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This chapter focuses primarily on those members of local elites who were connected to the government apparatus. This core group of local elites had decisively shaped state-elite interactions throughout imperial history. The chapter first outlines historical changes in the character of local elites and in their relations with the pre-imperial, the early imperial, and the late imperial state. It shows that the process of establishing viable relations between these elites and the bureaucracy was a lengthy and painful one, and that it took more than a full millennium for the empire to learn how to harness local elites to its cause. Even then, tension between holders of social and of administrative power remained highly visible, and cycles of cooperation and contest between them shaped much of the political dynamics of the imperial age.

Presents a case for a network version of the concept of political opportunity structure, focusing on environmental movement activity in eight communities in Japan. Embeddedness in specific networks shapes political action much more strongly in densely knit societies like Japan than in Western, individualistic societies; in Japan, networks operate mostly in terms of block recruitment rather than individual recruitment, and this holds for both movements and local elites. In particular, vertical ties between elites and citizen strongly shape local political opportunities: it is the presence of ‘breakaway bosses’ (i.e. local leaders who take the protesters’ side) to prove the strongest predictor of success for collective action. The chapter also presents a distinctive theoretical framework, Integrative Structurational Analysis, to link structure and agency.

This chapter describes the transformations of state security apparatuses in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It examines how the Soviet Union's collapse set in motion the cooptation and competition of local elites around shifting rent-seeking opportunities, leading to the fragmentation of security institutions in Tajikistan and the cohesion of Uzbekistan's security apparatus. In Tajikistan, fragmentation unfolded over four phases, leading to state failure and civil war. In Uzbekistan the regime's rent-based co-optation of local elites and expansion of its coercive apparatus contributed to its descent into corruption and repression, a term which the chapter refers to as a coercive rent-seeking state. In a period defined by anticorruption reforms, mass arrests and dismissals of political elites, unprecedented political and economic liberalization, and large demonstrations that often turned violent, local elites' long-standing patterns of access to power and wealth in each republic became openly contested.

Chapter 8 examines the deteriorating levels of corruption in Central Asia and explores how outside actors have contributed to some of these practices. The chapter overviews alleged corruption scandals involving large U.S. and Chinese oil deals in Kazakhstan, including the so-called “Giffen Affair,” and the fuel deals for the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan. These cases demonstrate how these attempts to buy influence are embedded within broader transnational networks involving local elites, private companies, external governments, and the offshore sector; these networks provide Central Asian rulers with private benefits, while allowing foreign governments and companies to maintain plausible deniability when allegations of corruption surface.

Looks at patterns of nation-building in Siberia, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia in the first decade of Bolshevik rule. The chapter demonstrates that the Revolution propelled to the top political positions in the newly created Soviet ethnic regions those minority representatives who had been cooperating with the imperial Orientologists before 1917. Together these two groups placed Islam and Buddhism, as well as the study of ancient histories, at the centre of nation-building projects which the Bolshevik government pursued in the borderlands. Thus, through various local initiatives, former imperial scholars and their local associates introduced elements into the Soviet project of national construction that were at odds with the goals and assumptions of Bolshevik officials in Moscow. It is these differences, rather than attitudes toward Marxism and socialism, as is usually assumed, that, above all, caused many of the former imperial scholars and their local associates to part ways with the Soviet regime by the late 1920s.

This chapter discusses how the western European consuls misunderstood the character of the imperial state society. It shows that, as a result of this misunderstanding, the consuls mistakenly declared the local elites to have been suppressed by the central government during the 1830s, even though the elites remained an essential part of the imperial system.

This chapter pursues a microcomparative study of the makeup of state security apparatuses in two regions across Tajikistan. These regions—Khatlon Province and Rasht Valley—exemplify how resource structure and patronage have embedded different state security outcomes within the country's territorial apparatus. The study reveals the inner struggles of Tajikistan's postwar reconstruction, in which the regime's use of patronage to control “unruly” local elites has been stymied by elites' limited access to rents, perpetuating an internally divided, fractious state. Initially, the formula for stabilizing and ruling Tajikistan after civil war entailed ceding control over state security institutions to key personalities and nominally absorbing smaller militia forces into various ministries of the national government. Over time, however, Tajikistan's fractious state apparatus has remained dependent on the co-optation of elites in some areas and locked in conflict with disaffected elites and nonstate militia forces in others.

This chapter discusses the author's arrival in the Turkish district of Of, where he conducted the first part of his fieldwork during the 1960s, revealing that two major families in the district have been monopolizing the higher official positions for over a century and examining the public organizations present in the district. The author also considers the notion of a clan-society that is divided from the state system. Next, the chapter presents an ethnographic analysis of the two major families—the Selimoğlu and Muradoğlu families—in order to understand them as local social formations. This analysis is able to identify the missing features of these two families that would have marked them as a political system based on unilineal descent groups. The chapter also addresses the issue of the exact foundation of these social formations in terms of daily interpersonal interactions and association.

This chapter closely examines the Armenian genocide in Diyarbekir province. It traces the genocidal tendencies of the Young Turks to the crisis of 1914 and their entry in the war; it describes the persecution process of Armenians and Syriacs in Diyarbekir province; it analyses how that persecution developed into genocidal destruction by focusing on how local elites in Diyarbekir interpreted, organized, and intensified the destruction of Armenians. The chapter discusses the conduct of the perpetrators, the fate of the victims, and responses by third parties. The conclusions focus on the importance of local elites in genocidal processes, and how the genocide can be placed in the broader structure of Young Turk population politics.

This chapter is concerned with the impact of the anti-opium campaign in Fujian. It discusses how provincial officials worked to win the cooperation of elites and co-opt them into their power structure, employing opium policy to create new relations between the state and local elites. In order to understand the dynamics of state involvement, the chapter explores the anti-opium campaign in Fuzhou from its inception in 1906 until the onset of warlordism sometime after 1915, and examines each of its bureaucratic components. It evaluates the role of the national opium administration in Beijing, and the corresponding civil and military bureaucracies in the province of Fujian. The chapter analyzes the influence of international agreements on the pace and direction of Qing anti-opium policy, and, lastly, discusses the impact of the 1911 Revolution and the policies of the new Republican state.

This chapter extends the study to the population of approximately forty weak states whose economies are defined by low capital mobility. It illustrates the impacts of resources, patronage, and local elite rent-seeking on state security using paired comparisons of six countries. Each pair—Syria and Lebanon, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan, Zimbabwe and Somalia—has confronted similar challenges, yet they have witnessed state security fragmentation in one and state security cohesion in the other. Approximately fifteen countries have experienced state security fragmentation (often leading to state failure), while across the same period thirteen countries have avoided fragmentation and witnessed the rise of cohesive state security apparatuses underpinned by rent-seeking. These are long-lasting state formation trajectories, and there is little overlap between the two groups. At the same time, another eleven countries have managed to avoid either of these trajectories, despite their low capital mobility.

This introductory chapter advances a theory of state failure that explains the cohesion and fragmentation of security institutions as a consequence of resource rents, which critically influence how local elites leverage local offices of state security. It offers an insight into the interplay of rents and resources, especially at the subnational level, in nations with low capital mobility—where resources cannot be extracted, concealed, or transported to market without state patronage and involvement. The chapter also presents the method and evidence used in the book's study. The central argument is explored through a comparative analysis of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These countries have many social, economic, and political similarities, yet they manifest starkly different paths of state development. The study employs comparative historical analysis of national-level developments that has nested within it a microcomparative study of subnational outcomes.

This chapter serves as the author's second account of his fieldwork in the district of Of. It introduces the term “hodja from Of,” which represents a stereotype for educated urbanites throughout the Turkish Republic. The chapter explains how the local elites and social thinking and practice are connected to Islamic belief and practice, and also examines the tradition of religious study, specifically its “upward” relationship to the state system and its “downward” relationship to ordinary townsmen and villagers. The question of why the hodjas specialized only in official Islam and neglected all its other versions is addressed.

This chapter identifies a comparative context for the Roman Empire in the Muslim imperial experience, from the Caliphate to the Mughals and Ottomans. As Crone once noted, the Caliphate was founded by Arab conquerors, but was quickly taken over by provincial converts to Islam in a process that saw the consolidation of an imperial monarchy, a court society, and garrisoned army. The course of Roman history mirrors this story of provincial takeover. A coalition of Italian conquerors expanded across the Mediterranean. Consolidation of conquests happened in a revolution that saw the institutionalization of a monarchy, the formation of a court, and a standing army. Only a little more slowly than in the Arab case, the history of the monarchy evolved as provincials came increasingly to constitute the personnel of the empire. At the end, power abandoned the city of Rome, only to find a durable seat in Constantinople on the Bosporus.

This chapter provides background on the history of the Anyuan coal mine and its surrounding area. It describes previous rebellions in the region, especially the Ping-Liu-Li Uprising of 1906, and explores reasons for their limited success.

This chapter provides an in-depth description of Yi Sihang's personal life and familial networks. Through microscopic investigation of a variety of private documents and by tracking down trivial links, it intends to attain a better understanding of the cultural contexts and social milieu in which Yi Sihang and his close family members lived. These efforts at reconstructing Sihang's private life shed considerable light on the social and cultural lives of other individuals and families in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a time when Korea was undergoing an epochal cultural transformation often called the Confucianization of Korea. A close examination of Yi Sihang and his family's cultural practices enables us to grasp how a regional elite such as Sihang adapted to a new cultural environment in an attempt to elevate the literati in his family and region to parity with the literati of other regions.

In this chapter the regions of Rome are analysed, in particular the three best-documented regions of the city, Trastevere, Pigna, and Colosseo. In each, the local elites are described in as much detail as is possible; how ordinary Romans acted in their regions and in the city as a whole is also analysed.

This chapter analyses the adaptation of Greek cultural and political practices in two distinct environments: fourth-century Karia and second-century Judaea. Both regions see a marked political transformation in their respective time periods. The Hekatomnid rulers actively fostered the foundation of poleis, experimented with Greek architectural styles, and the new polis communities and rulers publicly displayed Greek-language inscriptions. Similarly, one of the high priests of Judaea attempted to transform the city of Jerusalem into a polis and founded Greek polis institutions there. By raising the question of why Greek cultural elements were valuable to the agents of fourth-century Karia and second-century Judaea, this chapter proposes that very local reasons attracted the local elites of these regions to Greek institutions, and argues against seeing these processes as being deeply connected to global trends of a supposed Greek oikoumene.