Spring 2007 Newsletter of the ASA Comparative and Historical Sociology Section Volume18, No

________________________________________________________________________ __ Comparative & Historical Sociology Spring 2007 Newsletter of the ASA Comparative and Historical Sociology section Volume18, No. 2 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ SECTION OFFICERS Symposium on 2006-2007 Locked in Place: Chair William G. Roy State-Building and Late University of California-Los Angeles Industrialization in India Chair-Elect Philip S. Gorski Yale University Vivek Chibber Past Chair New York University Richard Lachmann SUNY-Albany Princeton University Press 2003 Secretary-Treasurer Geneviève Zubrzycki University of Michigan Why did India, despite a democratic framework and a Council Members state commitment to economic growth, fail to reach Jeffrey Broadbent, U Minnesota (2009) the levels of economic development that South Korea Miguel A. Centeno, Princeton (2007) reached in the 1950s and 1960s? Vivek Chibber’s Vivek Chibber, New York U (2009) Locked in Place revives the comparative historical Marion Fourcade, Berkeley (2008) study of economic development and argues for the Mara Loveman, UW-Madison (2008) James Mahoney, Northwestern (2007) central role of capitalists in sending India’s developmental state awry. In this issue Jeffery Paige, Elisa- beth Clemens, and Leo Panitch examine Chibber’s Newsletter Editor claims and Chibber responds. Monica Prasad Northwestern University ◊ Webmaster Dylan John Riley Also in this issue: Arthur Stinchcombe, William University of California, Berkeley Sewell, Jr., and Charles Tilly review each others’ recent books; and Amy Kate Bailey, Rebecca Emigh, and Richard Lachmann reflect on why and how they entered Comparative Historical Sociology. Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 India and the Myth of the Anti- Korea. The Korean case is based on secondary materials but is considerably more than simply a Developmental State shadow comparison. The review of the secondary literature appears exhaustive and Chibber even Jeffery Paige develops a novel explanation of the success of University of Michigan business-state relations in Korea—self-interest. While most accounts emphasize the relative Vivek Chibber’s Locked in Place is in many re- autonomy of the Korean state and its power to dis- spects an exemplary work of comparative histori- cipline a weak capitalist class, Chibber argues that cal sociology fully deserving of the many awards it was the turn to export-led industrialization aided it has received. There are a number of features that by Japan’s transfer of its light manufacturing to make this work stand out. Korea that made cooperation with the Korean state both necessary and profitable for Korean capital- First, the book is based on extensive research on ists. This comparison adds to our understanding of archival materials including both state documents the Indian case because the absence of a turn to and personal papers for the Indian post-colonial export-led industrialization (and the absence of period. These materials have never before been Japan) further limited prospects for a successful exploited by either sociologists or historians. developmental state there. These primary sources are not simply deployed in Furthermore, the book is comparative in the sense that Marc Bloch annunciated long ago--a hypothesis Challenges the conventional wisdom on all developed in one context is tested in sides, addresses problems of fundamental another. Indeed the comparisons of this kind both explicitly, with other theoretical and practical importance, and attempts at late-late development, or proposes novel solutions with broad appli- implicitly, with counterfactuals, are one of the book’s strengths. Both cation to the global South. This is what so- kinds of comparison are not static ciology should be at its best. parallel descriptions but theoreti- cally productive and generative. Third, as Achin Vanaik has ob- a historical narrative but used to develop and test served in his review of Locked in generalizable sociological propositions. Chibber Place in the New Left Review (2004, p. 154), it moves easily from the particular to the general represents “a powerful assault on the intellectual (and back) even though a substantial literature in assumptions, arguments and claims on which the comparative historical sociology has denied that prevailing neo-liberal consensus in India rests.” such a combination is desirable or even possible. And not only in India The dominant neo-liberal Detailed descriptions of historical events and per- narrative portrays India as one of the principal ex- sonalities are linked to theoretical propositions of amples of the failure of socialist inspired state the widest possible historical and comparative planning in which a “license-permit-quota-raj” scope. Debates in Delhi in 1947-1951 illuminate inhibited the development of a dynamic Indian the development state not only in India but in capitalist class and a high-growth free market South Korea, Japan, post-war France, Latin Amer- economy. The neo-liberal remedy of privatization, ica and indeed in the world of “late-late develop- deregulation, liberalization, and globalization is ers” generally. then seen as an antidote to the maladies of Indian development planning and indeed of development Second, this is a genuinely comparative work in planning generally. two senses. First there is an explicit comparison with the paradigmatic developmental state— It is difficult to believe that anyone could continue to hold to this view after reading Chibber’s book. 2 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 Despite Nehru’s socialist principles and a genuine ful demobilization of the working class but also devotion to development planning in the Congress the relative absence of independent political mobi- party’s political leadership, the Indian Planning lization on the part of the Indian peasantry. Al- Commission was a relatively powerless agency though Chibber notes that Gandhi succeeded in that was subordinate to other ministries. Its efforts incorporating the peasantry into the Congress at organizational embeddedness in the capitalist while advocating conservative positions in regard class consisted of little more than talking things to wealth and property, the absence of the peas- over. The Commission was never able to do any- antry from the Indian development political equa- thing more than offer special permits and other tion is striking. In Japan and Taiwan as well as benefits to the Indian business elite who success- Korea land reform created a small farmer class fully resisted all state efforts to direct or discipline that became reliable supporters of developmen- their activities. The business elite, as Chibber tally oriented political elites. shows, contrary to conventional historiog- raphy, was hostile to the very idea of state planning from the very beginning. Ulti- mately the weakness of the planning agency If India is an example of a failed rested on Congress’s ties to the business elite and Congress’s successful efforts to developmental state and the neo- demobilize an independent labor move- liberal orthodoxy is wrong, how ment. India is an example not of the failure of state-led development but rather of its do we account for the extraordi- absence! nary recent Indian economic Finally, the book begins to develop a model growth rates? of the political base of the developmental state. In the conclusion Chibber generalizes his findings and argues that the state must avoid capture by the capitalist class either Furthermore if India is an example of a failed de- by having the good fortune to have a very weak velopmental state and the neo-liberal orthodoxy is capitalist class (the case of Taiwan) or a strong wrong how do we account for the extraordinary political base in some other class. Chibber’s pref- recent Indian economic growth rates? Did the In- erence is obviously for a developmental state dian developmental state accomplish something based in a strong working class party and he after all? Or were the neo-liberal proponents of makes a convincing argument that post-war globalization right all along? Perhaps in his next France represents just such a case. In the end he is book--or more briefly in the discussion--he can forced to conclude that the putative social democ- explain how India became “unlocked.” ratic development state in the Third World re- mains a theoretical possibility only. Nevertheless Finally, prospects for the social democratic devel- the attempt to theorize the social base of the de- opmental state may be limited by precisely those velopmental state goes far beyond most accounts structural changes in the global economy that neo- and has implications far beyond the case of India. liberal ideology did so much to promote. The cur- rent unprecedented rise of left parties and social Still for a book explicitly concerned with the class movements throughout Latin America may pro- base of the developmental state one class receives vide a potential test of the prospects and limits of relatively little attention especially in regard to its the social democratic or any kind of developmen- immense numerical size—the peasantry. Diane tal state. Although the rise of the Latin American Davis in her recent Discipline and Development left is very much a project in process, the prelimi- (2004) argues that the peasantry or, more accu- nary results are not encouraging. Socialist and rately, the small farmer

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