negative as expressed in such
coinages as 'vassal state,' 'predator state,' 'vampire state,' 'receiver
state,' 'prostrate state,' and even 'fictitious state,' 'show of state' or
'collapsed state.
State,' and even 'fictitious state,' 'show of state' or
'collapsed state.' The changing imagery of the Third World state reflects the
new reality, particularly for states in Africa and enormous parts of Latin and
Central American, Asia, and therefore the Middle East also as those Eastern
European states that have now been downgraded from the Second to the Third
World . This justifies the blanket term 'Third World;' and it's with this
rapidly changing and evolving entity that this contribution cares .
Globalization and
Neo-liberalism
The hegemonic vision of world society for the Millennium has
clearly emerged within the notion of globalization. In contrast to the still
aggressively anticommunist 'New World Order' that opened the nineties, the
'kinder, gentler' - and more self-evidently hegemonic - 'globalization' of the
dominant international discourse may be a 'postcommunist' and even
'postimperialist' statement of a world becoming more and more unified during a
progressive neo-classical and neo-liberal system proclaiming free choice,
market economy and free labour. The nature and characteristics of the state
within the Third World, the top of the state-socialist challenge to hegemonic
capitalism lends force to the powerful underlying myths of globalization - that
it's desirable, that it's dynamic, that it's inevitable, and that, anyway, it's
the sole game in town. From out of the surfeit of recent literature on
globalization one central leitmotif clearly emerges: it's in its core
profoundly and relentlessly antistate. The overinflated, centralized and
bureaucratized state is that the universal villain within the neo-liberal
world-view. At the state's doorstep is laid blame for the planet economic
crises of the mid-seventies and early eighties. Its suffocating grip is claimed
to possess held in restraint the various creative, entrepreneurial forces
waiting to emerge.
Recommodification and
Democratization
From the attitude of the Third World state, the phenomenon of
globalization can, be usefully cast in terms of a primarily economic dimension,
recommodification, and a really closely related, mainly political one,
formal-liberal democratization. the previous concept, recommodification, The
important analysis of the state which, a decade ago, he saw as threatened by
the facility of capital because it had been implicated during a 'primary
contradiction' from which it couldn't extricate itself: on the one hand, the
capitalism , with the profits, revenues, etc. that it generates, was
historically necessary to form the state add the primary place; but state
intervention increased the scope of decommodification (or autonomous,
unregulated spheres of social action). The nature and characteristics of the
state within the Third World , However, decommodification, while it brought
greater social peace and increased mass purchasing power, was within the long
run also a limitation on capital's sphere of action, flexibility and
profitability and hence a threat to its power. Capital's (logical) response was
to recommodify, a process which 'seeks to decrease the scope and importance of
decommodified political and administrative power by resuscitating 'market
forces,'" mainly by means of wresting functions and powers from the state
and 'privatizing' or abolishing them.
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