Governments vs States: decoding dual governance in the developing world

Abstract

This article begins by questioning the transferability of Western conceptualisations of the ‘state’ to the developing world, particularly to those areas in which security concerns are extreme. It proposes that the complicated relationship between security and political liberalisation produces a reform–security dilemma, which in turn may result in dual-governance structures consisting of an autonomous ‘state’ bureaucracy and a relatively newer, political ‘government’. The dynamics of such a duality are explored through a longitudinal comparison of two critical cases: Iran and Turkey. Both cases reveal evidence of the ‘state’ and ‘government’ as distinct bodies, emerging over time in response to conflicting pressures for security and liberalisation. While the Iranian case remains entrenched in a static duality with an advantaged ‘state’, the Turkish case provides optimism that, under certain conditions, an eventual subordination of the state to the political government can take place.

Notes

1 For example, J Scott, Seeing like a State, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

2 R Duvall & A Wendt, ‘The international capital regime and the internationalization of the state’, paper prepared for the German–American Conference on International Relations Theory, Bad Homburg, 31 May–4 June 1987, p 32.

3 JA Caporaso, ‘The European Union and forms of state: Westphalian, regulatory or post-modern?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 34(1), 1996, pp 29–52; and D Lake, ‘The state and international relations’, 2008, at http://dss.ucsd.edu/∼dlake/documents/LakeOxfordStateessayreview.pdf.

4 S Krasner, ‘Approaches to the state: alternative conceptions and historical dynamics’, Comparative Politics, 16, 1984, pp 223–246.

5 Dealing with the idea of the developmental state, Gainsborough criticises the theory's use of the Weberian ‘yardstick’ to judge states that are not Weberian in nature. M Gainsborough, ‘The (neglected) statist bias and the developmental state: the case of Singapore and Vietnam’, Third World Quarterly, 30(7), 2009, pp 1317–1328.

6 For example, D Collier & S Levitsky, ‘Democracy with adjectives: conceptual innovation in comparative research’, World Politics, 49, 1997, pp 430–451; L Diamond, ‘Thinking about hybrid regimes’, Journal of Democracy, 13, 2002, pp 21–35; and F Zakaria, ‘The rise of illiberal democracy’, Foreign Affairs, 76, 1997, pp 22–43.

7 I refer here primarily to political globalisation—a consensus on the combined ideas of economic liberalism and liberal democracy and the pressure this creates on states for further liberalisation, which in turn necessitates a diffusion of national power. D Held, D Goldblatt, J Perraton & A McGrew, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, and Culture, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

8 For comparisons of development in the two countries, see H Shambayati, ‘The rentier state, interest groups, and the paradox of autonomy: state and business in Turkey and Iran’, Comparative Politics, 26(3), 1994, pp 307–331; and R Pfaff, ‘Disengagement from traditionalism in Turkey and Iran’, Western Political Quarterly, 16(1), 1963, pp 79–98.

9 For the origins of this alliance, see N Keddie, ‘The origins of the religious–radical alliance in Iran’, Past and Present, 34, 1966, pp 70–80.

10 For details of the Constitutional Revolution, see E Brown, The Persian Revolution 1905–1909, Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 1995. For a radical secular perspective on the era, see J Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy and the Origins of Feminism, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

11 For analysis of the politics of this period, see E Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982; H Ladjevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985; and F Azimi, The Crisis of Democracy in Iran, London: IB Tauris, 1989.

12 Response by a pro-British conservative member of parliament to a Mossadeq parliamentary speech, cited in MR Ghods, Iran in the 20th Century: A Political History, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989, p 188.

13 For details on the oil crisis, foreign involvement in it, and how it served to pull apart Mosaddeq's National Front coalition, see Ghods, Iran in the 20th Century, pp 133–137.

14 President Kennedy's insistence is attested to by the Shah himself in his book, Answer to History, New York: Stein and Day, 1980, but questioned by others, eg HE Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomenei, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

15 For examples of how the Shah held firmly onto power in these years of ‘liberalisation’, see RK Ramazani, ‘Iran's “White Revolution”: a study in political development’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5(2), 1974, pp 124–139.

16 For a deeper look at Iran's economic situation at this time, see R Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Power, New York: St Martin's Press, 1980.

17 According to some, including Ramazani, Carter's demands were the latest example in a tradition of US meddling in Iranian domestic politics. RK Ramazani, The United States and Iran: The Pattern of Influence, New York: Praeger, 1982. In agreement with Ramazani on this issue, and a particularly condemning work on overall negative Western influence on Middle Eastern democracy is G Perry, ‘Democracy and human rights in the shadow of the West’, Arab Studies Quarterly, 14(4), 1992.

18 R Wright, ‘Dateline Tehran: a revolution implodes’, Foreign Policy, 103, 1996, pp 161–174.

19 R Wright, ‘Iran's new revolution’, Foreign Affairs, 79(1), 2000, pp 133–145.

20 A Tarock, ‘The muzzling of the liberal press in Iran’, Third World Quarterly, 22(4), 2001, pp 585–602.

21 Zarir Merat, ‘Pushing back the limits of the possible: the press in Iran’, Middle East Report, 212, 1999, pp 32–35.

22 Shahram Chubin, Iran's Nuclear Ambition, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006; and Alireza Jafarzadeh, The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

23 A Gheissari & V Nasr, ‘The conservative consolidation in Iran’, Survival, 47(2), 2005, pp 175–190; and E Hen-Tov, ‘Understanding Iran's new authoritarianism’, Washington Quarterly, 30(1), 2006–07, pp 163–179.

24 P Clawson, ‘Iran: demonstrations, despair, and danger’, Policy Watch#766, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003.

25 A Molavi, ‘Iran's next revolution’, Financial Times, 1 January 2003.

26 For more detailed categorisations, see Z Brzezinski & RM Gates (co-chairs), ‘Iran: time for a new approach’, Council on Foreign Relations, July 2004; and W Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic, Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy/Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2000. For further delineation between the government and certain Shi'a institutions, see also K Alamdari, ‘The power structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran: transition from populism to clientelism, and militarisation of the government’, Third World Quarterly, 26(8), 2005, pp 1285–1301.