External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893–1952
Ja Ian Chong, "External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893–1952"
English | ISBN: 1107013755 | 2012 | 304 pages | PDF | 4 MB
English | ISBN: 1107013755 | 2012 | 304 pages | PDF | 4 MB
This book explores ways in which foreign intervention and external rivalries can affect the institutionalization of governance in weak states. When sufficiently competitive, foreign rivalries in a weak state can actually foster the political centralization, territoriality, and autonomy associated with state sovereignty. This counterintuitive finding comes from studying the collective effects of foreign contestation over a weak state as informed by changes in the expected opportunity cost of intervention for outside actors. When interveners associate high opportunity costs with intervention, they bolster sovereign statehood as a next best alternative to their worst fear – domination of that polity by adversaries. Sovereign statehood develops if foreign actors concurrently and consistently behave this way toward a weak state. This book evaluates that argument against three “least likely” cases – China, Indonesia, and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.
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