How to Have a Cooperative Relationship Between State and the People

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Joel S. Migdal defines uses an ideal-typed definition of the state as an organization, composed of numerous agencies led and coordinated by the state’s leadership that has the ability or authority to make and implement the binding rules for all the people as well as the parameters of rule making for other social organizations in a given territory, using force if necessary to have its way. He claims that a state’s ability to survive depends on several factors but most importantly, the ability to mobilize the society’s population. This consists of channeling people into specialized organizational frameworks that enable state leaders to build stronger armies, collect more taxes and complete other complicated tasks (Migdal). Social control, Migdal describes involves the successful subordination of people’s own inclinations of social behavior or behavior sought by other social organizations in favor of the behavior prescribed by state rulers. Migdal, like Robert I. Rotberg both refer to Michael Mann’s concept of infrastructural power, the need for a cooperative relationship between the state and the people.
According to Robert I. Rotberg, weak states are characterized as being: inherently weak because of geographical, physical, or fundamental economic constraints. He adds that it is often an effect of internal conflict. Public goods and peoples’ needs are not being met or the state is diminishing in ability to provide. Migdal describes a weak state as being characterized by having a strong society where the state lacks social control. Colombia, although maintaining an electoral democracy, is considered a weak state. Rotberg argues that Colombia is a weak state, and even leaning toward a failing state. Colombia controls only two-thirds...

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...rrorism 32.4 (2009): 322-345. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 04 Dec. 2013.

Migdal, Joel S.. Strong societies and weak states: state-society relations and state capabilities in the Third World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1988. Print.

Osada-Carbo, Eduardo. "Newspapers, Politics, And Elections In Colombia,
1830-1930." Historical Journal 53.4 (2010): 939-962. Academic Search
Premier. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.

Rabasa, Angel, and Peter Chalk. "Sources of Instability." Colombian Labyrinth the Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency and its Implications for Regional
Stability. Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2001. 1-9. Print.

Rotberg, Robert I. "Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and
Indicators." When states fail: causes and consequences. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2004. 1-25. Print.

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