In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Introduction from polycentrism to the polity Peter P. Houtzager The new politics of inclusion is the progeny of disquiet. Two decades of marketizing reform have succeeded in disassembling developmental states—their bases of legitimacy, the political coalitions that sustained them, and of course many of their concrete manifestations (from parastatal companies to interventionist economic policies and universal social programs).1 They have also fostered greater economic integration across national boundaries. The disquiet, in what is now a postdevelopment state period, grows out of the failure of marketizing reforms to signi‹cantly reduce absolute poverty (a quarter of the world’s population exists on less than one dollar a day) and out of historically unprecedented levels of inequality between and within countries.2 Antiglobalization protests and a new wave of international terrorism targeting the symbols of global capitalism are widely interpreted (not always accurately) as manifestations of the exclusionary nature of current marketizing development models. As a result, an array of national and international actors has recently become preoccupied with the inclusion of the poor in the gains from economic growth and the capacity of poor social groups to have their voices heard in national policy debates.3 The shift in concern from “getting prices right” to pro-poor growth and empowerment of the poor is helping to create new opportunities for differentially situated poor groups to challenge their economic and political exclusion. This volume explores the forms the new politics of inclusion can take in the postdevelopmental state period. In doing so, it casts a critical eye on the two dominant intellectual trends in international development— neoliberal and poststructuralist—that have converged on a set of beliefs that, if pursued in practice, may undermine the current opportunity to expand inclusion. These intellectual trends are rooted in the belief that the uncoordinated and decentralized actions of civil society, market, and state actors are likely to create a mutually reinforcing movement that can produce all good things for all people—democracies in which citizens enjoy actual legal equality and rights, higher standards of living, greater socioeconomic equality, and (lately) “empowerment of the poor.” A key feature of this radical polycentric zeitgeist is an indiscriminate hostility toward large political organizations, be they state entities, political parties , or groups organized across many localities such as labor movements and professional associations. At a time of unprecedented concentration of capital and power in the hands of a few private individuals and corporate conglomerates, the prescriptions for more equitable, af›uent, and democratic societies all emphasize decentralization of action, association, and governance. The construction and interpretation of a new politics of inclusion, this volume argues, must concern itself centrally with how societal and state actors democratically negotiate large-scale collective solutions across the public-private divide. There is little evidence for the belief that the uncoordinated action of a multiplicity of local actors in either civil society or the market alone can either solve problems such as market and state failure or challenge authoritarian political elites on a scale suf‹cient to lift large numbers of people out of poverty and political subordination.4 One of the principal obstacles to greater inclusion is the dearth of reform-oriented political actors and coalitions that can aggregate and negotiate competing interests both within society and between society and agents of the state. Constructing reform-oriented coalitions requires refocusing our attention from the decentralized and autarkic engagements of civil society and market actors toward the political arena and the institutions of representative and deliberative democracy. What analytic lens should we use to refocus? This chapter suggests a “polity approach” that draws on the insights of Skocpol (1992) and Tilly (1978, 1997) and different lineages of comparative institutionalism, including that proposed by Evans (1995, 1996).5 The polity approach is also built on, and attempts to provide a broad theoretical core to, a sprawling body of work that shares many assumptions of historical institutionalism in sociology and comparative politics. Such work has focused to varying degrees on the agency of political leaders, institutional dynamics , and forms of state-society synergy.6 The polity approach focuses on how societal and state actors are constituted , how they develop a differential capacity to act and form alliances, and how they cooperate and compete across the public-private divide to produce purposeful change. The capacity and nature of both state and societal actors are understood as the outcome of a two-way exchange that is shaped in substantial ways by the institutional terrain in...

Share