Abstract
This short paper comments on the eight preceding chapters. The author, as a scholar of ancient Greece and Rome, has a different perspective from the other contributors on questions of governance and statehood. Ancient governance processes, lacking modern technical possibilities in translocal communication, were spatially more restricted than today, and society had in general much lower expectations with regard to state performance. Nevertheless, the parallels between the Global South and Antiquity are striking and, in some respects, greater than between the Global South and contemporary Western societies. The following are the main points: the concept of weak, or better, restrained statehood; the fragile state monopoly on the use of violence; and civil society as a common model for the analysis of non-Western societies.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See the ambivalent picture Beckmann draws for Bolivia. Chakma and Gerharz point out the ambivalent effects of “NGO-ization” in Bangladesh.
- 3.
But often enough, determined local resistance can succeed in thwarting such “overreach.” The paper by Roy and Singh on India’s Pathalgadi Movement is a good case study in this.
- 4.
This may be comparable to the actions of the “Reclaim the City” movement in South Africa, as outlined by Daniel.
- 5.
For the model of societies: Vittinghoff (1990).
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Pfeilschifter, R. (2022). Local Self-Governance and Varieties of Statehood: Some Remarks from an Ancient Historian. In: Neubert, D., Lauth, HJ., Mohamad-Klotzbach, C. (eds) Local Self-Governance and Varieties of Statehood. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14996-2_10
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