Come hear
Prof. REO MATSUZAKI (Trinity)
NOVEMBER 10 / 12:15PM / Oak 438
Title of talk: “State-building: A Problem of Political Authority"
Abstract of talk: Despite considerable agreement among scholars and policymakers that a strong and prosperous state is undergirded by Weberian bureaucracy, representative government, and independent judiciary, attempts to forge such institutions in developing countries—i.e., state-building—have largely faltered. I argue that a critical impediment to state-building is paradoxically our very knowledge of what a successful state looks like. When “modern” state institutions are imposed upon “traditional” polities, they not only fail to function as intended but, moreover, stand in the way of the modernization of authority relations. Through a comparative analysis of U.S. colonization of the Philippines and Japanese colonization of Taiwan, I argue that modern states are more effectively forged through manipulation of institutions found within the indigenous political order. By repackaging the state’s claim on legitimate authority into forms that are familiar to the subject population, obedience to the state becomes a matter of habit, and the normative foundation of a Weberian state is developed.
Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and the Department of Political Science
For more information, contact: Fe Delos Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu