Third and Final Step Back: The Scope of the State

Acknowledging diverse forms of STR tells us little about the particular goals that states pursue in the Amazon. In historical terms, the phenomena are related insofar as the objectives of the state tend to promote particular types of state organization. The scope of the state typically precedes its territorial reach because policy goals are what drive the construction of STR. Charles Tilly (1985) argues, for example, that in Europe “each of the major uses of violence—war making, state making, protection and extraction— produced characteristic forms of organization” (p. 181). While armies and navies resulted from war making activities, tax collection agencies were largely the consequence of financial necessities. The state’s objectives are thus closely associated with

organizational developments on the ground: “the goals for which infrastructural power is used may affect how it is deployed and the actual outcomes it generates” (Soifer & Vom Hau, 2008, p. 228).

Thus far, I have offered conceptualizations of state strength and state reach centered on means rather than ends (Mann, 1986; M. Weber, 1968). Comparative scholarship assumes procedural definitions, but empirical studies tend to focus on particular state goals and functions (Berwick & Christia, 2018) such as information (Scott, 1998; Soifer, 2013), war making (Centeno, 2002; Thies, 2005; Tilly, 1992), and tax collection (Levi, 1989; Lieberman, 2002). In this context, I propose that the

theoretical and empirical study of the state stands to benefit from acknowledging both the existence of less traditional state goals and the fact that the scope of the state has

nineteenth century was barely involved in the provision of social welfare. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, due to the heightened significance of the so- called “social question,” the scope of the state markedly expanded. New state

infrastructures were developed as new demands for state involvement were articulated (Kurtz, 2013).58

How can we best characterize the goals of the Colombian state in the Amazon? Table 2.1 below represents a preliminary mapping that emerged inductively from my fieldwork in the Amazonia foothills and is intended to reduce the complexity of the state’s diverse and often contradictory objectives (Migdal, 2001). The scope of the state in the Amazon is influenced by at least by four sectoral agendas—agrarian, extractive, environmental, and ethnic—which each have characteristic land-use planning institutions and particular orientations towards the active promotion of economic development.

Table 2.1

State Agendas, Institutions, and Orientations Towards Development

Sectoral agenda Characteristic Land-Use Planning Institution

Orientation (Development Promotion)

Agrarian Individual land property

Developmental Extractive Individual property and concessions

Environmental Forest Reserve / National Parks

Non-developmental

Ethnic Indigenous reservations

Since different regions have been integrated according to different agendas, I will describe each in sequence. The agrarian agenda is characterized by the interest of the

58 _{See Kurtz (2013) for an interesting discussion of the ways the social questionshaped state-building} trajectories in Latin America. The author argues that in countries where mass mobilization began prior to the Great Depression, state building became difficult as conflict quickly escalated and locked in.

state in promoting the development of commercial agriculture. Thus, landowners, peasants, ranchers, and rural employees tend to be the beneficiaries of this sectoral agenda. The extractive agenda promotes the development of extractive industries like oil or mining.59 The beneficiaries of this agenda are the companies, employees, merchants, and other local contractors that directly or indirectly profit from extractive activities. The

environmental agenda aims to protect the environment by either prohibiting or regulating certain economic activities. The main beneficiaries of this agenda are those who are affected by the negative externalities of damaging economic activities.60 Finally, the ethnic agenda promotes the recognition of indigenous rights and the incorporation of indigenous peoples as non-subordinated citizens. In the Amazon, indigenous peoples tend to be the direct beneficiaries of the ethnic agenda and have received additional attention from the state as compensation for centuries of exclusion and violence.61

The four sectoral agendas are instantiated through concrete planning institutions that regulate both the use and acquisition of land. These institutions determine what can be done with land, where, and under what conditions. Land use has traditionally been linked to ownership, which means that institutions regulating land ownership also tend to affect how land is used (Unruh, Cligget, & Hay, 2005). Land-use planning institutions

59 _{The extractive agenda of the state can benefit large or small-scale projects, and those projects can be led} either by private actors or state-owned companies.

60 _{Environmental harms are characterized as “negative externalities” when they are caused by production or} consumption activities but affect people other than the beneficiaries of those activities (Black, Hashimzade, & Myles, 2017). However, the beneficiaries of the environmental agenda are not limited to those who directly suffer the negative externalities of a particular activity. Theoretically, the environmental agenda stands to benefit future generations, humanity at large, and other living beings (Dobson & Eckersley, 2006; Nash, 1989). Furthermore, it carries potential benefits for those implementing the policies and projects aimed at protecting the environment (Jodoin, 2017; Robinson, Holland, & Naughton-Treves, 2014). 61 _{The ethnic agenda is not limited to indigenous groups. However, as Chapter 3 explains, indigenous} groups are, at least numerically, the most important participants in the ethnic agenda in the Amazon.

can be understood as claims to the ownership and governance of territory, typically pursued by a diverse set of social actors.

The recognition of individual property rights tends to be the most important and characteristic land-use planning institution of the state’s agrarian and extractive agendas (Besley & Persson, 2009; Blomley, 2015; De Soto, 2000). In addition to the institution of private property, the extractive agenda also depends on mining concessions

exclusionary rights of exploitation that do not require the recognition of land ownership (Rodríguez, 2017). When it comes to the environmental agenda, reserve forests and protected areas for conservation are the two most important land-use planning institutions (Leal, 2017; Nepstad et al., 2006). Finally, indigenous reservations, a unique form of collective property, constitute the characteristic land-use planning institution of the state’s ethnic agenda in the Amazon.62

These four sectoral agendas and their associated land-use institutions can be classified into two additional categories on the basis their overall orientation towards developmental activities. Considering the role of the state in relation to economic development, it becomes clear that the state has at least two distinct faces (Bourdieu, 2014). One face—associated with the agrarian and extractive agendas—is essentially committed to promoting economic development, while the other—associated with the environmental and ethnic agendas—is not.

62 _{Afro-Colombian communities also have land rights in Colombia. However, given different historical and} spatial patterns of internal migration and displacement, the collective land of Afro-Colombian communities tends to be concentrated on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts (Asher, 2009).

Given that political scientists and economists have long used the terms “developmental” and “non-developmental” to describe the state, a clarification is

necessary (see for example Evans, 1995; Kohli, 2004). Scholarship on the developmental state described the way states play an essential role in promoting economic development by providing not only basic public goods (Huber, 1995) but also the infrastructure and institutions that facilitate economic cooperation (e.g., Lange & Rueschemeyer, 2005). My dissertation uses the same terms but in a slightly different way.

My goal is not to designate the state “developmental” but rather to classify the state’s four sectoral agendas into two categories. I assume that states are diverse and often internally incoherent forms of political domination that pursue a range of potentially conflicting goals (Migdal, 2001) and commitments with respect to the promotion of economic development. By classifying the state’s four sectoral agendas as either “developmental” or “non-developmental” (see Table 2.1), I recognize the way the state pursues both developmental and non-developmental goals simultaneously and often in the same space.

Furthermore, I use the term “non-developmental” with neither a negative nor a positive connotation. Scholarship on the developmental state tends to classify as non- developmental states those that “do not perform nearly as well in terms of developmental criteria” (Leftwich, 1998, p. 53). On that usage, a non-developmental state impedes development rather than promoting it, thus depriving citizens of a presumptive good. A non-developmental state is thus a failed developmental state, or a “predatory” state (Evans, 1995). In my dissertation, by contrast, the idea of non-development does not

convey this negative meaning: it simply indicates the absence of a fundamental commitment to the active promotion of economic development.

In addition, the idea of non-development should not be taken to imply active or radical opposition to economic development. Here, a distinction between non-

development and post-development is instructive. Post-development indicates ideas or actions in active opposition to, or somehow residing beyond the frontiers of, economic development (Escobar, 1994, 2017). By contrast, the idea of “non-development” allows us to distinguish a lack of a fundamental commitment to the advancement of

development from post-developmental antagonism to it.63 The distinction is particularly important given the difficulty of identifying clear sectoral agendas of the state that

strongly oppose development. The state rarely embraces such agendas, but rather exhibits a strong commitment to the active promotion of capitalism (M. Weber, 1968) and

modernity (Scott, 1998).

In sum, the four sectoral agendas of the state, their characteristic land-use planning institutions, and the two development-oriented faces of the state are naturally abstract constructs. Reality is more complex and dynamic than Table 2.1 suggests. My goal here is simply to provide a parsimonious conceptual map through which to understand the scope of the state in the Amazon. State scope, in turn, is an antecedent dimension of STR, state strength, and the politics of enforcement.

63 _{Since non-development does not always oppose development, the concept covers more but says less} about the phenomenon of interest (Sartori, 1970).