State Building and Repression in Authoritarian Onset(<Special Issue>State Formation in Comparative Perspectives)

Abstract

The paper seeks to explain three episodes of political violence in post-war Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines. It argues that in the tense and pointed post-war competition between state actors and social challengers, a strategic calculus governed relationships among different political authorities, and between different authorities and social forces. The state and its challengers examine the particular currency of power and advance to assess who poses threats, and in what ways, to their various plans for political advance. To validate this argument, the paper examines the social foundations of colonial rule and nationalism, the different modes of transition to independence, and the various engines of upward political mobility after independence.