Guyana and the theory of the overdeveloped state

Jan 27, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In two previous columns, I did indicate I would explain, using the conceptual model of the overdeveloped state by Hamza Alavi, why since Independence right up to the Granger Administration, the state has not been a consistent, competent and interested provider of service to the population and the future of a service culture doesn’t look bright.
This column now explains the Alavi theory and applies it to Guyana. It would be interesting to see what the people who are in the leadership of the APNU+AFC, and who have studied political theory, have to say about Hamza Alavi’s breakthrough theory of the overdeveloped state. No doubt Aubrey Norton, Vincent Alexander, my friend David Hinds, would all be very conscious of Alavi’s theory.
Do they believe Alavi’s theory can be applied to the APNU+AFC Government?  Is there anything seen from the new government since May 2015 that would suggest that Guyana no longer has an overdeveloped state? We begin with a simple, uncomplicated delineation of Alavi’s paradigm.
The different perspectives and critical discussions on Alavi’s theory need not detain us here, because space is not available. Suffice it to say that though it was written in the early seventies and is now about fifty years old, Alavi’s theory for understanding authoritarian politics in the countries that achieved Independence after the end of WW2 is fantastically resilient.
So let’s simplify Alavi. One must understand what he meant by overdeveloped as opposed to underdeveloped. Alavi was not the first to describe the underdeveloped nature of post-colonial economy. Everything was underdeveloped – economy, classes, infrastructure, education etc. Rodneyite scholars (that is Walter Rodney’s followers based on his book “How Europe Undeveloped Africa”) wrote about the poverty that colonialism left in the Third World that made it underdeveloped
Now here is where Alavi comes in. Alavi stated that while the economy and society were underdeveloped, the state was overdeveloped. This was the irony that made Alavi’s theory so influential. You see for Alavi, the colonials as a foreign power had to subjugate the local population and its territory. To keep the population in check, the state machinery had to be coterminous with the society. It had to be large and extensive. It was, in relation to the underdeveloped social structure and political economy, an overdeveloped state. Post-colonial society then in an incongruity. It has an unmodern, contracted economy, its classes are not fully developed, but the State machinery is huge and ubiquitous.
If its essential feature is its overdeveloped nature, what does the state machinery do? Its role is not to provide service and be accountable, but to do what the colonial State did – preserve power for the bureaucratic strata that controls it and to use it in service of the propertied and commercial classes. In the case of Guyana under Burnham, the overdeveloped state became a class in itself, as Alavi describes  it in Pakistan.
Under Hoyte, Cheddi and Janet Jagan, Jagdeo and Ramotar, the state retained its own identity, but formed open alliances with the petty bourgeois classes. Under Hoyte and Jagdeo, the overdeveloped state kept the population in check while it shamelessly shaped the economy to benefit the petty bourgeois classes. It is too early to say how the Nagamootoo/Granger State (and I include municipal power) will behave, but with a large group of former military personnel in the state apparatus, it is interesting to know if they will reduce the huge edifice of the state and if they want to do so in the first place.
Important to note is that the overdeveloped state has no interest in service. That is a culture it inherited from the colonial administration. From Burnham to 2016, the State has hardly served the people. There isn’t a state institution you can name from the time of Independence right up to the time of writing where the state has delivered meaningful service to the nation.  Every institution from Independence to January 2016 has shown contempt for the culture of service.
Shortly after Independence (in 1970 to be precise), bauxite workers were locked up and tear-gassed for pressing for possession of the pension money in the Riley Fund (see Eusi Kwayana’s book on the event). In Wales in 2016, workers read about their factory closure through the newspaper. While President Burnham invented visionary projects, he hardly consulted the Guyanese people. The nation woke up one morning and found out that Burnham made National Service compulsory for many sections of the population.  Under Jagdeo and Ramotar, every major state institution was undermined and service from each of them was abominable.  Space constraint prevents further analysis.

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