Balancing Civil Society and Strong States in the Development Process (While Avoiding Disorder)

We’ve been talking a lot about the dichotomy between an active citizen base, or strong civil society, versus strong and efficient states, mostly categorizing one or the other as necessary for modernization and development. Midgal, as it so clearly states in the title of his book, addresses what happens when society is strong and the state is weak, analyzing the relationship between the two and calling for a strengthening of the state to make effective change, and even Meredith compares India’s diverse and active pluralistic society and arguably inefficient, corrupt government (Strong civil society/weak state) to China’s super-efficient and pragmatic authoritarian government, which historically and even presently represses its citizenship (the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s, 1989’sTiananmen Square incident, and today’s censorship of the internet and media: Strong state/weak civil society). Tuesday night I also attended a talk given by Duncan Green, head of research for Oxfam Great Britain (and also former Senior Policy Adviser on Trade and Development at the Department for International Development and formrr policy analyst on trade and globalization for the Catholic Aid Agency of England and Wales) who discussed his latest book on development, From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World. He spoke about this “active citizenship” (as an indication of success post-development ) versus “effectives states” (necessary to develop, he argued) dichotomy as well, claiming that historically there is a conflict between the two.
What I’m interested in though, is whether this dichotomization is necessary? To me it seems the old paradigm, ‘nothing in excess,’ holds true, and although it might seem like an obvious (and maybe naive) solution to any sort of disorder that could arise from either extreme, I would personally argue for a moderate form of both state and society, in order for a nation to actually function effectively. Too great of unrestrained freedom given to civil society means consensus would never be reached as well as allows for the capacity for ethnic tensions to flair, as addressed by Bates as well as Brubaker and Laitin. I think we can all understand and agree on the dangers of too repressive of a government as well. Either, I believe, could lead to a form of disorder, possibly violent, and the potential for society to get out of hand, whether this should come from lack of government control, or too much of it (thus causing civil society to rise up violently or ‘explode’ if too thoroughly repressed as Buruma addressed last week).
Finding some sort of balance between the two is definitely something that I would say most developed and already industrialized Western countries, like the US, aim to do in forming a picture of their ideal governments. The issue, however, is whether a government balanced between an active but not too disorderly civil society and effective yet not repressive government can combine in the right measures to complete the modernization process of an undeveloped or third world country. Both Midgal and Duncan seem to think that a strengthened state is important in the development process. Not that I am familiar with all the case studies of all the countries in recent history that have undergone rapid growth, but it seems to me that most of the ones we have looked at (ie China and India in Meredith, Israel in Midgal, Eastern bloc nations, etc) have done so through the means of either a particularly pro-active civil society (an up rise of the people) or else through the forces of a particularly strong state, with little civil engagement. Is one or the other really necessary in modernizing while avoiding disorder, though, or is there a way that a moderation of the two can become combined?