Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development

What is the book about? Robert Bates analyses the process of transformation of agrarian societies to industrial societies. His main focus is on the political and economic aspects of this transformation. He analyses the process of domestication (institutionalization and management) of violence - the `coercive force' - in agricultural societies that lead to increased prosperity in industrial societies. This is because the inefficacy of private provisions of security is overcome in industrial societies. Analysis of kinship societies I found his analysis of the kinship societies such as the Neur societies as most interesting. These societies are able to maintain law and order in absence of formal dispute resolution institutions such as courts and tribunals. It is interesting for me because I am able to relate this concept to the society I come from. The society in my village is divided into different groups based on castes and religion. The contentious issues are decided on the caste considerations and not on the merit of the issue at hand. For example, if a caste member does something wrong, he gets the backing of his caste irrespective of other considerations. Though it is changing now, due in part to provision of courts and other dispute resolution bodies, it points to a method by which these villages were able to maintain peace. Some castes have a reputation for fierce temper and ability to mobilize for their caste brethren. Probably, it points to relatively recent assimilation of these castes in Indian mainstream. In fact, Jats, a caste for fierce reputation is of recent origin, having immigrated to India latter than others. It is worse in tribal societies such as Baluchistan in Pakistan. Concept of honor is the central tenet of these tribes. Honor killings (killing of women by their own family members to salvage their reputation) are an integral part of these tribal societies. The author takes a sympathetic view of kinship societies. He dismisses the view held by other sociologists that these societies are static (opposed to change) or not interested in expansion. On the contrary, these societies expand by investing in youth and sending them as scouts to look for opportunities elsewhere. From my village and other surrounding villages, a lot of people have migrated to Kolkatta, Assam and other areas. After the youth had established themselves in these areas, they called their own caste members to work with them. Many of the rich families in India today, for example the Birla family, had been helped in a similar manner when their youth were looking for opportunities. GD Birla stayed in an accommodation provided by his caste members and ate in mess subsidized by the caste members who had emigrated earlier. This caste of Marwaris controls the majority stake in trade and commerce in India today. They have institutionalized the concept of `help' for their struggling members. In majority of Indian cities today, there are subsidized accommodation

In his book, Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development, Robert Bates examines how underdeveloped societies transform from rural and agrarian to urban and industrial. Exploring the vast history of the modern state, Bates draws on numerous case studies to formulate a general theory that explains how societies make this great transformation. Central to his argument is the link between prosperity and violence. Perhaps no different from many scholars of development, he contends that agrarian societies face a debilitating cycle where prosperity begets violence which further restricts prosperity. Thus, we would assume that these societies are doomed to stagnation. But if this is so, how might developed industrial societies have come about? One may expect that the solution exists in somehow driving a wrench in the cycle and eliminating the encumbering violence. But Bates takes an unusual perspective and offers an unexpected and fascinating explanation. He argues that in order for societies to develop successfully, they must embrace their propensity for violence and use it to their own advantage. By domesticating coercion to cultivate investments and encourage economic growth, societies utilize violence to overcome stagnation and ultimately transform themselves into prosperous developing states. To understand development, Bates first explores what causes its failure. He begins by examining societies that are predominately agrarian, rural, and dominated by kinship. These kinship societies invest in migration and expansion to control new resources and overcome diminishing returns. They specialize in production, form markets, and engage in exchange. They manage the risks of nature by diversification and reliance on family support. They devise means to promote family welfare and to raise the expected level of income per capita. Economically, these societies have the ingredients for prosperity and development. However they are often characterized by poverty. So, why do they fail? The answer, Bates claims, is in the penchant for violence and a particular formation of political institutions. Violence takes root in agrarian societies and instills fear amongst the people. Eventually this fear lends to the formation of a political system that survives on deterrence. To illustrate this point, Bates draws on the Nuer of Southern Sudan. The Nuer lacked formal institutions such as a court, a functioning police system, or any inkling of a central government. Although one might picture life as brutish and short in such a case, they actually maintained relative harmony. The reason was simple: everyone was so darned afraid of everyone else. They didn't steal from one another for fear of fierce retaliation. And because the Nuer were so inclined to act violently at the slightest provocation, violence rarely occurred. Peace was maintained, but it was fickle and came at a cost of prosperity. Those within such a soci

Had he come of age in Uganda in the early 1980s, would Thomas Hobbes have written Leviathan in the same way as the classic work of political theory he penned in the aftermath of the English civil war more than three centuries earlier? For Robert Bates the answer is an affirmative one. That he can make such a claim is both the strength and weakness of his slim, provocative volume on the political economy of development. The book's subject is the politics and economics of what Karl Polanyi (1944) described as "the great transformation," that is, the movement of societies from village to city, from agriculture to industry. Bates seeks to explain variation in the extent to which different countries have experienced this transformation. In his account this structural change is essentially the story of development, which consists of two primary elements. First, it includes an economic dimension, which refers to the growth of per capita incomes in a society. Second, development has a political dimension, which implies the "domestication of violence" for productive rather than predatory social ends. The interplay of these two themes--prosperity and violence--animates Bates's exploration of the historical and contemporary experiences of developing societies. Although he may overstate the novelty of his approach, unlike many studies in the contemporary field of development, this analysis centers on comparison of the political-economic trajectories of countries in different periods of history. The core of the book is organized around a quartet of chapters that cover different aspects of the development process. These chapters proceed sequentially to analyze agrarian societies, the formation of states, state formation in the modern era, and shocks to the global system at the end of the 20th century. This historical approach risks repeating the mistakes of more naïve versions of modernization theory, which assume that societies move through specific stages to reach a kind of "development" that looks suspiciously like contemporary US or Western European liberal democracies. However, Bates avoids this by identifying both commonalties and differences between the experience of societies historically in Europe and those struggling to develop in the contemporary world. His basic argument is that differences in the structure and use of coercion explain differences in development, both historically and today. Explanation unfolds as follows. As agrarian societies, which are dominated by the institution of family, expand they make economic gains. These gains require protection. Protection in such societies is supplied privately through existing kinship institutions; it can be effective, but it is also fragile because the behaviors and beliefs that supply peace also encourage behavior, such as honor-bound retaliation, that increases the likelihood of violence. Perversely, people may thus try to avoid the costs of violence by choosing limit their economic act

Being a double major in political science and economics, it seems that I'm always looking at ways to connect the two subjects. Prosperity and violence does this so brillitanly that i read the book in a matter of a few hours. The book talks about how trade has brought people toghether to create cities to trade creating goverments in order to control and facilitate the process. Through time, goverment and the economy became mutually dependent and modern countires became to develop which the books compares to newly independent countries in the 20th century. The books goes into the present dealing with the cold war and how former allies of America and the USSR are comping with the transition into the 21rst century.