James Manor (ed.) - Rethinking Third World Politics

RETHINKING THIRD WORLD POLITICS

RETHINKING THIRD WORLD POLITICS

edited by James Manor

First published 1991 by Longman Group Limited

Second impression 1992

Published 2013 by Routledge

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Copyright 1991, Taylor & Francis.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-07458-3 (pbk)

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Rethinking Third World Politics.

I. Manor, James

320.9171

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Rethinking Third World Politics / edited by James Manor.

p. cm.

Papers presented at a conference held in Berlin, mid-1989, sponsored by the German Foundation for International Development.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-582-07459-2 ISBN 0-582-07458-4

1. Developing countries Politics and government. I. Manor, James. II. Deutsche Stiftung fr Internationale Entwicklung.

JF 60.R45 1991

Set in Linotron 202 10/12 Bembo

Contents

James Manor

Chai-Anan Samudavanija

Geoffrey Hawthorn

Jean-Franois Bayart

Sudipta Kaviraj

Manuel Antonio Garreton

Rudolf Wagner

Donal B. Cruise OBrien

Achille Mbembe

Jean-Franois Medard

Richard Crook

Christopher Clapham

Eberhard Sandschneider

The editor and contributors to this book owe an immense debt to the German Foundation for International Development, whose generous support was essential to the success of this project. The Foundation brought contributors from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe to the Villa Borsig in Berlin for a week in mid-1989. The facilities, hospitality and staff support in Berlin were superb. The provision of simultaneous translation facilities was particularly important since it enabled us to engage in much more detailed and sophisticated discussions than would otherwise have been possible.

The Foundation has also made it possible for us to make this book available to readers in the Third World at an affordable price. Our special thanks go to Dr Henner Papendieck, the programme officer for this project, to Mrs Christine Schultze and other members of the staff in Berlin, and to Professor Hans-R. Hemmer, Director-General of the Foundation.

We are also grateful to the Noel Buxton Trust and the British Council, which assisted in mounting a series of exploratory seminars in London involving German, French and British scholars during the year prior to the Berlin conference. The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, also provided support for these seminars, which were jointly chaired by the editor and Donal B. Cruise OBrien.

Thanks are also due to Mary Harper for translating the chapters by Jean-Franois Bayart and Achille Mbembe from the French, to Dr Christopher Harrison and Pat Root at Longman, and to Marguerite Cooke for vigilant assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication.

J.M.
Brighton, 1990

Jean-Franois Bayart, Centre dEtudes et de Recherches Internationales, Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris

Chai-Anan Samudavanija, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalong-korn University, Bangkok

Christopher Clapham, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Lancaster

Richard Crook, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow

Donal B. Cruise OBrien, Department of Political Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Manuel Antonio Garreton, Facultad Latinamericano de Ciencias Sociales, Santiago

Geoffrey Hawthorn, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge

Sudipta Kaviraj, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

James Manor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

Achille Mbembe, Department of History, Columbia University, New York

Jean-Franois Medard, Centre dEtude dAfrique Noire, Universit de Bordeaux I

Eberhard Sandschneider, Arbeitsstelle Politik Chinas und Ostasiens, Universitt des Saarlandes, Saarbrucken

Rudolf Wagner, Sinologisches Institut, Universitt Heidelberg

For Rajni Kothar
and Benjamin I. Schwartz

James Manor

The study of Third World politics is in disarray. This is partly the result of the success of researchers who have produced an explosion of empirical work over the last twenty-five years or so. Because so much is known in so many diverse sub-fields, the task of those who would bring coherence to the field and generate broad theoretical insights has become enormously difficult. This problem affects the field of political science generally, but it is especially acute for those seeking to draw together studies of Asia, Africa and Latin America since the cultural and other complexities that arise are so daunting.

Scholarly over-achievement is not, however, the only reason for the disarray. It is more adequately explained by the severe difficulties encountered by the two paradigms or schools of thought which have dominated the study of Third World politics in recent memory.

The first of these the political development school yielded plenty of important insights, but it tended to misperceive both present and past realities and future possibilities. It tended, for example, to create models which presumed more equilibrium and fewer contradictions in societies and polities than were actually there. Its expectations that less developed nations might converge on what Geoffrey Hawthorn here describes as an even, equable and eventually self-equilibrating modernity were misplaced. It often emphasised stability at the expense of change and social justice. Many in this school made simplistic contrasts between tradition and modernity, and tended to underestimate the diversity among Third World countries, the importance of political economy within nations and of the international economic order.