Working Paper #2013-052
Minding Weber more than ever? The impacts of State Capacity and Bureaucratic Autonomy on development goals
The notion of state capacity has attracted renewed interest over the
last few years, in particular in the study of violent conflict. Yet,
state capacity is conceived differently depending on whether the
interest lies in the state's power to discourage violent conflict, in
its ability to administer efficiently, or simply in its capacity to
foster economic development. In this article, we examine the links
between state capacity and bureaucratic autonomy, and discuss the
conditions under which these converge or differ. Using panel data over
1990-2010 and a novel indicator of bureaucratic autonomy, we then
estimate the separate effect of state capacity and bureaucratic autonomy
on two of the MDGs indicators: child mortality and the prevalence of
tuberculosis. The evidence suggests that a) bureaucratic autonomy has a
stronger impact than commonly used measures of state capacity; and b)
both bureaucratic autonomy plays a more important role for these
indicators than traditional macroeconomic variables.
- Keywords
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- state capacity - institutions - bureaucracies - millennium development goals - child mortality - tuberculosis
- JEL codes
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- I38
- D73
- O43
- O50
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Cingolani, L., Thomsson, K., & de Crombrugghe, D. (2013). Minding Weber more than ever? The impacts of State Capacity and Bureaucratic Autonomy on development goals (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2013-052). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=5016