State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain

by Centeno, Miguel A.; Ferraro, Agustin E.

• ISBN13: 9781107029866
• ISBN10: 1107029864
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-31
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

The growth of institutional capacity in the developing world has become a central theme in twenty-first-century social science. Many studies have shown that public institutions are an important (some would argue the most important) determinant of long-run rates of economic growth. This book argues that to understand the difficulties and pitfalls of state building in the contemporary world, it is necessary to analyze previous efforts to create institutional capacity in conflictive contexts. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the process of state and nation building in Latin America and Spain from independence to the 1930s. The book examines how Latin American countries and Spain tried to build modern and efficient state institutions for more than a century - without much success. The chapters discuss key processes and challenges of state building. To what extent do historical legacies determine the capacity and reach of states? What are the obstacles to and paths toward the effective consolidation of public authority? How can states best design and create the institutions meant to provide the basic services now associated with citizenship? How can we put together notions of community that include diverse groups and cultures within a single identity, while also respecting the integrity of particular traditions? The Spanish and Latin American experience of the nineteenth century was arguably the first regional stage on which the organizational and political dilemmas that still haunt states were faced. This book provides an unprecedented perspective on the development and contemporary outcome of those state and nation building projects.

Table of Contents

Republics of the possible: state building in Latin America and Spain

The construction of national states, 1820-1890: five cases, multiple variables

State building in Western Europe and the Americas before and in the long nineteenth century: some preliminary considerations

The state and development under the Brazilian monarchy: 1822-1889

The Brazilian federal state in the old republic (1889-1930): did regime change make a difference?

The Mexican state, Porfirian and revolutionary (1876-1930)

Nicaragua: the difficult creation of a sovereign state

Friends' tax. Patronage, fiscality and state building in Argentina and Spain

Ideological pragmatism and non-partisan expertise in nineteenth-century Chile: Andrés Bello's contribution to state and nation building

Militarization without bureaucratization in Central America

Between 'Empleomanía' and the common good: successful expert bureaucracies in Argentina (1870-1930)

Elite preferences, administrative institutions, and educational development during Peru's Aristocratic republic (1895-1919)

Liberalism in the Iberian world 1808-1825

Visions of the national: natural endowments, futures, and the evils of men

Spanish national identity in the age of nationalisms José

Census taking and nation making in nineteenth-century Latin America

Citizens before the law: the role of courts in post-independence state building in Spanish America

Visualizing the nation: the mid-nineteenth-century Colombian chorographic commission

Paper leviathans. Historical legacies and state strength in contemporary Latin America and Spain

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