State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Volume 1: Republics of the Possible
Author(s): Miguel A. Centeno (Editor), Agustin E. Ferraro
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 27 Jun. 2013
Language: English
Print length: 484 pages
ISBN-10: 1107029864
ISBN-13: 9781107029866
Book Description
The growth of institutional capacity in the developing world has become a central theme in twenty-first-century social science. Many studies have shown that public institutions are an important determinant of long-run rates of economic growth. This book argues that to understand the difficulties and pitfalls of state building in the contemporary world, it is necessary to analyze previous efforts to create institutional capacity in conflictive contexts. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the process of state and nation building in Latin America and Spain from independence to the 1930s. The book examines how Latin American countries and Spain tried to build modern and efficient state institutions for more than a century – without much success. The Spanish and Latin American experience of the nineteenth century was arguably the first regional stage on which the organizational and political dilemmas that still haunt states were faced. This book provides an unprecedented perspective on the development and contemporary outcome of those state and nation-building projects.
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘… this is a quite outstanding volume of comparative historical sociology on the Hispanic world … This suggestive and intellectually refreshing quality owes much to the care with which the editors have designed a volume that plainly derives for an extended period of collaboration.’ James Dunkerley, Journal of Global Faultlines
‘The great strength of this book, which will make people return to it again and again, lies in this integrated approach. The volume brings together a variety of work from diverse disciplinary and/or country study fields, making it an invaluable portal for historians, political scientists and sociologists alike to access each others’ research on state- and nation-making in Latin America.’ Nicola Miller, Journal of Latin American Studies
Book Description
Examines how Latin American countries and Spain tried to build modern and efficient state institutions for more than a century – without much success.
About the Author
Miguel A. Centeno is Chair of the Sociology Department and Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University. He has published many articles, chapters and books, the most recent of which are Global Capitalism (2010) and Discrimination in an Unequal World (2010). He has served as the founding director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and as master of Wilson College. Centeno has been a Fulbright scholar in Russia and Mexico. He has also been a visiting professor in Buenos Aires, Seoul and Spain. In 1997 he was awarded the Presidential Teaching Prize at Princeton University.
Agustin E. Ferraro is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He was visiting professor at Princeton University for the Spring Term 2011. He won the 2009 award of the Spanish National Institute for Public Administration for his research on state reforms and public policy in Latin America. As a Humboldt Scholar from 2001 to 2003, he worked at the Institute for Latin American Studies in Hamburg and at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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