Whence State Power?

The common denominator behind most instances of the normative/ empirical inversion and of the main dynamics in this book was effective state power. If power was as important as the English case suggests, where did it originate? The question exceeds the bounds of this account and its complexity requires full-length treatment.

14.2.1 Despotism, Weakness, and Infrastructural Power

This account has emphatically affirmed the importance of ruler power in generating institutional outcomes widely assumed to respond to bottom- up demand. However, as sociologists Hechter and Kabiri have noted:

the idea that social order is produced in top-down fashion by resourceful central authorities leaves a fundamental question begging: Just how can this power ever manage to be concentrated in the first place? To this question, top-down theorists have little in the way of an answer, save for the (often valid) idea that it is imposed exogenously on fragmented territories by more powerful states.^[1516]

Conquest, indeed, appears as a powerful argument. The invasion of 1066 was a watershed event. However, as the Castilian, Hungarian, Ottoman and other cases have also shown, invasion alone cannot establish effective control: where rulers distributed lands with high levels of autonomy, future control was undermined. The fact that in England conquest had centralizing outcomes was predicated on royal strength.

16

Rather, at least three more factors were important in shaping English outcomes. First, the Anglo-Saxon heritage already displayed a degree of centralization, based on the county as administrative unit.^[1518] Political organization after the Norman Conquest was thus path-dependent. However, past organization does not sufficiently explain post-conquest outcomes either. Crucially, Normans also exterminated the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy^[1519] - had they not done so, they would have faced centrifugal forces.^[1520] However, despite a dynamic start, English extractive capacity saw fluctuations for almost a century, as discussed in Parts II and III. Critical to this process were the judicial reforms of Henry I and Henry II - and this is the third factor, foregrounded by this account: justice had a crucial role in establishing power throughout an extensive territory and population, just as has been observed in studies of modern civil wars and emerging polities.^[1521]

But the argument in this book, like these modern studies, mostly only describes how some actors wielded power more effectively than others; it does not explain such superior capacity. It is one thing to point out that the more effective actors monopolize judicial functions; it is quite another to explain why and how they succeed in doing so or how they establish control in the first place. This remains a thorny question. Perhaps the most promising hypothesis is the one advanced by historian Eleanor Searle, who argued that the Norman practice of selecting only one heir within strong kinship groups generated both strong leadership and relent­less pressures to expand to accommodate the losers, resulting in “preda­tory kingship.”²² The unfairness of excluding siblings or competitors through primogeniture forced the ruler to expand his power: he protected himself from rivals by compensating them with spoils.

It is easier, however, to distinguish different forms of power. Michael Mann’s distinction between despotic and infrastructural power is argu­ably one of the most important distinctions in the literature on the state aiming to parse the puzzle of power.^[1522] Despotic power is defined as “the range of actions which the elite is empowered to undertake without routine, institutionalized negotiation with civil society groups.” Infrastructural power, on the other hand, is “the capacity to actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the realm.”^[1523] The concept of infrastructural power, which has been used extensively in this book to describe the English case, captures the most important component of effective state power.

However, the definition of despotic power raises some questions, espe­cially where such power is assumed to “have been virtually unlimited.” For instance, the Chinese emperor “owned the whole of China and could do as he wished with any individual or group within his domain.” Similarly, the Roman emperor or early modern kings claimed “unlim­ited,” “absolute” powers;^[1524] so did Peter the Great, “probably the least constrained of European rulers”^[1525] and, later, the Soviet state/party elite. Despotic power, in other words, is the “Red Queen” type of power, unconstrained, unaccountable, and capricious.^[1526] The notion of despotic power as power held by the state (whether “above” society or within it) remains central to Mann’s theory and the literature more widely.^[1527]

In the argument presented here, by contrast, despotism (or what is assumed to be its cognate, absolutism^[1528]) denotes a deficit of state infrastruc­tural power.

Scholars of the developing world, of political economy, and of totali­tarian regimes have long noted that arbitrariness “in part results from weakness,” as John Hall noted.^[1529] Migdal explained how many observed pathologies in developing societies “stemmed from the... resistance posed by chiefs, landlords, bosses, rich peasants, clan leaders. (for convenience, �strongmen’),”^[1530] as did scholars of Africa, for instance Zolberg, who noted that the “major problem is not too much authority, but too little.”^[1531] Similarly, late developing countries adopted “intrusive economic policies,” as political scientist Kiren Chaudhry observed, due to “failures to create acceptably functioning markets, signaling the administrative ineffectiveness of [their] regulatory and extractive institutions.”^[1532] The same pathology underlies the current spread of authoritarian governance from Russia and Eastern Europe to Latin America and Southeast Asia. Even when, as in Russia, a ruler succeeds in placing some of the most powerful (the “oligarchs”) under his control,^[1533] infrastructural power has remained weak,^[1534] requiring autocratic mechanisms to retain control.^[1535] Such weakness helps explain why collective action among the oligarchs has failed, inhibiting greater accountability.^[1536]

But the remedy, across different fields, is often believed to lie in greater “liberties,” “restraints,” or “pluralism,” or in a “politically weak” state and a ��consensually strong state equilibrium.”^[1537] The emphasis here is to shift the focus and see all these elements as endogenous to a more effective centralization of power, conditional on an effective system of justice that delimits the more powerful social actors.

14.2.2 Direct Rule, Indirect Rule, and English Rule

Another implication about power and state- and institution-building that flows from this book’s argument concerns the distinction between direct and indirect rule as alternative forms of power-building. These concepts have underlain both the theory and the practice of colonial rule, as well as the more recent literature on property rights regimes, intervention, and post-war governance.⁴¹ They sprung from English colonial rule over India and Africa,^[1538] itself influenced by the anthropological thinking of Henry Maine.^[1539] They are complex and controversial concepts,^[1540] and as political scientist Catherine Boone has shown, their implementation was in fact refracted through the bargaining powers of local elites and rural structures.^[1541] Only a generalized discussion is thus possible here. In the­ory, indirect rule meant that much of local governance devolved to rural elites,^[1542] while the colonial ruler retained sovereign powers on the use of force, especially for defense and taxation. In direct rule, on the other hand, officials were appointed by the ruling power at all levels of admin­istration, with policy at the local level decided at the center. Despite a long and controversial record under colonial conditions, indirect rule is attracting attention not least due to its assumed affinities with the decen­tralized, federal approach to politics.^[1543] The approach seems to display a democratic support for local preferences with a non-coercive system of rule, thus offering the possibility of accommodation between typically incompatible dynamics, although as Boone emphasizes, it was neither democratic nor participatory in practice, but led by local elites.^[1544] But it certainly remains relevant to our understanding of governance structures in the developing world.^[1545]

Typically, indirect rule is seen as distinctly English.⁵⁰ It echoes the stereotypes about English governance that have been considered in this book: an assumed “weak” state and “amateur” officials, drawn from local power-holders and relying on custom.

The analysis in this book has hopefully succeeded in showing that the “statist” assumption - which has, after all, been long debunked in the historical literature on European absolutism - relies on a misconcep­tion: outsiders dispatched to govern and inspect provinces appear as absolutist because weak infrastructural control prevented rulers from effectively penetrating localities.⁵¹ Conversely, indirect governance is possible where local organization is both developed and amenable to

Table 14.2 Direct, indirect, English, and French rule

control. Similar patterns are also identified by Boone and others in colonial settings.^[1546]

But the additional insight presented here is that indirect rule differs from what the English state itself applied internally and that, accord­ingly, the distinction between direct and indirect rule is missing two alternatives, the original English and French ones. The English alter­native was the most effective method of rule but also very difficult to achieve. It used local officials (the “amateur” freeholder, duty-bound to perform service to the state mostly on account of his landholdings) to channel local custom through state policies and laws (the “common law” - Table 14.2). This explains how the English state achieved such remarkable levels of jurisdictional uniformity and extractive capacity whilst maintaining the myth of a “weak state.”^[1547] Moreover, the medi­eval French strategy of state expansion also differed from the modern understanding of direct rule. As Strayer explained, “Philip Augustus had hit on a formula which was followed by all his successors. When a province came under direct control of the king it preserved its customs and its institutions, but the customs were enforced and the institutions were staffed by men sent out from the royal court at Paris”^[1548] - i.e. state officials applied local laws.

The flipside, however, was that the area that was effectively controlled under the English formula was much smaller. “England failed in its attempt to annex Scotland, made only slight headway in Ireland and spent several centuries in gaining full control of so small a province as Wales. France, on the other hand, attached firmly to the crown territories as diverse as Normandy, Languedoc, Dauphine, and Brittany.”⁵⁵ Ironically, English rule was closer to what we would today call direct rule than the French model. It was also harder to impose on heteroge­neous populations; hence the adoption of indirect rule across much of the British Empire.

Although, as mentioned, this book cannot resolve the rather intractable problem of the origins of state power, it has offered some observations that may help clarify and deepen our understanding of the mechanics of power, whilst jettisoning commonplace assumptions that continue to permeate social scientific work and whilst confirming recent reassess­ments of the benefits of centralization. By reassessing the foundations of social power in medieval England, it suggests a more nuanced way of conceptualizing how central and local powers interact and the need to beware of the often-distorting optical effects of how power is distributed via institutions, especially representative ones.

14.3