State capacity
State capacity is the ability of a government to accomplish policy goals, either generally or in reference to specific aims. A state that lacks capacity is defined as a fragile state or, in a more extreme case, a failed state. Higher state capacity has been strongly linked to long-term economic development, as state capacity can establish law and order, private property rights, and external defense, as well as support development by establishing a competitive market, transportation infrastructure, and mass education. Based on a myriad of typologies proposed by authors and scholars in the social sciences field (including, but not limited to, Weber, Bourdieu and Mann), Centeno et al. advance that it is possible to break down the concept of "state capacity" into four different types or categories as shown below:
- Territorial: it is related to the traditional Weberian concept of monopoly over the means of violence and makes us think of the state as a disciplinary body. This type of state authority or capability is purportedly the simplest to exercise because all that is needed to impose the desired order is the acquisition and use of a sufficient amount of relative coercive force. This power is wielded in two different fronts: firstly, vis a vis other states defining sovereignty and secondly, against internal or domestic opposition.
- Economic: it entails two distinct but frequently related processes. First, this is about the state guaranteeing the society's general prosperity by consolidating an economic space through the development of a national market alongside the physical and legal infrastructure necessary to support the integration of that domestic economy into a global system of exchange. The ability to direct and appropriate resources through the creation of a productive fiscal system is the second facet of the economic capacity.
- Infrastructural: it refers to the ability to process information, create organisational structures, and maintain transportation and communication systems.