His review of the state and development literature is coming out in the Journal of Economic Literature, and it’s one of the best surveys I’ve read. (Link works now)

An excerpt:

There is now a burgeoning literature on state capacity contributing to the aforementioned state ‘strength’, spelling out the various ingredients, particularly fiscal, legal and military aspects of capacity.

For example, the role of wars in forging such capacity, and that of a Weberian bureaucracy, its autonomy from the political process, its career paths and incentive payments have been discussed in this context.

Less often discussed is the nature of political coalition among different interest or identity group and ‘social pacts’ and inter‐temporal bargains that make the key difference and the underlying problems of collective action that have to be overcome in building the all‐important political capacity of the state.

I’ve made related arguments in the past:

You might argue a third dimension of institutions is the political machinery that gets developed to answer the question “Who decides?”. And re-answer it every day without a destructive conflict or tumultuous turnover of power. All the apparatus that helps elites and groups bargain and make and hold agreements, have a political conversation and compete for power more or less peacefully.

This kind of political development has a lot in common with “constraints” and “capacity”, but it’s distinct. “How to manage peaceful political transitions as the relative power of different interest groups change?” is a really, really, fundamental question a society has to answer to have persistent economic growth.

Bardhan makes the case better than I can. I think I’ve found the cornerstone for my SIPA course on the political economy of development. The full article is recommended.