Concepts Wiki > > Concepts in Migdal - Morgan Smith
- Mobilization of Society: The state’s ability to politically influence its citizens and its resources in meaningful ways. These meaningful ways are ways that benefit the power of the state and are really centered around human capital. Examples of this kind of mobilization of society would include having a standing army, collection of and bargaining power over taxes, institutional rule of law, and strong-men across rural and urban areas of the state.
- Social Control: When the state becomes a symbolic and vivid aspect of people’s daily survival; affecting the way individuals behave and think. This is in accordance with the behavioral goals according to the dictates and wants of the state, and give the state power to utilize individuals towards the goals of the state.
- Centralized Social Control v. Fragmented Social Control: Centralized Social Control allows for the power and social control to be centered in the power of the state; where Fragmented Social Control disperses power among multiple social organizations and individuals who are not necessarily state political actors (such as strongmen).
- The Rulers’ Dilemma: State political actors can only utilize the mobilization of society when they provide viable survival strategies to the people. This plays into the broader theoretical mechanism of providing and utilizing resources at a state level, and allows a place for strong institutions to be a solution to overcoming collective action problems that can block the mobilization of society, and ultimately harm the power of the state, and the state’s ability to hold social control.
- Politics of Survival: Focuses on the survival of the state, and the ability to maintain power at any and all costs in the most extreme forms. This idea can take on separate forms that are individualized to the state, and the ruler, and the strategy is likely to fluctuate as the state experiences external threats or pressures, internal threats or pressures, and internal spurts of growth and prosperity.
- Triangle of Accommodation: The triangle of accommodation can be seen when states are experiencing fragmented social control. It is the idea that there is a tradeoff, balance, and accommodation of power and social control between politicians, implementers, and strongmen in a state.
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