scholarly journals State Infrastructural Power and Social Transfers: The Local Politics of Distribution and Delivering ‘Progress’ in Ethiopia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Lavers
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Social Transfers ◽  
State Infrastructural Power ◽  
Infrastructural Power

Who is the state? Infrastructural power and everyday water governance in Delhi

2020 ◽  
pp. 239965441989792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaffa Truelove
Keyword(s):  
Water Governance ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
State Infrastructural Power ◽  
Indian Cities ◽  
Infrastructural Power

In Indian cities, a variety of state and non-state political actors and institutions play a role in regulating infrastructures in the everyday. Anthropological approaches to the everyday state have demonstrated how residents experience and discursively construct the state in relation to key services and amenities. However, less is known and theorized regarding how city-dwellers and public authorities understand and experience political space and power related to urban infrastructure that includes a variety of actors operating in tandem with, or even outside the bureaucracies and purview of, the state. This article partially addresses this lacuna through ethnographic research on (1) residents’ experiences and narrations of the everyday infrastructural governance of water and (2) the practices of key political actors who engage in regulating urban water infrastructures in Delhi’s neighborhoods. This research demonstrates that political actors’ and residents’ narratives and practices related to the infrastructural governance of water sharply contest both singular and dichotomous (state/non-state) readings of state power, instead revealing nuanced and situated understandings of hybrid and negotiated forms of “infrastructural power.” In particular, the practices and narratives of both residents and political authorities bring attention to the ways social and political power is decentered in the everyday and the porosity of the institutions of everyday infrastructural governance. My findings show the complex ways that infrastructures are tied to differing experiences, understandings, and articulations of power in relation to urban environments.

Authoritarian Aid and Regime Durability: Soviet Aid to the Developing World and Donor–Recipient Institutional Complementarity and Capacity

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 968-979
Author(s):  
Christopher Heurlin
Keyword(s):  
Military Assistance ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Institutional Complementarity ◽  
Economic Aid ◽  
State Infrastructural Power ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Infrastructural Power ◽  
Cross National

Abstract How does authoritarian aid influence the durability of dictatorships? Western aid is thought to facilitate authoritarian durability because it can provide patronage. Authoritarian aid, by contrast, has received far less attention. This article examines both Soviet economic and military assistance, developing a theory of donor–recipient institutional complementarity to explain the impact of Soviet aid during the Cold War. The argument is developed through case studies of Vietnam and Ghana and a cross-national statistical analysis of Soviet economic aid and military assistance to developing countries from 1955 to 1991. Soviet economic aid was tied to the purchase of Soviet industrial equipment. When recipient states shared the Soviet Union's centrally planned economy, economic aid strengthened state infrastructural power by (1) enhancing fiscal capacity and (2) cultivating the dependency of the population on the state. Aid flows helped consolidate and maintain authoritarian institutions, promoting authoritarian durability. By contrast, while Soviet economic aid to noncommunist regimes provided some opportunities for patronage through employment in SOEs, the lack of institutional complementarity in planning institutions and overall lack of capacity of these institutions caused Soviet aid to contribute to inflation and fiscal crises. Economic problems, in turn, increased the vulnerability of noncommunist regimes to military coups, particularly when ideological splits emerged between pro-Soviet rulers and pro-Western militaries that undermined elite cohesion. The institutional subordination of the military to communist parties insulated communist regimes from the risk of coups.

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