Migdal’s book provides an approach to understanding the capabilities of modern states. Throughout the book, he refers to the experiences of five states: Egypt, India, Israel, Mexico, and Sierra Leone. This is a range of cases along a spectrum of state capabilities, one with a very weak state, Sierra Leone, and one with a relatively strong state Israel. Using a “most different systems” research design, Migdal selected cases that are different enough in certain key regards so that he could eliminate these differences as possible explanations of state capabilities. The cases thus range from one displaying extreme ethnic heterogeneity (India) to one with an unusual ethnic homogeneity (Egypt), from small populations (Sierra Leone, Israel) to extremely large ones (India).

First, he focuses on understanding and demonstrating the circumstances that led to social control in societies being distributed as it is. The expansion of the world economy and the European rules shattered existing forms of social control and left societies looking for new strategies of survival. Then he looks at why certain social patterns developed and how they influenced state capabilities by assessing the British colonial power and its rules in these societies. Migdal not only considers the institutions of states; he analyses the societies, their existing strategies of survival, their relation to power and authority, and the behavior of both state-leaders and strongmen.

 I have two main comments on the method he utilized. There is a case selection issue. Other cases can address his concern of validity and fit “the most different systems” however, he chose these five cases; why? Migdal admits in his prologue that these states and societies are those he knew more about than others and wanted to learn a lot more. Out of the five cases selected, four were greatly affected historically by Great Britain. In many aspects, the choice of Great Britain as colonial power has impacted the result of the study. One can argue that societies that came under other western influences present important differences. For example, The French practiced direct rule. They sent officials and soldiers from France to rule the colony. The British, on the other hand, relied on indirect rule. They used local rulers to govern the colonies.