State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Volume 1

Marc Notes: Originally published: 2013.; Includes bibliographical references and index.; This publication examines how Latin American countries and Spain tried to build modern and efficient state institutions for more than a century - without much success. Review Quotes: Nineteenth-century experiences of state building in Latin America (ironically mirrored in Spain) offer telling analytical lessons for contemporary debates on the role of the state. This collection unites a set of the world s most distinguished scholars on the topic and offers an invaluable resource for those interested in understanding this historical experience and drawing on it to decipher contemporary puzzles. Peter Evans, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley"Review Quotes: Centeno and Ferraro very effectively organize an impressive collection of essays on the challenges of state building in Latin America. Above all, they successfully marshal exceptional scholarly talent and bring it to bear on the puzzle of the long-term process of creating effective and coherent states. Merilee S. Grindle, Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development, Harvard University"Review Quotes: This is the best-organized collection of papers that I have ever come across, splendid in every way. All authors concern themselves with four dimensions of state power territory, economy, infrastructural reach, and legitimacy introduced by the editors, who effectively conclude the volume by assessing the results of the whole enterprise. The papers are little jewels, slowly covering all of the countries with attention to key details from censuses to the nature of war, from the varieties of nationalism to the nature of bureaucracy. The results are illuminating. Holding a mirror up to northwestern Europe, Spanish development is contrasted to that of Latin America, and diversity within Latin America properly and clearly stressed. This book has been needed for a long time. John A. Hall, James McGill Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology, McGill University"Review Quotes: In State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain, Centeno and Ferraro and their colleagues probe the historical origins of Latin American and Spanish state building in the long nineteenth century. Their theoretically sophisticated and empirical rich analyses demonstrate that elites in Latin America and Spain sought conscientiously to emulate and adapt the state-making experiences of England, the United States, and France to their own circumstances. Despite some successes early on, by the early twentieth century this project of state making had proven to be a debacle. Building on the best in the contemporary social sciences and recent historiography, this important collection highlights institutional fragility, weak and shallow rule of law, difficulties in creating a competent public bureaucracy, poor economic performance, and failure to construct an encompassing sense of communal identity as central elements in this general pattern of flawed state formation. This volume establishes a new benchmark for future research by historians, political scientists, and sociologists. William C. Smith, Editor, Latin American Politics and Society, University of Miami"Review Quotes: ..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. -Professor James Dunkerley, Queen Mary, University of London, Journal of Global Faultlines"Table of Contents: 1. 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 Marti; 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: Andres Bello's contribution to state and nation building Ivan Jaksic; 10. Militarization without bureaucratization in Central America James Mahoney; 11. Between 'Empleomania' 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 Brena; 14. Visions of the national: natural endowments, futures, and the evils of men Fernando Lopez-Alves; 15. Spanish national identity in the age of nationalisms Jose 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."Publisher Marketing: The 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 (some would argue the most 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 chapters discuss key processes and challenges of state building. To what extent do historical legacies determine the capacity and reach of states? What are the obstacles to and paths toward the effective consolidation of public authority? How can states best design and create the institutions meant to provide the basic services now associated with citizenship? How can we put together notions of community that include diverse groups and cultures within a single identity, while also respecting the integrity of particular traditions? 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 the development and contemporary outcome of those state and nation building projects." Review Citations:

Choice 05/01/2014 (EAN 9781107029866, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Centeno, Miguel A Miguel A. Centeno is Chair of the Sociology Department and Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. He has published many articles, chapters and books, the most recent of which are Global Capitalism (2010) and Discrimination in an Unequal World (2010). He has served as the founding director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and as master of Wilson College. Centeno has been a Fulbright scholar in Russia and Mexico. He has also been a visiting professor in Buenos Aires, Seoul and Spain. In 1997 he was awarded the Presidential Teaching Prize at Princeton University. Contributor Bio:  Ferraro, Agustin E Agustin E. Ferraro is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He was visiting professor at Princeton University for the Spring Term 2011. He won the 2009 award of the Spanish National Institute for Public Administration for his research on state reforms and public policy in Latin America. As a Humboldt Scholar from 2001 to 2003, he worked at the Institute for Latin American Studies in Hamburg and at the London School of Economics and Political Science.