The resilience of institutions
States are more than simply an aggregation of institutions, but those institutions do a great deal to define a state, and to shape its capacity for governance (see Painter and Pierre 2004).
If there is a well-developed and well-functioning set of institutions then the states blessed with those institutions are likely to be able to cope with increased strength and diversity of pressures coming from both the domestic and international environments. Conversely, in failing states, such as those found in much of Africa or the Caucasus, the institutions are present in form but not in function, so that these states are largely at the mercy of the external forces that impinge upon them. Thus, it may not be so much the state per se that has been failing in governance but certain forms of the state operating in certain conditions.Joel Migdal (1988) has pointed out the importance of different types of matches and mismatches between the relative strengths of states and their societies. The interactions between the state and the environment become more complex when the international market becomes a player also, so that strong states may be able to mediate between their societies and the international environment, while weaker states may be at the mercy of both external forces. In some instances states can use the power of external economic actors - the World Trade Organization or the European Central bank - to overcome the power of entrenched social interests, or perhaps even forge coalitions with powerful domestic actors (environmental NGOs perhaps) against external actors (see Pauly and Grande, 2005). One of the clearest examples is the current fiscal probity of Italian and Irish governments in response to their membership in the EMS, after decades of huge deficits. The fundamental point is that states are not at the mercy of non-state actors and can govern. They may not always govern alone, but they can govern.
We have argued elsewhere (Peters 2002; Peters and Pierre forthcoming; Pierre and Peters 2000), and will continue to argue here, that the most appropriate place at which to begin an analysis of governance is the state, rather than beginning with the external actors - social or economic. This is in part an analytic stance, but it is also a theoretical position. Analytically, beginning with the state enables us to see when deviations from this a priori expectation may have occurred, and hence identify the points at which either international economic or domestic social forces may have intervened. Theoretically, we will be arguing that despite the important changes that many scholars of governance (Rhodes 1997; Tihonen 2004) have identified (and in some cases perhaps exaggerated) a great deal of the governance action in most societies, occurs through state organs.
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