Statebuilding by Imposition

How do modern states emerge from the turmoil of undergoverned spaces? This is the question Reo Matsuzaki ponders in Statebuilding by Imposition. Comparing Taiwan and the Philippines under the colonial rule of Japan and the United States, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he shows similar situations produce different outcomes and yet lead us to one conclusion.

Contemporary statebuilding efforts by the US and the UN start from the premise that strong states can and should be constructed through the establishment of representative government institutions, a liberalized economy, and laws that protect private property and advance personal liberties. But when statebuilding runs into widespread popular resistance, as it did in both Taiwan the Philippines, statebuilding success depends on reconfiguring the very fabric of society, embracing local elites rather than the broad population, and giving elites the power to discipline the people. In Taiwan under Japanese rule, local elites behaved as obedient and effective intermediaries and contributed to government authority; in the Philippines under US rule, they became the very cause of the state's weakness by aggrandizing wealth, corrupting the bureaucracy, and obstructing policy enforcement. As Statebuilding by Imposition details, Taiwanese and Filipino history teaches us that the imposition of democracy is no guarantee of success when forming a new state and that illiberal actions may actually be more effective. Matsuzaki's controversial political history forces us to question whether statebuilding, given what it would take for this to result in the construction of a strong state, is the best way to address undergoverned spaces in the world today.

Reo Matsuzaki is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College.

Reo Matsuzaki's Statebuilding by Imposition moves beyond familiar theoretical formulations examining intra-imperial state formations to the more challenging task of comparing inter-imperial administrative divergence. Matsuzaki's approach is both refreshing and insightful.

The book should be essential reading for scholars and policymakers interested or engaged in statebuilding by imposition, with its provocative but convincing arguments and detailed evidence about the dilemma of the liberal-democratic—yet inherently undemocratic—approach to statebuilding.

This tightly argued institutional analysis of "statebuilding by imposition" in two colonial settings contends that Japan successfully built the machinery of a "high-scope" state in Taiwan while the United States largely failed in a similar effort in the Philippine Islands... this book is a valuable contribution to colonial studies. It is well written, exhaustively researched, and heartily recommended.

S.C.M. Paine, William S. Sims University Professor, US Naval War College, and author of The Japanese Empire:

Crystalline logic, simple organization, detailed evidence, and profound conclusions make Statebuilding by Imposition an essential reading for those who recommend outside intervention to build the state institutions and economies of others.

Tuong Vu, Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon, and author of Vietnam’s Communist Revolution:

Statebuilding by Imposition is full of provocative arguments about the inability of democracies to build effective states. Reo Matsuzaki’s candor about the mismatch between liberal values and the nature of statebuilding by imposition is admirable.