Internal Conflicts in Southeast Asia: The Nature, Legitimacy, and (Changing) Role of the State

Abstract

I would like to thank Sumit Ganguly and Amy Freedman for their helpful comments and suggestions on this Introduction, and Herbert Lin for research assistance.

Notes

1. Fearon and Laitin remind us of this in James Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review Vol. 97, No.1 (February 2003), pp. 75–90.

2. Given the use of weak states as a point of entry, it should be noted here that insofar as theories of the state are concerned, several scholars have drawn attention to the influence of external factors in state formation and consolidation. See Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta, “States and Social Policies,” Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 12 (1986), pp. 131–157; Karen Barkey and Sunita Parikh, “Comparative Perspectives on the State,” Annual Review of Sociology Vol. 17 (1991), pp. 523–549.

3. Indeed, as Krasner has proffered, it is the loss of control over territory that signifies the erosion of domestic sovereignty. See Stephen D. Krasner, Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 10.

4. Robert Jackson, “The State and Internal Conflict,” Australian Journal of International Affairs Vol. 55, No. 1 (2001), p. 66.

5. See for instance, Caroline Thomas, “Southern Instability, Security and Western Concepts: On an Unhappy Marriage and the Need for a Divorce,” in Caroline Thomas and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, eds., The State and Instability in the South (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989); Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991); Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State–Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).

6. Stewart Patrick, “Weak States and Global Threat: Fact or Fiction?,” Washington Quarterly Vol. 29, No. 2 (2006), p. 31.

7. See Michael Vatikiotis, “Resolving Internal Conflicts in Southeast Asia: Domestic Challenges and Regional Perspectives,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 28, No. 1 (April 2006), pp. 27–47.

8. Robert I. Rotberg, “Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States; Causes and Indicators,” in Robert I. Rothberg, ed., State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), p. 3.

9. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States, pp. 207–208.

10. I am of course in no way implying that the inability of states to deliver key political goods relates only to its peripheral regions. To be sure, the legitimacy of a state in itself is premised on its ability to deliver these goods to the population that resides within its territorial boundaries. That said, the interest in these essays is primarily the relationship between the state and society at its territorial margins, and it is in this context that I suggest the failure of the central state to deliver almost invariably is interpreted as neglect and marginalization, and compromises its standing among people situated at its outermost peripheries.

11. Migdal, Strong States and Weak Societies, p. 29.

12. Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” in John Hall, ed., States in History (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 109–136.