Description
Book SynopsisThe growth of institutional capacity in the developing world has become a central theme in twenty-first-century social science. Many studies have shown that public institutions are an important determinant of long-run rates of economic growth. This book argues that to understand the difficulties and pitfalls of state building in the contemporary world, it is necessary to analyze previous efforts to create institutional capacity in conflictive contexts. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the process of state and nation building in Latin America and Spain from independence to the 1930s. The book examines how Latin American countries and Spain tried to build modern and efficient state institutions for more than a century - without much success. The Spanish and Latin American experience of the nineteenth century was arguably the first regional stage on which the organizational and political dilemmas that still haunt states were faced. This book provides an unprecedented perspective on
Trade Review'… this is a quite outstanding volume of comparative historical sociology on the Hispanic world … This suggestive and intellectually refreshing quality owes much to the care with which the editors have designed a volume that plainly derives for an extended period of collaboration.' James Dunkerley, Journal of Global Faultlines
'The great strength of this book, which will make people return to it again and again, lies in this integrated approach. The volume brings together a variety of work from diverse disciplinary and/or country study fields, making it an invaluable portal for historians, political scientists and sociologists alike to access each others' research on state- and nation-making in Latin America.' Nicola Miller, Journal of Latin American Studies
Table of Contents1. Republics of the possible: state building in Latin America and Spain Miguel Centeno and Agustin Ferraro; 2. The construction of national states, 1820–90: five cases, multiple variables Frank Safford; 3. State building in Western Europe and the Americas before and in the long nineteenth century: some preliminary considerations Wolfgang Knoebl; 4. The state and development under the Brazilian monarchy: 1822–89 Jeffrey Needell; 5. The Brazilian federal state in the old republic (1889–1930): did regime change make a difference? Joseph E. Love; 6. The Mexican state, Porfirian and revolutionary (1876–1930) Alan Knight; 7. Nicaragua: the difficult creation of a sovereign state Salvador Martí; 8. Friends' tax. Patronage, fiscality and state building in Argentina and Spain Claudia Herrera and Agustin Ferraro; 9. Ideological pragmatism and non-partisan expertise in nineteenth-century Chile: Andrés Bello's contribution to state and nation building Iván Jaksic; 10. Militarization without bureaucratization in Central America James Mahoney; 11. Between 'Empleomanía' and the common good: successful expert bureaucracies in Argentina (1870–1930) Ricardo Salvatore; 12. Elite preferences, administrative institutions, and educational development during Peru's Aristocratic Republic (1895–1919) Hillel Soifer; 13. Liberalism in the Iberian world 1808–25 Roberto Breña; 14. Visions of the national: natural endowments, futures, and the evils of men Fernando López-Alves; 15. Spanish national identity in the age of nationalisms José Alvarez Junco; 16. Census taking and nation making in nineteenth-century Latin America Mara Loveman; 17. Citizens before the law: the role of courts in post-independence state building in Spanish America Sara Chambers; 18. Visualizing the nation: the mid-nineteenth-century Colombian chorographic commission Nancy Applebaum; 19. Paper leviathans. Historical legacies and state strength in contemporary Latin America and Spain Miguel Centeno and Agustin Ferraro.
