Predatory developmental state?: Case of Pakistan’s militarized neoliberal state

• In Event: 20481 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4. States and Governance

Abstract

The developmental states theory emerged after the peculiar successes of some East Asian countries. Largely, the thinkers of the sociology of development attributed the exceptional success of some East Asian developmental states to their prioritization of high economic growth, high rates of investment to GDP, and better management of urban labor forces under a centralized bureaucracy with enough institutional capacity. Contrasting developmental states, the theory on predatory states that sprang up as an antithesis to developmental states, defines them as states marred by disorganization, economic and developmental failures, and dysfunctionalism. However, scant attention has been given to critically examining specific state structures, the modalities of authoritarian power under them, their undergirding role in the creation of predation — and how predation could overlap with certain developmental tendencies. This leads to an evasion of understanding specific state structures, the development models they spearhead, and their relationship to predatoriness. Here the emphasis is on the structural conditions imposed by the modalities of power under a specific state structure. Through the case study of Pakistan’s contemporary militarized neoliberal state, this paper argues that predatory developmental states like Pakistan display a form of “functional predatoriness” — where the state is predatory owing to the military’s overdeveloped, disproportionate, and extractive control over the political economy of the state, however, it still maintains a certain functionality through the civilian organ of the state that uses different forms of neoliberal developmentalism as its developmental vision.

Author

• Muhammad Adil Zahoor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign