A Comment on: “State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract”by Timothy Besley

Abstract

In this note, I discuss avenues for future research stemming from Besley's [this issue] theoretical approach on the interconnections between civicness, institutions, and state‐fiscal capacity. First, I lay down some ideas on how one could extend the framework to model fragility traps that characterize many low‐income countries and study issues related to nation‐building, conflict, and heterogeneity across space and ethnic lines in the provision of public goods. Second, I discuss the relevance of the approach for the analysis of authoritarian populism that is spreading in developed countries and emerging markets.

Unity in Diversity? How Intergroup Contact Can Foster Nation Building

“…Despite its national diversity, most Indonesians live in segregated communities: of more than 60,000 urban and rural villages, the median village has an F of 0.04. 7 For most of its history, several independent kingdoms governed the peoples of the Indonesian archipelago. Absent a common ruler, many different cultures and languages persisted throughout the region.…”

“…This is precisely where our study innovates, and our context should be of broad interest given Indonesia's remarkable diversity and relative success in promoting a national identity. 7 Villages (desa or kelurahan) comprise the lowest level of governance in Indonesia with an average population of over 2,000 (7,000) in rural (urban) areas in the early 2000s. They are the main administrative unit of analysis in our study.…”

“…Our main specification regresses nation-building outcome y on diversity in Transmigration village v , (7) y…”

“…24 The model implies β f > 0 and β p < 0 . For our core outcome (homeIndo) and a few others, we estimate individual-level analogues to equation (7) with up to 1.8 million people. We include an array of fixed effects to address confounders.…”

Reply to: Comments on “ State Capacity, Reciprocity, and the Social Contract”

“…Papaioannou () homes in on how the framework speaks to wider debates about state fragility and the relevance of the analysis to this. Interlocking governmental and market failures trap citizens in poverty and in some cases endemic violence.…”