Prosperity and Violence; The Political Economy of Development

New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. FOrmat is approximately 5.625 inches by 8.5 inches. 144 pages. List of Figures. Footnotes. Illustrations. Notes for Further Reading. Bibliography. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Robert Hinrichs Bates (born 1942) is an American political scientist specializing in comparative politics. He is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government in the Departments of Government and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. From 2000?2012, he served as Professeur associe, School of Economics, University of Toulouse. An Africanist by training, Bates's research has been influential in comparative politics and the political economy of economic development. Bates has been a leading proponent of the use of rational choice theory and deductive methods in political science. Bates received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 1969. From 1985 until 1993 he was Luce Professor of Political Economy at Duke University. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016. Bates's research focuses on the political economy of development, particularly in Africa. Starting with field work in the mining townships of the Copperbelt he subsequently conducted field work in Zambia. He addressed the politics of agricultural development and food supply just at the time that dearth and famine increasingly arose on the continent. Bates received the Riker Prize from the University of Rochester. He has served as Vice President of the American Political Science Association. The author explores the evolution from clan-level societies to the modern state, focusing on Sudanese guerillas, Zambian miners, and Columbian diplomats, among other contemporary case studies. Derived from a Kirkus review: A challenging monograph exploring the role of violence in economies and societies. Bates fuses economic and political theory to analyze the transformation of societies from rural to urban and from agricultural to industrial. He argues that as this transition occurs, sometimes people employ violence?and the threat of violence?to strengthen rather than disrupt the system of production. He uses the example of coffee-growing in Kenya to illustrate one of his principal theses about development: ?It involves the taming of violence and the delegation of authority to those who will use power productively.? People practice violence in agrarian societies, Bates argues, for one of two reasons: to increase wealth or to defend possessions. He presents the Nuer of southern Sudan, who avoided violence by establishing a nascent form of the weapons policy later implemented by the superpowers: mutually assured destruction. Because everyone knew their neighbors were able and willing to fight to defend their property, the Nuer experienced only rare instances of theft. By contrast, Bates shows clearly that countries like Uganda, where instability and violence are endemic, fail to develop because there is no incentive for investment in a future that is so fragile; people live for the moment, taking what they want by force. Bates then examines the growth of states and the consequences of the Cold War?s end. When the USSR collapsed, he notes, the United States lost interest?and reduced investments?in former clients like Somalia, whose strategic value had vanished overnight. The author also presents convincing evidence that developing nations sowed the seeds of their own destruction during the international debt crisis of the 1980s when they adopted protectionist policies for their industrial products. They simply could not produce and export enough goods to earn the money to repay their enormous loans. Bates?s comprehensive scholarship and his field experience in developing nations give this closely argued text a force that will strike even general readers. Condition: Very good / Very good.

Keywords: Economic Development, Industrialization, Agrarian Reform, Cold War, Democratization, Developing Countries, Kinship, Debt Crisis, Kenya, Peacekeeping, Uganda, Violence

ISBN: 0393050386

[Book #84568]

Price: $60.00

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