Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation by Peter EvansReview by: Atul KohliThe American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), p. 669Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2082664 .Accessed: 29/01/2015 00:12

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American Political Science Review Vol. 90, No. 3

government authorities. This made it possible for union leaders to expand the scope of their demands beyond wages and employment issues to issues of national politics. The interests of the miners were soon torn, however, between support for overcoming the communist system and the difficulties-particularly acute in the coal sector- caused by Yeltsin's economic reforms.

The second case focuses on several of the small number of enterprises where the trade union Sotsprof emerged as an important actor. The authors conclude that Sotsprof s influence was extremely limited (and fading by 1993-94) and that the organization was actually less a trade union than a vehicle for political activities by its core leadership. Even at individual enterprises, the strength of Sotsprof often depended on its ability to play on divisions among the competing groups of would-be owners.

The third case represents what the authors consider to be perhaps the most successful of the independent trade unions, one which joined Russia's air traffic controllers. It differed from the other movements discussed in that it was a outgrowth of an official Soviet-era trade union. Strikes in the post-Soviet period were followed by repressive govern- ment measures, but the union was able to use its contacts and a fortuitous change in the organization of the air control system to establish a role for itself.

In their conclusion, Clarke, Fairbrother, and Borisov find that while the independent organizations produced some localized successes, no genuine national leadership of inde- pendent trade unions ever emerged. Most local branches of independent unions have been reduced to fighting rear- guard actions against the onslaught of privatization that clearly favors management's rights over those of workers. Meanwhile, the official trade unions have retained their status and continue to be subservient to enterprise manage- ment.

The two books reviewed here at least implicitly place labor in a central role in recent events. Yet, there is no serious effort to weigh the relative importance of worker behavior against other sources of system instability and weakness. Both books make no secret of the authors' ideological sympathies with the workers' movement and the cause of workplace democratization. In the case of Clarke, Fairbrother, and Borisov, these sympathies apparently fa- cilitated close personal contacts with independent union leaders, which proved to be the source of an impressive amount of detailed information about the inner workings of these movements.

Certainly, the weakness of the independent labor move- ment and its inability to mobilize Soviet workers in more than a few sectors demonstrated the success of the Soviet system in preventing this element of civil society from emerging, in marked contrast with the Polish case. Needless to say, no Soviet or Russian equivalent of the Solidarity trade union ever emerged to threaten the state.

Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transforma- tion. By Peter Evans. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. 323p. $49.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.

Atul Kohli, Princeton University This is a wonderful book, a real tour de force. It is essential reading for students of the political economy of develop- ment. It is also highly recommended to all those trying to understand the relationship of state and markets in the second half of the twentieth century, especially students of comparative politics.

The book seeks to analyze the role of states in both facilitating and hindering industrialization in contemporary developing countries. Moving away from the neo-utilitarian view that the best states are those that govern the least, Evans focuses instead on types of state intervention. To his mind, some states are better at facilitating industrialization than others. Why is this so? Evans develops his answer by undertaking a comparative analysis of three countries- Korea, Brazil, and India-that is focused on one sector of the economy, namely, computer industries.

Evans argues that states tend to be most successful as agents of economic transformation-as, for example, in Korea-when they exhibit the characteristic of "embedded autonomy," that is, a well-developed Weberian bureaucracy that gives the state a degree of corporate autonomy from social groups, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an embeddedness in society, especially a good working rela- tionship between bureaucrats and capitalists. Instead of hostile regulation or appropriation of private capital, states in such a setting prefer to facilitate the emergence and maturation of private firms; or stated in the new vocabulary Evans creates, successful economic states prefer the roles of "midwifery" and "husbandry" over those of "custodian" or "demiurge."

Working in the grand intellectual tradition of compara- tive political sociology that stretches from Max Weber to Barrington Moore, Peter Evans moves the study of states and economic development a giant step forward. This giant step consists of a persuasive demonstration that the neolib- eral orthodoxy on states and economic development is simply not borne out by historical evidence and that when comparative evidence is examined closely, it turns out that states have played both positive and negative economic roles. Instead of ideological simplemindedness (some even mistake such simplemindedness for parsimoni- ous theory), therefore, this more complex view provides a much better frame for discussing both successes and fail- ures in post-World War II experience with deliberate development.

This is not to suggest that all that Peter Evans argues is persuasive or that he does not leave some important questions unanswered. For example, he focuses on the relationship of the state to private capital to explain suc- cessful state intervention. The explicit argument is that, instead of undertaking direct production, states do best when they nurture and cajole private entrepreneurs. Fine, but one does wonder how he would explain the relative success of Korea's steel industry, say, vis-a-vis that of India; both have after all been largely run as public enterprises. More important, questions of why states undertake differ- ent roles are not addressed directly. Why, for example, did the Korean state prefer facilitating the success of private entrepreneurs, whereas the state in India viewed its own capitalists with suspicion, preferring instead to control their activities? No single book can answer all the important questions. Nevertheless, attention to such questions would have forced Evans to take the political and historical context within which the states in these countries operate even more seriously.

Such questions aside, it is important to reiterate to all students of comparative political sociology and of political economy of development that a major new book has been published. Order it, read it, argue with it, and teach it in your classes.

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Article Contentsp.669

Issue Table of ContentsThe American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. i-x+475-713Front Matter [pp.i-x]ArticlesPolitical Inclusion and the Dynamics of Democratization [pp.475-487]Hume's Constitutionalism and the Identity of Constitutional Democracy [pp.488-496]Serving God and Mammon: The Lockean Sympathy in Early American Political Thought [pp.497-511]Assessing the Dyadic Nature of the Democratic Peace, 1918-88 [pp.512-533]The Costs of Coalition: Coalition Theories and Italian Governments [pp.534-554]Dynamics of Cosponsorship [pp.555-566]The Dynamics of Aggregate Partisanship [pp.567-580]Strategic Policy Considerations and Voting Fluidity on the Burger Court [pp.581-592]

Research Note"Race Coding" and White Opposition to Welfare [pp.593-604]

ForumHistory, Historiography, and Political Science: Multiple Historical Records and the Problem of Selection Bias [pp.605-618]

Book ReviewsPolitical Theoryuntitled [pp.619-620]untitled [pp.620-621]untitled [pp.621-622]untitled [pp.622-623]untitled [pp.623-624]untitled [pp.624-625]untitled [pp.625-626]untitled [pp.626-627]untitled [pp.627-628]untitled [pp.628-629]untitled [pp.629-631]untitled [pp.631-632]untitled [pp.632-633]untitled [pp.633-634]untitled [pp.634-635]untitled [pp.635-636]untitled [pp.636-637]untitled [pp.637-638]untitled [pp.638-639]untitled [pp.640-641]untitled [p.641]untitled [p.642]

American Politicsuntitled [p.643]untitled [pp.643-644]untitled [pp.644-645]untitled [pp.645-646]untitled [pp.646-647]untitled [pp.647-648]untitled [pp.648-649]untitled [pp.649-650]untitled [pp.650-651]untitled [pp.651-652]untitled [pp.652-653]untitled [p.653]untitled [p.654]untitled [pp.654-655]untitled [pp.655-656]untitled [pp.656-657]untitled [pp.657-658]untitled [pp.658-659]untitled [pp.659-660]untitled [pp.660-661]untitled [p.661]untitled [p.662]untitled [pp.662-663]untitled [pp.663-664]untitled [pp.664-665]

Comparative Politicsuntitled [pp.665-666]untitled [pp.666-667]untitled [pp.667-668]untitled [pp.668-669]untitled [p.669]untitled [p.670]untitled [pp.670-672]untitled [pp.672-673]untitled [pp.673-674]untitled [pp.674-675]untitled [p.676]untitled [pp.677-678]untitled [pp.678-679]untitled [pp.679-680]untitled [pp.680-681]untitled [pp.681-682]untitled [pp.682-683]untitled [pp.683-684]untitled [pp.684-685]untitled [pp.685-686]untitled [pp.686-687]untitled [pp.687-688]untitled [pp.688-689]untitled [pp.689-690]

International Relationsuntitled [pp.690-691]untitled [pp.691-692]untitled [pp.692-693]untitled [pp.693-694]untitled [pp.694-695]untitled [pp.695-697]untitled [pp.697-698]untitled [pp.698-699]untitled [p.699]untitled [pp.700-701]untitled [pp.701-702]untitled [pp.702-703]untitled [pp.703-704]untitled [pp.704-705]untitled [pp.705-706]untitled [pp.706-707]untitled [pp.707-708]untitled [pp.708-709]untitled [pp.709-710]untitled [pp.710-711]untitled [pp.711-712]untitled [pp.712-713]

Back Matter