Rule and Rupture - State Formation through the Production of Property and Citizenship examines the ways in which political authority is defined and created by the rights of community membership and access to resources. It combines the latest theory on property rights and citizenship with extensive fieldwork to provide a more complex, nuanced assessment of political states commonly viewed as “weak,” “fragile,” and “failed.” The contributors characterize the results of societal ruptures into three types of outcomes for political power: reconstituted and consolidated, challenged, and fragmented. They then delve into ten case studies taken from post-colonial settings around the world, including Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, and Bolivia. Written by a global group of scholars from the fields of political science, development studies, and geography, this book brings together exciting new insights on the theory of state formation, vividly demonstrating how nations are locked in a cycle of creation, rupture, and reproduction.
