External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation

China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893–1952

Ja Ian Chong

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781107013759
• eBook ISBN: 9781139512305
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores ways foreign intervention and external rivalries can affect the institutionalization of governance in weak states. When sufficiently competitive, foreign rivalries in a weak state can actually foster the political centralization, territoriality and autonomy associated with state sovereignty. This counterintuitive finding comes from studying the collective effects of foreign contestation over a weak state as informed by changes in the expected opportunity cost of intervention for outside actors. When interveners associate high opportunity costs with intervention, they bolster sovereign statehood as a next best alternative to their worst fear - domination of that polity by adversaries. Sovereign statehood develops if foreign actors concurrently and consistently behave this way toward a weak state. This book evaluates that argument against three 'least likely' cases - China, Indonesia and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

Table of contents

• Cover
• External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• CHAPTER 1: Moulding the Institutions of Governance: Theories of State Formation and the Contingency of Sovereignty in Fragile Polities
• CHAPTER 2: Imposing States: Foreign Rivalries, Local Collaboration, and State Form in Peripheral Polities
• CHAPTER 3: Feudalising the Chinese Polity, 1893–1922: Assessing the Adequacy of Alternative Takes on State Reorganisation
• CHAPTER 4: External Influence and China’s Feudalisation, 1893–1922: Opportunity Costs and Patterns of Foreign Intervention
• CHAPTER 5: The Evolution of Foreign Involvement in China, 1923–1952: Rising Opportunity Costs and Convergent Approaches to Intervention
• CHAPTER 6: How Intervention Remade the Chinese State, 1923–1952: Foreign Sponsorship and the Building of Sovereign China
• CHAPTER 7: Creating Indonesia, 1893–1952: Major Power Rivalry and the Making of Sovereign Statehood
• CHAPTER 8: Siam Stands Apart, 1893–1952: External Intervention and Rise of a Sovereign Thai State
• CHAPTER 9: Domesticating International Relations, Externalising Comparative Politics: Foreign Intervention and the State in World Politics
• Appendix: Questions for Focused, Structured Comparisons
• References
• Index