linz and stepan, breakdown of democratic regimes

(4): calling for attention to be paid to political actors, who work--they acknowledge--in socio-economic structures, but in ways that are not pre-determined. [despite the banality of this observation, i can use this to make the claim about 'structural complex' vs. individual transitions]

(7): this study will not apply to pakistan/nigeria, where breakdown coincided with the process of state-building [this is why, in other words, there is a particularly acute artificiality to the pakistan project]

(12): wanting to move away from idea that democracy is just a means to some socioeconomic order, in the eyes of the electorate, or whatever. they argue that the two can be analytically separated--and thus, you can have four constellations, corresponding to high or low legitimacy for each.

SSR Pakistan in Crisis

(Mian, 7): Bush didn't call in the first few days after the coup

(Cheema, 3): silence of the street masks three-pronged political crisis

1. inability of the regime to win the popular vote in free/fair election
2. necessity of gaining political legitimacy
3. the need, therefore, to turn to extra-constitutional measures

(Cheema, 3): in the 2002 elections, after all, Musharraf won only 27% of the vote

the political economy of military rule in pakistan, akbar zaidi (2008)

(3): military begins active role in economy under zia (citing siddiqa)

(5): key--1988-1999 as severley limited politically by ISI/military, and economically by debt and sanctions (runs up to 9/11, basically) [great place for form of state/form of regime distinction]

(7): military gov't penchant for devolution

(8): debt written off after 9/11, of course

(11): under Musharraf, April 2002 referendum, November 2002 elections

(11): Musharraf's amendments -- a NSC through which officers oversee the gov't [what came of this?]; 17th amendment, through which presidents could dissolve parliament

(13): MMA as bogey

(15): real weakness of this paper--doesn't operationalize the middle-classes, and gives no reason (except their 'wealth' and 'clout' in the abstract) to suggest why their support was important to the regime. does he mean capitalists?

(19-20): key argument is that accomodative nature of the political parties explains military rule. the mechanisms here are not sensible. but we might want to re-frame this claim as a 'dependent development' one, where, a la RSS, the effects of structural underdevelopment have hampered the political process severely. no 'democratic' actor. in other words, the lack of political resistance (or the fact, as he notes on p. 20, of a 'divided' resistance) is best understood not as a lack of intent, but as a lack of capacity.

In fact of the 121 districts cited as “key” to winning the war in the report, only 29 of those districts had populations seen as even sympathizing with the Karzai government.

theda skocpol, states and social revolutions (1979)

chapter 1

(4): definition of social revolutions

1. coincidence of structural change with class upheaval
2. coincidence of political with social transformation

(14): three major principles of analysis need to be stressed, she's suggesting

1. structural perspective (14-18)
2. international and world-historical context (19-24)
3. the potential autonomy of the state (24-33)
   

(14-17): a critique of voluntarism and 'purposive' accounts of revolutions being led by vanguards -- 'revolutionary movements rarely begin with a revolutionary intention' [but then it becomes difficult, if you take this too far, to account for contingency and organization, etc.; surely structuralism can be overemphasized?]

(20): important reminder that the international context is crucial (totality insight) (see 23, structures of world economy, state system; and "world-time")

(22): a State-centered conception of the State ("interdependent with world capitalism"), which demands interrogation.

(27): argument that Marxists and Tilly haven't looked seriously at clashes between dominant elites and State rulers.

(29): in a way, five reasons to care about the State

1. political crises have expressed contradictions in the structures of the Old Regime
2. the protagonists of these conflicts have formed as interest groups around state structures
3. the vanguard parties have been responsible for State-building, without which revolution makes no sense
   
4. social revolutions have changed State structures as much as they have changed class relations
   
5. effects of revolution have been due to the changes in State form, as well

(29): the notion of the potential autonomy of the State [not a new kind of voluntarism? taking the State seriously is a welcome reminder; arguing that it is potential autonomous in a way that Marxists haven't recognized seems to beg all sorts of questions, though]

(32): important--not interested in the breakdown of 'legitimacy', really, as much as the breakdown of the 'capacity to coerce'

(34): Marxists haven't recognized how important the variable of State strength is.

(41): social revolutions as a triple conjuncture

1. incapacitation of central State machineries
2. widespread rebellion by lower-classes, notably peasants
3. attempts by political leaderships to consolidate State power

chapter 2

(48): the fundamental tensions in these three cases were the tensions between producing classes and landed classes, and between landed classes and State (not commercial-industrial classes and anyone else)

(49): [State in feudalism vs. State in capitalism? or is the question simply about State and autonomous sources of revenue.]

(50-51): key dynamic, then--the context of escalating international competition placed pressure on centralized monarchies, who in turn put pressure on their landed elites. in France and China a strong landed class responded by incapacitating the State, in effect. in Russia, the nobility were weaker--however, the State was still unable to carry out the requisite reforms, and it still fell into protracted political crisis.

(51-67): FRANCE

• (54): serious competition putting pressures on royal capacities
• (55): relatively backward agriculture
• (56): a dominant class that was neither 'feudal' nor 'capitalist--surplus appropriation was a melange of rents/dues, but also redistribution accomplished through the State, itself
• (61): revenue problem of the French State
• (64): key--power of the landed elite (she will say their 'political power') prevents the State from moving against them [doesn't this highlight the lack of autonomy of the State, fundamentally?]
• (65): army was reluctant to move against privilege

(67-81): CHINA

• (71): gentry class based upon office-holding and ownership of liquid wealth/surplus land
• (75): key--State was confronted by acute crises (peasant revolts, population pressures) -- but the way in which it repressed these simply stregnthened the hands of the gentry, making centralization/reform/development impossible. And ultimately making the political crisis more acute.
  

(80-81): summary of China/France similarities--useful

(81-99): RUSSIA

• (82): free of feudal shackles--a particularly efficient bureaucracy was possible
• (85): after the defeat in the Crimean War, State successfully implemented reforms (including Emancipation of serfs in 1861, creation of zemstvos, etc.)
• (86-87): important--State moving to expropriate landlords, acquiring its own sources of surplus, which obviously increase its autonomy (passing them out as rewards for State service, instead). becoming less dependent on the landed elite.
  
• (89): important--however, reforms fail to spur the modernization of agriculture [now here redemption payments figure centrally--yet aren't the existence redemption payments a sign that the State doesn't possess the requisite autonomy to eviscerate its landed class?]
• (90): contrast w/ China, where the argument is that the gentry were much more powerful viz-a-viz the State
• (91): Witte's program of crash industrialization in the 1890s (behind tarriff walls, etc. -- laissez-faire didn't work)
  
• (92): industrialization creates grave digger
• (94): key--but, at its root, this didn't solve the problems brought on by international military competition. decisive problem remained the low rate of growth in agriculture.
  
• (95): 1905 vs. 1917 is simply a question of differential state capacity. State can repress in 1905 because troops are back by 1906. this is not the case in 1917.
  

(99): summary passage for France, China, and Russia re: Old Regimes

(100-104): Meiji Restoration in Japan--why?

1. absence of a powerful landed upper class in Tokugawa Japan
   
2. no breakdown in State capacity--this was a revolution from above
3. bureaucratic reforms were pursued (as in Russia), that were successful in ensuring economic take-off (unlike Russia)

(104-109): Prussian Reform Movement--how come, given Prussia had Junkers?

1. a better-organize bureaucracy--upper-classes didn't infiltrate the State apparatus [seems crucial to the explanation]
   
2. upper-classes made a pact, with the State, in effect--they were willing to surrender kingdom-wide authority
3. emancipation in Prussia succeeded in modernizing agriculture, because Prussia had large, commercially-oriented estates (unified management pursued innovative techniques, etc.)

(109-111): chapter summary

chapter 3

(113): peasants as protagonists -- their revolt was a necessary ingredient, but urban workers' revolt was not [dubious--could Russia have been consolidated without an urban workers' challenge?]

(115-117): thesis--Skocpol focusing on three factors

1. the kinds of solidarity of peasant communities
2. degreees of peasant autonomy from day-to-day supervision
3. relaxation of State coercive sanctions against peasantry
   

(118-128): FRANCE

• (123-124): in short--1. creation of collective communities (see also 126), through cahiers; 2. disorganization of upper strata; 3. lack of repressive capacity, of National Assembly; 4. urban forces against 'aristocratic reaction'
• (127): important--the Revolution stregnthened private property and individualism--agrarian revolution of 1789-1793 left peasants more divided (unlike Emancipation of Serfs in Russia)
  

(128-): RUSSIA

• (129-133): 1. emancipation left serfs worse off, bogged down by redemption payments; 2. obschina remained form of land tenure, thus collective institutions were still strong; 3. many were still rentiers, and thus in a very precarious economic situation; 4. the mir was the center of political authority, as emancipation reduced the serfs political dependence on the State.
  
• (133): area was ripe for rebellions, all that was needed was end to coercive controls--which happened in 1917
• (135): Stolypin reforms--noticed communal institutions, but didn't really work
• (137): France vs. Russia [in France they respected private property, etc.; in Russia it was levelling--but this has everything to do with political leadership, it would seem to me. to suggest that this is determined by economic structure seems problematic. it could only be the case if 'collective institutions' didn't exist at all in France, and they existed everywhere in Russia. otherwise something else is doing the work, no? certainly she notes other factors. but surely political leadership must be one--and maybe the most important? would 'levelling' have happened if the Bolsheviks hadn't existed to recognize the seizures?]

(142): in England you had a revolution that didn't displace a landed upper class, that didn't trigger widespread peasant revolts--b/c, she's arguing, of (1) enclosures. capitalist agriculture made it not possible; and (2)no peasant-run village assemblies in England. much weaker collective institutions.

(145-146): in Prussia you didn't have successful peasant rebellions because of the State's capacity to repress peasant rebellions. moreover, E. of the Elbe you had Junkers who didn't give the serfs any breathing room--serfs had fragmented landholdings, and landlords had a monopoly on administrative sovereignty.

(147): CHINA

• (148): in China, collective identity and freedom from landlord control had to be created ('base areas')--they didn't prexist the revolutionary interregnum.
• (149): both collecitve institutions, and freedom from sociopolitical control were absent, in effect.
  
• (151): in previous rebellions, peasants had to be led by gentry--they didn't have their own communal institutions
• (152): the Chinese gentry were strong, but now they're being portrayed as locally-centered. capable of undermining the State but incapable of providing unified administrative apparatus. [it feels like everything is going on at once--will need to think about this more--is this fair?]
• (153): CCP leadership is critical [again, we can ask why this isn't the case in Russia?]
  

(154-155): summary of Part I

Chapter 4

(168): Revolutionaries as 'state-builders' [very slippery slope]

(170-171): argument that revolutionary ideologies are immaterial to the analysis of the post-Revolution [extremely problematic]

Chapter 6

(207): key--in Russia, the liberals were much, much weaker than in France [is this not a permanent revolution argument?]

(210): liberal incapacity, in short

(211): important--peasant incapacity, too -- couldn't constitute a new national order, by themselves [but this is precisely why revolutionary leadership is important, in all cases. shouldn't we look here for differences between France and Russia, as well, for example? (as mentioned earlier)]

(214): a deceptive presentation of the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly [precisely because she's decided not to think seriously about the principles behind it--the default interpretation for everything is for 'reasons of State']

(221-225): Skocpol's presentation of NEP and the scissors crisis (argument, here, is that Bukharin's proposal was impossible b/c of lack of market legacy; Stalin's proposal was necessary, but was bound to come at massive cost). [whatever else there is to say, have to push back on the attempt to link this to the Old Regime--surely 'habits' don't matter as much as the 'scissors'. if you give them prices, they will produce.]

(224): ridiculous to say that the quasi-psychological 'need' for was driving the alternatives

(226-227): consolidation of State-Party system

(227): upward mobility

(228-229): fate of workers and peasants

1. trade unions neutered by 1928
2. living standards deteriorated markedly in the 1930s
3. collective farmers for peasants, where they were intensely exploited
   
4. high food prices to extract surplus from workers

(230-231): hierarchies and coercion were re-established

(232): in sum--all of this were the imperatives that confronted a State under international pressures that needed heavy-industrialization, but was presiding over a predominantly agrarian society

(233-235): notes that all this brings back bourgeois/proletarian distinction. but her contribution is to stress that this unfolds in a context. [fair enough--but you've set yourself a strawman.]

- - - - - -

(1) her structuralism/voluntarism discussion makes it very difficult to have any serious room for (a) contingency and (b) organization in the argument.

(2) "the potential autonomy of the State." it is unclear what role, exactly, this is playing in her argument. empirically, the analyses of the Old Regime, to my mind, prove precisely the opposite--that in all of these cases, the State is unable to move against its landed class successfully (in France and China it doesn't; in Russia it does but the reforms are ineffectual). theoretically, the question is obvious--insofar as the State requires resources, it can't have total autonomy until it has autonomous ways to extract surplus. the extent to which this is true about the three cases is hard to establish, but this should be recognized. why should the capacity of the State rise and fall with the 'political' power of landlords (i.e., whether the gentry have been integrated into the state apparatus, as in France and China)? why not with their economic power?

(3): her discussion of peasant 'community' seems hurried. isn't it difficult to generalize across nations? see pg. 137 discussion of France and Russia, post-revolution, where she clearly neglects political leadership as one of the factors. why, when in Russia these communal institutions are limited to one part of the country (C. Steppes) does agrarian revolt of a 'leveling' kind take place everywhere? are the other factors not doing more work? [she acknowledges the critical importance of the CCP, remember--though the implication is that this is exceptional]

(4): her treatment of the scissors crisis is poor, insofar as she harkens back to "Old Regime" legacies rather than contemporary factors. we need to foreground the actual dilemma.

(5): strawman treatment of the bourgeois/proletarian distinction (re: political leadership, again), on pp 233-235.

(6): deceptive presentation of the disbanding of the Constituent Assembly, precisely because she's decided to not take revolutionaries' aims seriously. it's fine to say their confronted with competing imperatives; but it's ludicrous to say that everyone can be understood as a State-builder.

The trouble with a mandate for GM crops is this: it won't work. A recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists demonstrates that GM crops don't increase crop yields. USAID has already spent millions of taxpayer dollars developing GM crops over the past two decades, without a single success story to show for it, and plenty of failures. A recent, highly touted partnership between USAID and Monsanto to develop a virus-resistant sweet potato in Kenya failed to deliver anything useful for farmers. After 14 years and $6 million, local varieties vastly outperformed their genetically modified cousins in field trials. Another 10-year USAID project for GM eggplant in India recently met with such outcry -- from scientists and Indian farmers alike -- that the government put a moratorium on its release. Growing insect resistance to genetically modified cotton and corn shows that the technology is already failing farmers and will continue to fail over the long term. Sadly, today's GM obsession shows every indication of duplicating the first ill-fated "Green Revolution" that trapped millions of farmers on a pesticide treadmill while devastating the functioning of the ecosystems on which we depend.

jeffery paige, agrarian revolution (1976)

(6-7): summarizing stinchcome--"family-sized tenancy most likely to produce intense class conflict..."

(7-8): summarizing wolf--"middle peasant provides mass base"

(11): the infamous graph of rural class conflict

(16-17): small-holding as the most efficient form of organization (political factors prevent this form from proliferating, he's suggesting--this is obviously very important in the Angolan case)

(18-25): thus, for noncultivators

1. (18): draws income from land, is economically weak and needs coercion; draws income from capital, is economically strong
   
2. (21): draws income from land is dependent on servile labor; draws income from capital, can tolerate free labor
   
3. (23) zero-sum conflict over static agricultural product; reform possible in other situation
   

(21): graph of three noncultivator attitudes

(22): no labor unions possible here--where dependent on servile labor [?]

(26-34): thus, for cultivating classes

1. (26) land for cultivators important, they will avoid risk; income, they can afford risk
2. (30) importance of land as source of income, stronger incentive for economic competition and weaker incentive for organization (and vice-versa)
3. (34) the greater the importance of land, the more the structural isolation of noncultivators and thus the weaker the pressures for political solidarity
   

(28): quoting Mao on the middle peasants

(33): export agriculture, where there are wages, tends to be equalizing (he puts a lot of emphasis on this, like Marx with working-class, he's saying)

(29): graph of three cultivator attitudes

(40-45): LAND and LAND--agrarian revolt [he's giving the example of El Salvador--but it's difficult, as was noted, to discard this as simple 'agrarian revolt' because it was crushed. it certainly doesn't indicate that we have a quiescent, unorganized, structurally isolated peasantry!]

(42): German Peasant Wars and Bolivian revolution--here the introduction of organizational strength comes from without, he is suggesting. [hone in on this, seems dubious again]

(45): CAPITAL and LAND--the reform commodity movement (focusing on control of the commodity market, not asking for radical demands for redistribution of property)

(48-58): CAPITAL and WAGES---the reform labor movement (a radical class-conscious proletariat focused on limited political questions, because the costs of revolution are higher given the higher probability of reform)

(51-58): discussion the exception of the Malaya plantations [see graph on 57], where 'rubber' means that behavior of the elite is more and more like one who depends on land, due to

1. labor input much less onerous in rubber, thus very difficult for small-holder to cultivate; thus rubber plantations have competition, whereas the tea estates in Ceylon dont
2. rubber took indentured immigrant laborers, servile labor
3. fixed incomes in rubber; expanding in Ceylon

(58): LAND and WAGES--agrarian revolution (you have a well-organized peasantry and a landed elite that can't make concessions, basically)

(62): decentralized sharecropping and irrigated rice production, in particular, will give you revolutionary socialism

(65): graph comparing cotton sharecropping, though, to rice sharecropping (stability of tenure, centralized management, and dependence on landlord in the former). but see graph, since the latter is better on only two out of three.

(66): the migratory labor estate will give you revolutionary nationalism--Algeria and Kenya are the examples. [arguing, on 68, that workers are organized from without--this is the weakest part of the book, since it is impossible to make this distinction in the way that he does

(69): account of the Mau Mau, and the role of the Kikuyu

(70-71): summary of the four outcomes

(95): describing how he distinguishes revolutionary socialism from revolutionary nationalism. [problematize]

(104): quite robust statistical results, having done this

(120-123): summary of chapter 2, his empirical data and the support it lends to chapter 1

(212): Portugese kill 30,000 to 40,000 putting down the Angolan rebellion in 1961

(230): again, SH viable, but the estates were dominant; the graph is useful

(237): estate managers were dependent on colonial controls of (1) labor and controls of (2) land

(250): migratory patterns were prohibiting class-based organization [but here, again, we have to remember that, actually, the class-based organization won!]

(254): no flexibility --> zero-sum conflict

(278): sharp contrast between N. and S. Vietnam

(292): population in N. Vietnam, he's arguing, had a 'conservative interest' in their subsistence plots, and a 'consequent resistance' to political innovation [this is going to be difficult to sustain, my man!]

(300): the point about ecological disaster upsetting the North completely [this is how he makes sense of rebellion, presumably--but weak!]

(322): his highly selective graph of uprisings and 'revolutionary socialist events'

(324): important--here is the most odd aspect of his argument, where the claim is that there was a military dimension to the base in the North, but a political aspect to the insurgency in the South. [interrogate here]

- - - -

[1] 'political organization' from outside vs. from inside--particularly apparent in the case of Vietnam. on the one hand, they had mass support; on the other hand, they were a party 'imposed' in any normal sense of the word. his argument actually hinges on the very thin presentation of 'revolutionary socialist events'

[2] the notion of 'agrarian revolt', and how this squares with anticipated apathy in the 'LAND and LAND' case?

[3] market as enabling reformism. as skocpol rightly says, the market can put inordinate pressures and make upper-classes more stubborn than ever.

[4] wolf and skocpol talk of the importance of a lack of repression in allowing political organization to build--this is fundamentally why the middle peasant matters for wolf, he can avoid the incompetence that comes with being completely subjugated

[5] confusion of Marxism with Materialism--given that there isn't a one-to-one between crops and source of income, might we not have to talk of class struggle as itself determining 'income source'. why is land/income the first mover, always?

[6] in Angola, the importance of political structures in conditioning the character of rebellion, rather than income source. he notes the traditional structures, for example--income source ceases to matter in determining that this was a 'revolutionary nationalist' cast. [and let's not forget, also, that it was the MPLA, the class-conscious segment, that finally won.]