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The Historical Formation of the State in Latin America: Some Theoretical and Methodological Guidelines for Its Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Oscar Oszlak
Oscar Oszlak*
Affiliation:
Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES) and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires
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This work will sketch some methodogical and theoretical guidelines for studying the historical process by which national states were formed in Latin America. It is a suggested method for studying this process, not a rigorous interpretation of it. Such an interpretation would be difficult without first having studied in depth the experiences of several nations from which to infer and generalize a pattern of historical development. Studies of this sort have been undertaken recently, so I will confine myself here to a discussion of certain conceptual elements and a research strategy that may prove useful in the work that lies ahead. Several hypotheses on the process of state formation will be advanced to illustrate the perspective from which I propose to undertake its study.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , 1981 , pp. 3 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This work is part of a project, “The Historical Formation of the State,” on which I am working at CEDES. I want to thank The Tinker Foundation for its financial support, and my colleagues at CEDES—Jorge Balán, Andrés Fontana, Leandro Gutiérrez, Elizabeth Jelin, and Guillermo O'Donnell—for their valuable comments on previous versions of this work.

References

Notes

1. Previous versions of this work were used for reference in the seminars at the Instituto Centroamericano de Administración Pública (ICAP) and various Central American universities for the organization of a comparative project concerning the historical formation of the state in those countries (Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May 1978 and San José, Costa Rica, July 1978).

2. A good essay, in which the various anthropological treatments of the theme are reviewed, is that of Lawrence Krader, La formación del estado (Barcelona: Editorial Labor, 1972). The historical perspective has been enriched in recent years with the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1974 and 1980); Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of the Western European States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Review Books, 1975). Also see Robert L. Heilbroner, La formación de la sociedad económica (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1964).

3. Thus are excluded other historical forms, such as empires, city-states, and various primitive means of exercising domination that are sometimes considered states.

4. Formally, at least, in order to avoid dealing with the problem of whether the “extraterritoriality” of the social logic (or, in other words, the dependent relationship) casts doubt on the “national” character of the state.

5. On the state as a social relationship (and, as such, an abstraction in the concrete) see the suggestive comments of Norbert Lechner, La crisis del estado en América Latina (Caracas: El Cid Editor, 1977). Also Guillermo O'Donnell, “Apuntes para una teoría del estado,” Document CEDES/G.E. CLACSO/No. 9 (Buenos Aires, 1977). This interpretation differs substantially from the more traditional ideas that tend to identify a state exclusively as a group of institutions. For example Ralph Miliband, El estado en la sociedad capitalista (México: Siglo XXI, 1970).

6. As Tilly points out, the concept of “nation” continues to be one of the most controversial items in the political lexicon.

7. See Tom Nairn, “The Modern Janus,” New Left Review 94 (Nov.–Dec. 1975).

8. For example, Brading argues that the development of Mexican nationalism decreased after independence, due to the instinctive rejection of native patriotism by the new liberal ideologies and their mestizo supporters. The liberals, however, could not get their individualist and Europeanized ideology to engender a cohesive national spirit. See David A. Brading, Los origines de nacionalismo mexicano (México: SepSetentas, 1973). In the case of Argentina, thirty years after independence was declared, Esteban Echeverría demonstrated dramatically the consequences of territorial isolation, individualism, and localism, asking: “Does there beat, perchance, any feeling of nationalism in the heart of this fourteen-headed giant called the Republic of Argentina?” (Dogma socialista, Buenos Aires).

9. See Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Tilly, The Formation, p. 70.

10. As J. P. Nettl suggests in “The State as a Conceptual Variable,” World Politics, no. 20 (July 1968):559–92. This focus is also implied in the literature on “crisis and sequences” in the formation of the state, some of which has been collected in Tilly, The Formation.

11. Phillipe C. Schmitter, John H. Coatsworth, and Joanne Fox Przeworski, “Historical Perspectives on the State, Civil Society, and the Economy in Latin America: Prolegomenon to a Workshop at the University of Chicago, 1976–1977.” Mimeographed.

12. Although I recognize the difficulty of the problem. A controversy exists concerning the modes of production in Latin America, some discussions of which are collected in Carlos S. Assadourian et al., Modos de producción en América Latina (Córdoba: Ediciones Pasado y Presente, 1973). For a heterodox theory, which emphasizes the feudal character of the dominant mode of production, see Marcello Carmagnani, Formación y crisis de un sistema feudal (México: Siglo XXI, 1976).

13. See Julio Cotler, Clases, estado y nación en el Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos Ediciones, 1978).

14. As Schmitter et al. indicate, those administrations with a higher grade of bureaucratization, interventionism, and control are found in regions that have reached high levels of economic activity, associated with the extraction and exportation of minerals and agricultural products (Mexico, Peru, and, in a lesser measure, Brazil). We could perhaps suggest that the administrative machinery inherited from colonial times was more significant here, where the state apparatus played a greater role in the colonial economy. On the other hand, in other areas, which were at that time marginal (such as the Río de la Plata), the administrative machinery required by a pastoral, gathering, and only incipiently commercial economy was slight, for which reason its weight in the era of independence must have been comparatively minor. The topic of the colonial inheritance of the new nations has been treated, for the states of the region, by Stanley and Barbara Stein, The Colonial Heritage of Latin America: Essays on Economic Dependence in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). An interesting comparative analysis with relation to Brazil and Colombia can be found in Fernando Uricoechea, “Formación y expansión del estado burocrático-patrimonial en Colombia y Brasil,” in Eugene A. Havens et al., eds., Metodología y desarrollo en las ciencias sociales (Bogotá: CEDE, Universidad de los Andes, 1977).

15. The almost indiscriminate use of such terms as “state bureaucracy,” “state organizations and institutions,” “administrative and productive apparatus of the state,” “public sector,” only reflects the serious epistemological deficiencies that still characterize studies of this subject.

16. In addition to the various types of semi-state (mixed enterprises, “joint ventures,” institutes with state and private patronage) and para-state (juntas, special commissions), one should consider various forms of reciprocal penetration on the part of civil and state actors, which range, for example, from the participation of the former in the councils of public organizations to direct control by the state of diverse aspects of the policy of private businesses.

17. For an analysis of these concepts and the suggestion of a research strategy based on the study of social issues, see Oscar Oszlak and Guillermo O'Donnell, “Estado y políticas estatales en América Latina: hacia una estrategia de investigación,” Doc. CEDES/G.E. CLACSO/No. 4 (Buenos Aires, 1976).

18. Guillermo O'Donnell, “Apuntes.”

19. Those themes linked more directly with the state seen as a social relationship present a series of questions regarding the modes and mechanisms of representation and access to the state (e.g., political regime), consideration of which takes us away from our main object of analysis.

20. A more extended discussion of these themes can be found in Oscar Oszlak, “Notas críticas para una teoría de la burocracia estatal,” Doc. CEDES/G.E. CLACSO/No. 8 (Buenos Aires, 1977).

21. This work, however, must be postponed until a sufficient number of studies make possible an interpretation less speculative than can be made at the present time.

22. The quotation marks indicate that we are not necessarily referring to the foci that fall within structural-functionalism, but rather those — including those last-mentioned—that observe the activity of the state in terms of the fulfillment of tasks or functions. For a recent work that takes this viewpoint, see Marcos Kaplan, “El Leviathan criollo: estatismo y sociedad en la América Latina contemporánea,” paper presented at the Congreso Latinoamericano de Sociología, Quito, Ecuador, 1977.

23. A sufficiently mechanistic presentation in this sense is that in James W. Wilkie, The Mexican Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970).

24. This point presents the complex problem of the different meanings that a single issue can have for different social actors, which alters not only their respective positions toward the problem, but also the patterns of alliance and conflict that characterize the political system. Consideration of this problem is crucial to the analysis of concrete historical experiences.

25. For this purpose there is various research, finished, planned, and in progress, that refers to different national cases. In a book that appeared recently, I gather some partial results of these investigations. See my Ensayos sobre la formación histórica del estado en América Latina (San José de Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1981).

26. On the relationship between the independence of the Spanish colonies in Latin America and the beginnings of the process of the universalization of the state, see Henry Lefebvre, De l'État dans le Monde Moderne (Paris: Union General d'Editions, 1976).

27. I must recognize that the expression “colonial state” can be equivocal. For an interpretation that considers the Spanish empire as a simple extension of the monarchic state, see Arnaldo Córdoba, “Los orígenes del estado en América Latina,” CELA Cuaderno no. 32 (México: Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 1977).

28. Concerning the Latin American independence movements and their connection with the problems of national integration and the formation of the state, see Tulio Halperin Donghi, The Aftermath of Revolution in Latin America (New York: Harper and Row, 1973); Leon Pomer, “Sobre la formación de los estados nacionales en la América Hispano-India,” mimeographed. For the development of this theme in relation to specific national cases, see Edelberto Torres Rivas, “En torno a los problemas de la formación del estado: la experiencia centroamericana de 1821–1840,” in Oscar Oszlak, Ensayos; Tulio Halperin Donghi, Revolución y guerra (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1972; there is an English version published by Cambridge University Press); Fernando Uricoechea, “A Formação do Estado Brasilero no Século XIX,” Dados, no. 14 (1977); Julio Cotler, Clases; Anna Macias, Génesis del gobierno constitucional en México: 18081820 (México: SepSetentas, 1973); and Carlos M. Vilas, “Notas para el estudio de la formación histórica del estado en la República Dominicana,” in Oszlak, Ensayos.

29. The purpose of these institutions—the majority inherited from the colonial period—was to assure supplies to the cities and the security of goods and persons; to provide various health and sanitation services, public works, and customs collections; and to administer justice and the public registry of certain transactions.

30. See Tulio Halperin Donghi, Historia contemporánea de América Latina (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1969) and Celso Furtado, La economía latino-americana desde la conquista ibérica hasta la Revolución Cubana (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1969).

31. Compare Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependencia y desarrollo en America Latina (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1969). For the Argentine experience, see Roberto Cortés Conde and Ezequiel Gallo, La formación de la Argentina moderna (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1967).

32. Furtado, La economía, p. 38.

33. Compare Fernando H. Cardoso, O Estado na América Latina (Rio de Janeiro: Paz y Terra, 1977). Also by the same author, Estado y sociedad en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión, 1972), pp. 236–37. A systematic interpretation of the Brazilian experience can be found in Fernando Uricoechea, O Minotauro Imperial: A burocratização do estado patrimonial brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo: Difel, 1978; English version, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

34. Cotler, Clases.

35. In particular, the already dense dependencia literature developed from the pioneering work of Cardoso and Faletto, Sunkel, Dos Santos, Frank, and others. For a recent criticism of this literature, which questions its interpretive value, see D. C. M. Platt, “Dependency in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: An Historian Objects,” LARR 15, no. 1 (1980):113–30.

36. The concept of cellular domination is developed in Anderson, Lineages. As an interesting counterpoise to the concept of state domination, as it relates to an historical Latin-American experience, see Marcello Cavarozzi, “La etapa oligárquica de dominación burguesa en Chile,” Documento CEDES/G.E. CLACSO/No. 7 (Buenos Aires: 1977).

37. It is interesting to observe that the conjunction of those problems was not casual but corresponded to a definite stage of historical development. In effect, if “order” as a necessity of social life already appears in the works of Plato, the idea of “progress” has a much more recent origin, which coincides with the beginnings of the industrial revolution and the spread of capitalism. On this point see J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York: Dover Publications, 1932). Also, the classic essay of Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

38. As E. Bradford Burns suggests, “Over the course of the century, the elites distilled a philosophical overview which approved European ‘progress’ in Latin American terms. Politically, they required order to implement it. Economically, they adopted capitalism….” In “Ideology in Nineteenth-Century Latin American Historiography,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 58, no. 3 (August 1978). As we will see shortly, the consolidation of capitalism repeatedly presented, with different names and manifestations, the problems of “order” and “progress,” so that these, in a certain manner, tended to become permanent tensions of this mode of social organization.

39. H. S. Ferns, Gran Bretaña y Argentina en el Siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Solar-Hachette, 1968).

40. Albert O. Hirschman, “A Linkage Approach to Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (in Spanish, El Trimestre Económico, 1977).

41. I refer to a study in progress on the formation of the Argentine state during the second half of the nineteenth century, the results of which will be published shortly.

42. The quotation marks indicate the ambiguous character of the term, its insufficiency for characterizing the forms of action of the state, and, above all, the false connotation of an answer or reaction that it suggests. As it is not easy to replace in the context of this discussion, I suggest that you at least be aware of its limitations.

43. On this last point, compare O'Donnell, “Apuntes.”

44. This is not to imply, by any means, a mechanical relationship, since the nature of the mechanisms used can depend on various factors, from the degree of severity of the problem in question, the sectors affected, and the position of the state in regard to them, to less substantive considerations such as organizational modes, available technology and resources, etc.

45. This is connected to the idea of “bureaucratic rings” suggested by Cardoso in Estado y sociedad.