Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. xiv, 241 pp. (Tables, maps.) US$49.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-5017-3483-0.
Reo Matsuzaki’s Statebuilding by Imposition highlights the inherent dilemma of modern statebuilding by imposition. When Western democracies impose statebuilding on ungoverned or undergoverned spaces, it is an inherently undemocratic and illiberal proposition that requires overcoming local opposition. Hence, there is an inherent contradiction between the liberal-democratic model of governance advanced by today’s statebuilders and the process through which a strong state may be successfully established amid widespread resistance. The principal obstacle to the success of statebuilding by imposition has been, Matsuzaki argues, the commitment of recent statebuilders to liberal and democratic models of governance.
To test this argument, Matsuzaki engages in comparative historical investigation of two cases of statebuilding by imposition: Taiwan and the Philippines under the colonial rule of Japan and the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sharing similar initial structural conditions, the authoritarian approach of the Japanese was more effective than the Americans’ Tocquevillian approach, according to the author’s analysis. He observes the variation in statebuilding outcomes by comparing the abilities of the Government-General of Taiwan (GGT) and the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands (IGP) to undertake two basic administrative tasks: (1) collect statistical information on the characteristics, behaviours, and assets of inhabitants, or “see like a state” and (2) mobilize citizens and subjects for the purpose of providing public goods and services.
Matsuzaki contrasts the ability of the GGT to successfully carry out an island-wide cadastral survey in 1898, just three years after Japan’s annexation of Taiwan, and the acute inability of the IGP to undertake cadastral surveys quickly and widely throughout the archipelago. He also compares the capacity of the two colonial governments to contain the spread of infectious diseases. While the GGT was able to improve Taiwan’s hygenic environment and eradicate bubonic plague—the deadliest disease at that time in Taiwan—by 1917, the IGP’s antiplague campaign to eradicate cholera—the primary disease of concern—was unsuccessful.
He examines three possible explanations for the variation in statebuilding outcomes: structural conditions, existing institutions, and statebuilding strategies. He shows that underlying geographic and socioeconomic structural conditions were not much different between Taiwan and the Philippines in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Taiwan was a more challenging site for statebuilding. The Spanish state in the Philippines was institutionally more modern than the provincial government of Taiwan. The critical difference that produced different outcomes between the two territories was neither the underlying structural conditions nor the institutional endowments: it was the vastly different statebuilding strategies, or different approaches to building institutions of state-society mediation.
These institutions shape the behaviour of administrative intermediaries, whose assistance is critical to obtain systematic compliance with rules and regulations from the subject population. Voluntary compliance is especially hard to obtain during the initial stages of statebuilding by imposition, when modernist rulers seek to drastically expand the scope of government. Hence, bureaucratic expansion and rationalization is not sufficient for effective statebuilding by imposition. Mediational institutions—such as clientelistic networks, neighbourhood associations, and government-administered mass organizations—that affect the behaviour of administrative intermediaries play a critical role in overcoming local resistance and obtaining voluntary compliance. Successful statebuilding that requires effective mediational institutions, Matsuzaki argues, necessitates reform strategies and institutional models that are inherently illiberal and undemocratic. His comparative historical investigation shows that the Japanese colonial government’s authoritarian and illiberal strategy of reconfiguring the very fabric of Taiwanese society into an administered community was largely successful, while the American approach that pursued statebuilding and democracy building simultaneously was unsuccessful. Matsuzaki’s findings force us to question whether statebuilding efforts by the United States and international organizations such as the United Nations are worth pursuing to address problems of insecurity and misrule in today’s ungoverned and undergoverned spaces.
However, there are two important questions that the book fails to address. First, what is the contemporary relevance of colonial Taiwan and the Philippines? Are the successful and unsuccessful statebuilding efforts by the Japanese and American colonial rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries responsible for the contemporary political and economic performances in these countries? In this regard, it is regrettable that the book’s investigation does not extend to the postcolonial period. My comparative historical analysis of Taiwan (and South Korea) and the Philippines shows that it was the success (in Taiwan and South Korea) and failure (in the Philippines) of land reform in the early years of post-independence rather than colonial legacies that produced different political and socio-economic outcomes (You, Democracy, Inequality and Corruption: Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines Compared, Cambridge University Press, 2015). Another related question is whether it is true that the colonial statebuilding was really successful in Taiwan but unsuccessful in the Philippines. In fact, the Philippines was more advanced than Taiwan at the time of independence in terms of not only economic development but also educational attainment, as acknowledged but downplayed by Matsuzaki (184). In addition, Taiwan was no less unequal and corrupt than the Philippines in the early years of post-independence (You, 2015). This raises doubts about the claims of successful and unsuccessful approaches to statebuilding by the Japanese and American colonial governments. One may question the appropriateness of the selection of two variables—implementation of cadastral surveys and containment of infectious diseases—as indicators of successful statebuilding.
In spite of this limitation, 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.
Jong-sung You
Gachon University, Seongnam