State Fragmentation: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of the Territorial Power of the State Author(s): Jieli Li Reviewed work(s): Source:

Sociological Theory, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Jul., 2002), pp. 139-156 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3108643 . Accessed: 24/04/2012 05:41
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State Fragmentation: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of the Territorial Power of the State*
JIELI LI

Ohio University

In existing theories of revolution, the state is narrowly defined as an administrative entity,and state breakdown simplyrefersto the disintegrationof a givenpolitical regime. But this narrow definition cannot deal with this question: Why, in a revolutionary situation, do some states becomefragmented and others remainunified?I would therefore arguefor the broadening of the concept of state breakdownto include the territorial power of the state and to treat the latter as a key analytical dimension in the study of state fragmentation. The dynamics of territorial state power involve the control of critical territories and valuable resources associated with the spatial position of a given state in the interstate system. A strong territorial state is able to maintain its organizationalcoerciveness and territorial integrity,whereas a weak territorialstate is vulnerable to fragmentation. The overall state crisis derives from the accumulated effects of geopolitical strain by which territorialfragmentationunfolds.

In the world as we have known it until now, nothing about states has been more apparent than the instability of their territorialboundaries.Change in the size and shape of individual states has always been associated with the rise and fall of state powers. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, an event that surprisedmost social scientists, questions about how the state relinquishescontrol over territoryhave generateda new roundof intellectual searchingfor furtherexplanations of state breakdown. When we examine the case of the Soviet Union (1991) and compare it with the case of the Iranianrevolution against the Pahlavi regime (1979), which also surprisedarea specialists, we can find the unfolding of two patternsthat distinguish state breakdown.First, the change in Iran representedthe transferof governing power between elite groups, but Iran'sterritorial sovereigntyremainedfixed; second,the changein the Soviet Union involved not only a collapse of the incumbentgovernment,but also the disintegrationof state territory into multiple sovereign states. In addition,there were other events of the 1990s that raised interesting theoretical questions: Why did Yugoslavia become dismembered,contradictingthe popularassumptionthat a federation,or decentralizedsystem, would inhibit And why, on the contrary,did a highly centralizedChina the nation-state'sdisintegration?1 survive an enormous political turmoil, going against all the predictions of its demise? In general, then, why are some states' territoriesfragmentedwhen they get embroiledin what Tilly (1993) terms "revolutionarysituations?"Why, when other states break down,
*An early version of this paper was presented in a session on the place of theory in applied sociology at the annualmeeting of the Society for Applied Sociology, WashingtonD.C., August 11, 2000. I wish to thankRandall Collins, Alex Thio, three anonymous reviewers, and the editor of Sociological Theory for their valuable comments on early drafts of this paper.Address correspondenceto: Jieli Li, Departmentof Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio University,Athens, OH 45701. E-mail: lij@ohiou.edu 1Many scholars tend to assume that the federation as a political institution characterizedby decentralization would provide territorialsub-units or ethnic minorities of a given state with more autonomy as well as greater economic resources so as to minimize their demand for national sovereignty (Riker 1964; Forsyth 1989; Smith 1995). Sociological Theory20:2 July 2002 ? American Sociological Association. 1307 New York AvenueNW, Washington, 20005-4701 DC

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do theirterritoriesremainintact?In other words, how is it that revolutionor political crisis leads to territorialfragmentationin some cases and not in others? The existing literature reveals that we do not lack theories about how the state breaks down, but we are short of theories explaining how the state becomes fragmented. THE AMBIGUITYOF STATEPOWERAS A CONCEPT In our researchon revolution and state breakdown,the territorial dimension of the state is apparentlyde-emphasized.What we have learned is that state breakdownis primarilythe breakdownof administrativeapparatus,the state's governing body. The state as a concept or is narrowlyconfined to the administrativeorganization,whetherexpressed in structural instrumentalterms.2Most studies on the state tend to focus on the relationshipsbetween the state and society. Therefore,wherever state power is concerned, it is portrayedmainly as state capacities that are manifestedin institutionalization the administrativeability to of intervenein the society's social andeconomic spheres(Evans, Rueschemeyer,and Skocpol 1985). Alternatively it is depicted as an organization possessing coercive power in the polity, which changes hands as a result of mobilized social groups'competitionfor control of the government (Tilly 1978). For most theoristsof revolution,statebreakdown,often consideredthe conceptualequivalent of "revolutionoutcome," is simply the displacementof one group of power holders by another.Because the state is perceived as an administrativepower, state breakdownis largely synonymous with the collapse of government.This line of thinking also is broadly reflected in theories of social movements, as seen by Gamson (1975), Oberschall(1973), and McCarthyand Zald (1977). The central theme in the most prominentexplanatorytheory of revolution is the statecentered theoreticalparadigmdeveloped by Skocpol (1979) with a focus on "state autonomy." By "state autonomy,"Skocpol means that the state has its own interests and that these interests,undercertaincircumstances,necessarily conflict strongly with the interests of social classes. Skocpol's significant contributionis a conceptualdistinctionbetween the state and social classes, which serves as a corrective to the Marxist view that the state merely reflects the power and the will of the dominantclass. Skocpol thereforeelaborates on two variables: the state represents one arena as an "autonomousentity" and social classes the other.According to Skocpol, a social revolution involves the social and political structural changes that occur together as a result of strainedrelationshipsbetween the central administrativeauthorityand social classes. Skocpol, however, seems oblivious to the distinctionbetween the state's administrative power and its territorialpower. Her view of "state autonomy"seems to suggest that the state and the government are basically the same because the interests of the state are actually those of state officials or state bureaucratsin administrativeorganizationsof the central government.From this perspective, state breakdownis merely the dismantlingof centralizedadministrativeorganizationsthat bolster the ultimate interestsof state bureaucrats. A similar view is held by Trimberger(1978) and is predominantin other major studies of revolutions, for example, Farhi'swork on the revolutions in Iranand Nicaragua (Farhi 1990).
2The debate over "structuralist" "instrumentalist" and of interpretations the state does not move beyond the overlappingconcepts of the territorialpower of the state and the organizationalpower of government.According to "structuralists," rulers of the state and the governmentofficials or bureaucratsare the same social actors, the whose interests conflict with those of other social actors; that is, the officials act to preserve the social system (whetherthis is conceived as capitalism or the state itself) against narrowclass interests inside the society. For the instrumentalists," state, the government,and the dominantclass are the same faction because the state or the governmentmerely consists of representativesof the dominantclass.

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Theories of revolution that have developed since Skocpol have in effect become state breakdowntheories. The currenttheories of state breakdowngenerally illustratetwo major paths: (1) popularrevolt from below, which leads to structuralchange in society, with the result thatthe established state's governing body is in disarray;and (2) revolt of an administrativeelite from above, leading to a grouptransferof governing power.These two paths, although they represent different approaches, converge into the same analytical dimension: the collapse of the state's administrativepower. Like almost all the predominant theories of revolution, they are not very much concerned with how the state breaks down in the sense of being fragmented,and they tend to confine the issue of revolution largely to a question regardingthe change of hands between social groups in controlling the state administrativeapparatus. To some extent, state fragmentationhas been discussed in scholarly literatureon secessionism or irredentism.Relevant theories aimed at explaining the origins of ethnonationalist conflicts revolve aroundthe demand for formal withdrawalfrom a host state, either by claiming independentsovereign status or by joining anotherexisting state. In general, scholars have approachedthe issues from the instrumental,primordial,and political economy perspectives (Brustein 1988; Hechter 1992; Rex and Mason 1986; Smith 1989; Wood tend to argue that ethnoregionalcollective action is 1981; Connor 1987). Instrumentalists motivated largely by rationalitybased on associations of political and economic interests, while primordialistsemphasize the nonrationalelements stemming from kinship and culturalinheritance.On the other hand, the political economy school focuses on ethnic cleavage in the form of class conflict or "internalcolonialism."3 Strictly speaking, theories of ethnonationalismare not theories of state breakdown. Rather,they are variantsof general social movement theory because their analyses focus more sharply on the dynamics of movements themselves than on the macro structural conditions under which such collective actions occur. In this sense, secessionist/ irredentistmovements are merely part of the process of state fragmentation,not the cause of it. As a matter of fact, very few secessionist movements have succeeded when the centralstate power is highly effective. As we will discuss, such effectiveness can be understood more clearly in terms of the state's territorialdimension. Apparently,if the notion of the state is to be theoreticallymeaningful,the state must no longer be treated merely as a synonym for government. The concept of the state has a broaderimplication than that of government.The state is a variable with multiple aspects including the control of land, population, naturalresources, and ethnicity (Nettle 1968). Mann (1986) also declares that the power of all states is territoriallyrelated, for the state expresses itself mainly in possession of its sovereignty in relation to other states. If sovereignty concerns the way in which exclusive jurisdiction is exercised over respective territoriesof an empire or a nation-state,then the power of a sovereign state is more than it the authorityof bureaucraticadministration; hinges on territorialintegrity.By viewing the state in terms of territorialintegrity,we turnour attentionto the extreme uncertainties of territorial boundariesin constantinterstateconflict. We considernot only how the incumhow statehoodbeing viewed bent governmentcould survivepolitically,but more important, as both a physical and a legal entity could be preserved. The state as a territorial power, therefore,standson its own right, which manifests itself in spatializedpatternsof change in interactivenaturaland social forces. The dynamics of the state's territorialpower should be treatedas a key analytical dimension in theorizing. To understandwhy a state is more likely to fragment, or conversely, to consolidate, we should move beyond the conventional concept of administrativebreakdownand find out
3For a detailed narrativeof comparativeperspectives on secessionist movements, see Premdas(1990:12-29).

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how the territorialvariablesoperateto influence state change, and how the paths of change are different under varying circumstances. TERRITORIAL DIMENSIONS OF STATEPOWER A major attemptat approachingthe state's territorialdynamics and relating them sociologically to state breakdown is the geopolitical theory of Randall Collins (1978, 1986, 1995). Drawing on Weberiantheory, Collins demonstratesthat the legitimacy of a ruling political elite at home hinges upon the state's power prestige abroad. In other words, politics works from the outside inside to affect the state's internalorganizationalpower.4 According to Collins, territorialpower is composed of the organizationalresources that make up the bases of militarypower and the territorialconfigurationin which the military power is exercised. Thus, territorialpower is indexed by the expansion and contractionof state boundaries,and its overall dynamics are geopolitical. Collins's theory can be summarized in four principles: (1) states with greater size, economic resources,and populationexpand at the expense of poorerand smaller states; (2) "marchland" states, with rivals in only a few directions,expand at the expense of "interior" states surrounded more enemies; (3) overextension leads to increasinglogistic costs of by controlling distant territories,thereby bringing potential for the rapid loss of territorial states with rivals on multiplefrontstend to fragmentinto smaller control;and (4) "interior" units. According to Collins, principle (4) draws out the obverse problem of principle (2): "interior"states are those that are not "marchlands"; hence they tend to be at a disadvantage vis-a-vis those states thatare aroundit on differentsides. Over a period of many years such "interior" statestypicallyget cut up into spheresof influenceby the statesaroundthem. Viewed in this perspective, the world system is a structure,a network of competing states drivenby the relentless pursuitof power-prestigestatus and resourceacquisition.To achieve power-prestigeabroadand remain legitimate at home requires a strong administrative capacity for extracting security-relatedresources to meet external demands. This administrativecapacity of the state is largely measuredby the degree of the state's power projectedto deploy violence whenever necessary. States are war machines either for conquest or defense. Tilly (1975,1990) makes it clear that the basis of state capacity is the state's ability to wage war, but the excessive resource extractionnecessary to fight a war affects the political capacity of the state and produces instability on the home front. As often happens, the incumbent government may get hit with political shocks emanating from a financial crisis (O'Connor 1973; Levi 1988), and rebellion may follow participation in a war when the central authorityis unable to produce the resources demandedby the masses, thereby threateningthe state's internallegitimacy (DeNardo 1985; Lamborn 1991). The overall fiscal crisis of the state appearsto be a critical variablein the state-centered theory of state breakdown, although approaches to causal mechanisms vary from one theoryto another.Too often, theoriesthatemphasizehow the stategains access to resources that are often controlled by other societal actors give short shrift to how the state can mobilize territory-related resources. Attention to a state's capacity for mobilizing territorial resources leads us to focus on the geopolitics of the state, presenting an alternative path to resource shortfalls.
4According to Weber(1978:911-12), the degree of the state's power-prestigeabroadwould strongly affect the popularityof the incumbentgovernmentat home. This pursuitis a process of "emulation"among nation-states (Bendix 1967, 1978). "The relationsamong states may be seen as a kind of status system" in which "the prestige emulation goes on constantly,during peacetime as well as during war" (Collins 1986:162). Migdal (1988) also points out that the great stimulus for a state to exert its control over society is an interstate threat,and war preparationincreases the state's ability to intervene in society's political and economic arenas.

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I wish to point out thatthe volatility of the interstatesystem seldom keeps any territorial state in a well-balancedposition and thatthe vicissitudes of a state's legitimacy connects to such changes. The struggle to control critical territoriesremains constant because territoof rial resourcesconstitutethe logistical infrastructure the state, a key to delivering finance and manpowerto the state administration(Mann 1988, 1993). Control of the critical territory,or in a broad sense, the critical space, is essential for control of the state revenues, whetherthey are producedby taxes on tradeat strategiclocations, on exploitationof fertile soils or mines, on productionof skilled-craftgoods, or on interstateor interregionalcapital transactions.Loss of control over the critical space can lead to loss of revenues and can weaken the state's administrativecapacity. Some may argue that the key sources of revenue for a state have changed as the result of an agrarianeconomy being replaced by an industrialor post-industrialeconomy, but I contend thatthe basic dynamics of geopolitics have remainedthe same today as in the past. If an agrarianempire expanded its revenue base by extracting tributes and conquering territories,a modem nation-statestill uses its geopolitical advantagesto maintainaccess to profitable markets and raw materials, even though it abandons the older "conquer thy neighbor" strategy. Gilpin (1981) points out that the structureof the internationaleconomic system is determinedprimarilyby the structureof the international political system, because mercantilismand the internationalmarketeconomies of the nineteenthand twentieth centuriesall dependedon particularconfigurationsof internationalmilitaryand political power. Increasedeconomic cooperationand interdependencedo not change the nature of militarycompetition; war remains the final solution to internationaldisputes. A similar view is found in the works of Modelski (1987) and Thompson (1988). Elaboratingon the significance of externalrelationsbeing connected to resourceadvantage and disadvantage,Waltz (1979, 1991) and Christensenand Snyder (1990) argue that the distributionof power thatcauses formationand dissolution of alliances in international politics also affects changes in political authorityin terms of defense or offense as survival strategiestied to spatializednationalinterest.Formationand dissolution of alliances could tip the balance of resources among contenders. Yet studies of internationalrelations differ from the sociology of geopolitics in that the former takes the internationalsystem ratherthan a particularstate as the unit of analysis. For example, Waltz and others are more interestedin how wars breakout in the context of an overall internationalsystem, and similarly Gilpin is more concerned about how world stability is linked to the rise and decline of dominantstates. The sociology of geopolitics, however, is fully engaged in state-centeredanalysis, as Collins's theory illustrates,with a focus on specific externalconditions of the state and how they are associated with internal change. Collins's theory clearly extends the early sociological work of Stinchcombe (1968:276-77), which noted how the overextendedstate tends to bear heavy logistic loads that decrease its military strength. Collins's theory can be complemented by other geopolitical theories to enhance our understandingof the state's territorialpower. In discussing the relationshipbetween distance and power, Kenneth Boulding (1963:245-47) proposes the loss-of-strength gradient (LSG), arguing that each nation's strength is greatest at its home base and declines the farther from home it goes. O'Sullivan (1986) proposes that state power has two inpower,"or the control of nationalterritory,and "missionarypower," gredients:"territorial or the control of a sphere of influence. O'Sullivan argues that for a state, the difficult choice is in striking a balance between missionary and territorialpower because the allocation of more resources to reach out may enable the state to gain a short-termadvantage in prospecting for dominion, but at the cost of reducing its ability to control territory in the long run.

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Using geopolitical analysis, Kennedy (1987) explores the relationshipsbetween overextension of state power and redistributionof economic resources. He argues that the rise and fall of greatpowers in history are determinedby the extent of economic capabilitythe state has in different periods of time. An empire's tendency to overextend and to commit itself to maintaininga sphereof influence is associated with a severe strainon its resourceproducingcapacity.As a result of a weakened economy, the overextendedempire cannot compete with rivals to control its territoryeffectively. Underlying all the above theoreticalapproachesis the assumptionthat the loosening of the state's control over territoriesderives mainly from geopolitical strain and resource shortfalls that impinge upon a state. VARIABLES DYNAMICS OF TERRITORIAL Although Collins's theory provides a highly effective approachto the territorialdimension of the state, it has some weaknesses. Collins does not give sufficient consideration to demographic change and ethnoregional conflict pertaining to the state's internal spatial dimension, that is, how these two variablesinteractwith geopolitical variables,adding up to the state's overall territorialcrisis. Collins's geopolitical view of state change delineates the significance of topographyas a territorialvariable.According to Collins's theory (Collins 1978), topographyenters the picture in two ways. On the one hand, naturalbarrierssuch as mountains,wide seas, and uninhabitableterritoriesgive some states a "back wall" that enables them to concentrate their forces in fewer directions. On the other hand, states without naturalbarriershave potentialenemies on many frontsand are more vulnerableto internaltension in the face of threats or perceived threats on multiple fronts, as wars or preparationsfor war consume military resources without productivegain. are Demographyis also a territorialvariablebecause populationand territoriality inseparablein termsof economic productionand political organization.Goldstone (1991) offers a theory on how demographicchange could be a source of a state's instability.He points out that increasedpopulationpressureputs strainon the state's resources that, in conjunction with othersocial factors,triggerssocial tension leading to revolution.Goldstonedevelops a more refined version of the same basic model as Skocpol in termsof state breakdown. Though touching upon the state's territorialdimension, his theory still addressesonly one type of breakdown-the collapse of administrativeapparatus. Yet the theories of Collins and Goldstone are not contradictory, rathercomplemenbut both scholars emphasize a structuralrelationship between state commitments and tary: state resources, and both identify resource strain as the critical condition for state crisis. The demographicpressure as a source of a state's resource strain can be added to a geopolitical framework to broaden our perspective. If the state under population pressure, while in the absence of economic productivityand effective revenue collection, is facing an administrativecrisis, then this crisis is likely to deterioratefurtherto a territorialcrisis when the state is caught up in mounting external pressure at the same time. From the macrohistoricalviewpoint, an administrativecrisis of the state caused by internal socioeconomic tensions may not be sufficient to tearthe state territoryapart.It is only when the administrativecrisis is compoundedby a high degree of geopolitical strainthat the state's territorialintegrity is in jeopardy. The ethnic make-up of a Ethnicity is another variable that characterizesterritoriality. of state is often a productof the historical transformation a territoryresulting from forced is annexation,and because of this, ethnonationalism not uncommonin many modernstates. Ethniccomposition, however, varies from one countryto another,but it usually constitutes

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a spatialized core and peripheralrelationshipsthat are maintainedby coercive force from the center (Parker 1988). In world history, especially during the past two hundredyears, identities have often sought the right many ethnic groups with distinct territorially-based to separateterritorialcontrol and political independence. relations?Thereis a rapidlyincreasingscholWhat,then, has aggravatedcore-periphery arly literatureon the subject of ethnonationalism.Horowitz (1985) directs our attentionto territoriallyderived ethnic mobilization and potential threatsto state territorialintegrity. For Horowitz (1985:230), the secessionist movements are rooted in unbalanceddomestic politics; yet the ebb and flow of ethnoregionaldrives for separationrevolve aroundinternationalpolitics-changes in the balance of power in the region thatdeterminesthe degree of foreign assistance to those movements (Horowitz 1985; Suhrke and Noble 1977), and the velocity of internationalcompetition that has varying impacts upon the state's policy toward minority groups (Clark 1998). Hechter (1992, 2000) furtherpoints out that the majorfactors contributingto the rise of ethnoregionalmovements for autonomy or secession are: (1) a regional political organization (that usually exists in the form of party) with a secessionist orientation;(2) a low regional dependence on economy in the center; and (3) a perception of the host state's weakness (as members of territoriallyconcentratedethnic groups see little cost to themselves in pursuing collective action to demand sovereignty). Each of these three factors comes into play in accounting for a declining central power that allows for the active maneuveringof anti-statemovements. What, then, causes central state power to decline? The current theories of ethnic conflict do not seem to offer a satisfying answer because most of them tend to focus primarily on sources of domestic ethnic tensions ratherthan on the state crisis in general, limiting their analyses to the scope of macro conditions as far as state breakdown is concerned. Even the most popular view, which offers federalism and decentralization as a solution to containing ethnic nationalism, has been seriously challenged because new evidence indicates that federation as a political institution is more likely to create opportunities for ethnoregions to fight the central state for nationalist ends (Meadwell 1993; McCarty and Zald 1996). In fact, the threat of ethnic separationexists to varying degrees in many countries regardless of whether they are poor or rich, because ethnic groups with a territoriallydefined group allegiance always aspire to independencewhenever an opportunityto gain it is available (Knight 1982). Yet lessons in the past suggest that the freedom to secede cannot be achieved easily, for the central state power will always try to prevent secessions with all its might; anti-state movements (even those carried out in civil wars) have rarely succeeded when the central state power is highly effective. Moreover,we may ask these questions:Why does ethnic separationbecome successful in some countries,but not in othercountries?More specifically, why have Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania become independent, but not Tibet? When we mesh the perspectives of ethnic conflict with the geopolitical approach, one more corollary can be added to the theoreticalframeworkof state fragmentation: More than language and religion, even more than economic deprivation and political cruelty, the success of a localized ethnic drive towardself-determinationor towardseparatestate status depends largely on the decline of the central or host state's coercive power in times of overall state crisis. In the context of territorialpower of the state, when the state suffers a downhill trajectoryin its geopolitical fortunes, there is usually a power shift from the centertowardthe peripheries,providingan arenafor political mobilization of ethnonationalism.The world map of the 1990s dramatically indicates that most of the new states formed have been the products of state fragmentationratherthan secession.

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By synthesizing all theoretical perspectives discussed above with Collins's theory as a vantage point, we could develop a model to demonstratea causal sequence of the decline of central state power leading to fragmentation. the Three ideal-typicalpatternsof causal relations stand out as crucial in understanding dynamics of territorialvariablesas they are relatedto the process by which state fragmentation proceeds: (1) the relationshipbetween the change in the balance of power in interstate conflict and geopolitical position of a state that ensues from such change; (2) the relationship between the state's geopolitical position and its administrative resourceextractingcapacity; and (3) the relationshipbetween the amount of resources the state is able to gain access to and the level of coercion the state is able to carry out within its territorialboundaries.The basic principle is that, all other things being equal, states with geopolitical superiorityconsolidate whereas the states with geopolitical inferiority fragment. This means that whether a state expands or contracts is contingent on how it is geopolitically positioned in relationto other states, especially powerful states. A favorable geoposition increases the state power with resource advantages that promote expansion, whereasan unfavorablegeoposition decreasesthe state power with resourcedisadvantages that engender disintegration. How do we ascertainwhich is a state with geopositional advantage?Historically,this is relative to how densely settled and wealthy the populationis on one's borders,and on the other hand, to what extent military threatsare posed by the surroundingstates. Moscow state in northernRussia in the fourteenth century because was a superior, "marchland" effectively there was no military power further north of it, although in fact there were small tribalcoalitions in the area. Similarly,what counts as "on one's borders"depends on the conditions of long-distance transportationtechnology as well as political alliances formed to keep the balance of power in interstatecompetition. For example, the United States and Russia could not have been territorialenemies effectively in the early nineteenth centurybecause it was too much of a logistical overextensionfor both to come into militarycontact. Neither was it possible for the United States to counterbalancethe power of Russia without the critical role of NATOduring the Cold War. A state with geopositional disadvantageis an "interior"state to the extent that it has enemies on its borders in several directions, whose relative levels of resources are high enough to pose a threat, and who are within effective logistical range. The degree of geopolitical strain on an "interior"state is due to how many different directions it has enemies on, multipliedby the resource strengthof each of those enemy states comparedto the state's own resources, and by the logistical costs associated with delivering resources to defend those territories.A badly strained"interior"state is the one that has a total of resource imbalances and logistical strains from its major enemy, or enemies, or all the different potential enemies it faces. While the breakdownof a historically vulnerable "interior"state can better be understood in the context of the shift in geopolitical positions of a given state, the real dynamics of territorialpower do not lie merely in large or small state cases, but more in an interstate turns into an "interior" active and cumulative process involving how a "marchland" in other words, how a resource-richstate declines into a resource-poorstate. The state, process starts unfolding when a given state's geopolitical advantage evaporates, and its obligation to take increased external challenges gobbles up all the resources that might have otherwise been allocated for meeting domestic needs. Resource shortfalls are initially derived from nationaldebt incurredfrom excessive spending on wars or war preparation, and from the loss of profitablemarketsas well as sources of externalfinancial aids.

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A lack of criticalresourcessubsequentlyexerts a devastatingimpacton the coercive power of the state's administration. Hence, schematically,the more the state suffers from its overall geopolitical strain,the more likely it is that it will fall into an "interior" geoposition. Moreover,the more the state is in an "interior" geoposition, the higher the security-relatedcosts, and the more it will be subject to financial strain.The greaterthe financial strain,the less the state administration will be able to allocate adequateresourcesto meet internalneeds, and so the greaterwill be societal tensions due to unbalanceddistributionof resources, the more likely there will be increasedconflicts between the core elite and peripheralelite, and the more likely that the conflict will extend to policy disputes between factions of the core elite. As intra-elite conflicts increase, the weaker the state administration'scoercive power becomes. As the central state's access to coercion diminishes, a power vacuum develops, providing an arena for vigorous anti-centermovements, making the state extremely vulnerable not only to volatile revolutionarysituations but also to direct or indirect foreign intervention. In the long run, the more persistent geopolitical strain becomes, the deeper in turn becomes the condition of financial crisis, decreasing the state's legitimacy and strengthening ethnonationalistmobilization. This makes it more likely that there will emerge dual or multiple power centers, so that the state might break up into multiple sovereignties. As shown in the composite model (see Figure 1), geopolitically generated resource shortfalls drive the central state into a position susceptible to fiscal crisis in conjunction with existing populationpressure or economic recession. The intra-eliteconflict that follows aggravates social or demographictensions and ethnic antagonism,giving rise to an internalrevolutiondue to the legitimacy crisis of the incumbentgovernment.As the model furtherindicates, the dynamics of territorialforces do not stop at the explosion of internal revolution. They continue to interact to exacerbate internal decay. Under prolonged and heightened geopolitical strain, the territorialintegrity of the state is endangered when ethnonationalistmovements grow strongerat the expense of deterioratingcoercive central state"thatclaims national power and each becomes what McColl (1969) calls an "insurgent sovereignty over its own core area. Such momentumculminates in splitting up the whole territorialstate, as none of the contending powers in the political arenaare strong enough to replace the center. Historically,it often turnsout that when the state splinters,fragmen-

Whilebeingcombined with existingeconomic or demographic pressure Aggravated core-periphery--tensions

intervention Nonmilitary of foreignpowers / \ Precipitated mobilization of of ethnonationalism

t
High degreeof geopoliticalstrain of centralstate Highdegree of resourceshortfalls Increased intra-eliteconflict

/
crisis Legitimacy of incumbent government
.

T
Dual/multiple powercenters-, Divided territorial sovereignty

~p/

Diminished coercive administrative power of centralstate

Revolutionary situations

J
intervention Military of foreignpowers

Whilebeing combined with existingsocial tensions

Figure 1. A composite model of state fragmentation.

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tation startswith the regions farthestaway from the center,with the impactthen spreading inward. The power of the territorialstate is not static;the destabilizingor stabilizing effects are cumulative over time as the state's geoposition changes. A strong territorialstate builds upon its long-run geopositional advantages, and the smallness of internal states is the result of empire fragmentation,not the cause of it. THE CASES STATECHANGE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: OF THE SOVIETUNION, YOGOSLAVIA,IRAN, AND CHINA Two significant events, among others, in recent history deserve special attention in our They involve the territorial disintegrationof the Soviet Union study of state fragmentation. (USSR) and the Federationof Yugoslavia in the past decade. I will briefly analyze the processes and consequences of these two countries'fragmentationand then comparethem with the IranianRevolution in 1979 and China's political crisis in 1989. This comparative analysis is intended to illustrate how the presence and absence of similar causal mechanisms led to different outcomes of state change. The Soviet Union Some scholars attributethe fragmentationof the Soviet Union to the failure of its communist ideology and authoritarian political system, but we are puzzled by a question:Why did it happen to the Soviet Union, not China, anothercommunist giant, while both countries found themselves embroiledin political chaos at approximatelythe same period?Alternatively, other scholars espouse the idea of the "greatman of history":that only a reformminded individual leader like Gorbachev could make it happen. But we know that the reformscarriedout by Gorbachevwere intendedto rejuvenatethe Soviet power ratherthan destroy it. Probably anyone who took over the role of the Soviet leadership would have done the same at a time when the empire was in decline. Still, the Soviet Union crumbled, bringing down not only its political structurebut, more significantly, the union among its various ethnic regions. The fall of the Soviet Union exemplifies how a strong territorial state fell into a weak territorialstate and eventually perished in fragments. Soon after its founding, the Soviet Union expandedits power into Transcaucasia the in 1920s and into CentralAsia in the late 1920s. The expansion continued during and after World War II, resulting in the conquest and acquisition of new territories as well as the establishment of satellite states throughout Eastern Europe. However, such westward expansion, by eliminating a traditionalbuffer zone (such as Hungary,Czechoslovakia, and Poland), turnedthe Soviet Union into an "interior" position as it came to face a direct standoff with NATO,the second-to-none power group in the world. Soviet military strength was spread thin, with its armed forces stationed in many remote regions, dissipating resources requiredto put down political dissidents in both annexed and satellite nations. Since the mid-1960s, the geopolitical shift became more unfavorable to the Soviet Union. While continuingto engage in a costly Cold Wararmsrace with Westernpowers in Europe, the Soviets faced hostile military forces along the long border with China and became involved in several militaryclashes. Comparedwith its enemies, the Soviet Union came up short in resources,by a ratio of 1 to 3.5 in total populationand by 1 to 4.6 in total economic resources (Collins 1995:1567). Yet again, the Soviet geoposition worsened in 1979 as a result of its war in Afghanistan,which put more burdenson its already strained state treasury.This overall "interior" geoposition had profoundrepercussionson domestic

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politics, especially in combination with an ineffective planned economic system. By the 1980s, resources needed to sustain political and economic stability were depleted to such extent that social unrest became common. On the domestic front, Russians resided with large numbersof non-Russianpeople in the peripheralregions, who constitutedsome 45 percentof the Soviet population(Ganguly and Taras1998). In the Soviet era, especially afterWorldWarII, as more nationalitieswere incorporatedinto the empire, tension between the central state and ethnoregions (particularly those on the westernperipherywhere economic developmentwas advanced)remained constant, and it became more acute as the center, which had been under increased geopolitical strains, attemptedto squeeze more materialsfrom the resource-richrepublics. Furthermore,towardthe end of the 1960s, the growing economic disparitybetween center and periphery resulted in a demographic movement that reversed the traditional migration pattern(from the center to the periphery),thereby creating more resource pressureon the center (Zaslavsky 1997:89). Forcesunleashedfromgeopoliticallygeneratedstrainsfirstundermined Soviet Union's the military apparatus,as was evident in its failure to seek expansion by winning a war in neighboringAfghanistan.The signs of weakeningterritorialauthorityfirst startedshowing up when the Soviets failed to responddecisively to the rise of the Solidaritymovement in Poland, and later refused to send militaryforces to other East Europeansatellite nations to help put down dissident movements as they had done before. The intra-eliteconflict came to a head as the state was floundering with resource shortfalls. The decline of coercive organization manifested itself in the revival of long-suppressed nationalist identity and separatist aspirations that appeared in peripheralregions close to the West such as the Baltic Republics, Ukraine and Moldavia. Interestinglyenough, unlike in the past, tension between peripheryand center revolved more aroundnationalidentity than mere economic self-interest (Sunny 1993). As the peripherieswere challenging the central authority,the elites in the center split into two powerhouses, as shown in the emergence of the Yeltsinled Russian Republic opposed to the Soviet Union. By the end of 1989, the Soviet Union lost its grip on Eastern Europe, the far-flung western peripheryof the empire. The disintegrationof the WarsawPact following the fall of the Berlin Wall spurredwaves of state breakdownin the communistbloc (Stokes 1993). When the chain effect spreadfurtherinside the Soviet Union, the balance of internalpower politics was tipped in favor of the peripheralregions. Geopolitically, it was no coincidence that those Baltic republics close to the West became the first to mobilize themselves into action. In March 1990, the Lithuanianparliamentopenly declared its independencefrom the USSR, and similarmoves soon took place in the rest of the Baltic republics.Then other peripheralSoviet republicssuch as Moldavia,Armenia,and Georgiaquickly followed suit, breakingaway from the Union. At these times of severe territorialcrisis, reforms intendedto save the empire were too late to be effective, and Gorbachev'sperestroika and glasnost initiatives achieved little besides expediting the fragmentationprocess by furtherdiluting the central state's powerForces released prestige and creating a power vacuum for ethnonationalistmaneuvering.5 from the crisis, once set in motion, are likely to gain momentumin the mannerdescribed by Schelling (1962) as a "tippingphenomenon."Thus neitherGorbachev'sreformsnor the resistant elite coup to regain central control were able to turn back the trend. With the center crumbling,otherethnic republics (such as those on the CentralAsian periphery)that
5Forexample: By appealingto Westernfinance in returnfor the Soviet supportof the U.S.-led Gulf war against Iraq,its long-termally in the Middle East, Gorbachev'sfinancial reformpackage to rescue the economy appeared costly to the power-prestige of the Soviet Union in the eyes of his own people, let alone the international community.

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had demandedmore autonomy,ratherthan full separation(due to their economic dependence on the center) were actually left alone and thereforeforced onto the bandwagonfor independence (Motyl 1992:37). By the end of 1991, the once proudSoviet empire finally disintegrated,with its entire state territoryfragmentinginto multiple national sovereignties. It is interesting to note that the impact of the "shockwave" of fragmentationhas continued to linger, spreading further into the semi-peripheralMoslem North Caucasus regions such as Chechnya and Dagestan. Yugoslavia If the case of the Soviet Union is illuminating for understandinghow a large territorial state disintegratesas the result of its "marchland" geoposition being shifted to an "interior" geoposition, the federation of Yugoslavia may serve as an example of how a smaller state can also be caught in territorialcrisis. Some scholars explain Yugoslavia's disintegrationby pointing to its unbalancedstate-society relation, that is, too much decentralization of the center-regionalrelations generated destabilizing effects. But we are unclear about whether the union was so decentralizedthat secessionism became a viable option. Otherscholars hold the view thatthe world economic recession in the 1980s was to blame for the collapse. But what about other states that did not breakup while going throughthe same economic difficulties? From the geopolitical viewpoint, the fragmentationof Yugoslavia is no historical coincidence. The Balkans, twice engulfed in world wars in the twentiethcentury,have been a barometer of changes in the balance of power in Europe.The stability of the formerYugoslavia was due largely to its unique geoposition as a buffer between the Westernpowers and the Soviet-led eastern powers in the post-World WarII period, delicately balanced on Tito's nonalliancepolicy, the so-called "ThirdRoad"between communismand capitalism. Such a geopositional advantage, in many respects, helped elevate the power-prestige of this multiethnic state, which in turn became a magnet for a unified national identification. It also helped the state gain access to extra resourcessuch as foreign aid and loans needed to achieve an impressive economic development.6 By the 1980s, for example, Yugoslavia had become the seventh largest industrialnation in the world. Yet this buffer status evaporatedas the balance of power shifted in favor of the West when the Soviet-led WarsawPact disbanded.As a result, Yugoslavia became less strategically significant in the eyes of the West because it was no longer needed to contain the Soviet Union (Woodward 1995:148). Confrontedwith NATOexpansion into Easternand CentralEuropeand with dwindling externalresources, the territorialpower of Yugoslavia quickly declined as the central government was unable to maintainthe delicate balance between the center and regions, and deep-seated interethnicconflict started resurfacing (Rusinow 1988). In 1989, spurredby the waves of nationalismsweeping throughPoland, Hungary,and otherEast Europeancountries,the two resource-richrepublicsof Yugoslaviaon the periphery, Slovenia and Croatia,quickly jumped on the bandwagonto challenge Belgrade. Slovenia was the first to introducecompetitive parliamentary elections to allow the formation of new political parties (Rupel 1994). In early 1991, the governmentin Ljubljanaformally moved to secede from Yugoslavia. Consequently,a civil war eruptedbetween the federal government and Slovenian resistance forces. Given the advantages of being close to the
6In anotherexample, that of India, the position as a "bufferzone" state between two contending powers-the United States and the Soviet Union-provided an opportunity for India to gain access to more resources to improve its economic development and consolidate the state power in the period of 1947-1962 (Basu 1985:193-213).

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western powers and being equippedwith betterresources,well-armed Slovenians defeated the federal forces. At the end of June 1991 when the federal military failed to stop the Slovenian movement toward independence, the Croatiangovernment seized its opportunity and broke away from the Yugoslav Federation. Western intervention, especially on the part of the E.C. (EuropeanCommunity,now called the E.U. or EuropeanUnion), played a pivotal part in expediting the fragmentation process of Yugoslaviain which the role of a reunitedGermanycan by no means be underestimated. With its historical and cultural links to Slovenia and Croatia, Germany, its power-prestigeboosted after reunification,voiced strong supportfor the independenceof these two Yugoslavianregions, and became influentialin the E.C.'s eastwardexpansion in the name of peace-making (Cohen 1993:229-36; Woodward1995:183-89). Strainson the central state of Yugoslavia built up from mounting external pressure when the United States and E.C. took action to freeze arms sales and financial aid, suspend trade and cooperationagreements,impose a ban on the importationof Yugoslav textiles, and terminate GATTbenefits for Yugoslavia.The E.C. even excluded Yugoslaviafrom participating in an economic recovery programfor EasternEuropeancountries. Moreover,the conspicuous decline of the Soviet influence allowed the western powers to step in openly to support the independence of Slovenia and Croatiawithout fear of Russian military intervention (Woodward 1995:146-98). Under this high geopolitical strain, the central administrativesystem of Yugoslavia started falling apart in the midst of a financial crisis, caused first by the collapse of the central banking system (as more republics refused to transferrevenue to Belgrade), and then by the federal government'scostly military campaigns in Slovenia and Croatia,followed by Western economic sanctions. By the end of 1991, the Yugoslav economy was disintegrating,and so was the federal coercive power to keep the remainingrepublicsfrom breaking away. In succession, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovinabecame independent. Similar to the Chechnyawar in Russia, the recent Kosovo crisis was merely part of the continuing fragmentationof the federationof Yugoslavia.A strong military reaction from eastward-expandingNATO power to hold back any Yugoslavian military campaign in Kosovo indicates again that a geopolitically weak state is in no position to effectively mobilize its resources (including seeking powerful allies) to keep its territoryintegrated. Iran Comparedwith the cases of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the case of Iran in 1979 turnedout differently:Iran'sterritorialpower remainedstable in spite of the radicalpolitical change that took place throughthe process of revolution. The Iranianrevolution was a case of state breakdownwithout fragmentation.As many have pointed out, this revolution was basically caused by misguided governmentmodernizationpolicies coupled with an increased conflict between the state and clergy over the land reform as well as the secularizationthat severely threatenedthe traditionalmiddle class or bazaaris (DeFronzo 1996:250-71). The unequaldistributionof wealth that createda huge gap between the rich and the poor further alienated the general public and intensified intra-elite conflict that gave rise to a strong opposition led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The charisma of Khomeini effectively organizedpopularuprisings against the incumbentgovernment,with the result that the new regime replaced the old one. What makes the case of the IranianRevolution interesting is that Iran went through a crisis of administrationratherthan a crisis of territory.In a large measure, before 1978, Iran's geopolitical position was far from that of an "interior"state. In fact, geopolitically the state had been in relative ascendancyand engaged in a majoreffort to assume a leading

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role in the region to fill the power vacuum created by the British withdrawal of their protectorateforces from "east of Suez" in 1971. Comparatively,Iran possessed greater resource capacity. The country had a greater human resource advantage than most of its neighbors. The Iranianoil reserve also provided the Shah's regime with enormous petrodollar revenue. By the early 1970s, Iran enjoyed one of the world's highest rates of economic growth; it was moving rapidly to become the most highly industrializedstate in comparisonwith all of its neighborsexcept the Soviet Union. In addition, Iranenjoyed military superiorityin the Gulf. According to Institutefor Strategic Studthe evaluation report (1972-1973) issued by the International ies (IISS), Iranwas militarilythe strongestamong the threemajorGulf powers (Iran,Iraq, and SaudiArabia),and the technical capacities of its ground,naval, and air forces were far superiorto those of its neighbors. Throughoutthe 1970s, the balance of power in the Gulf tilted heavily in Iran's favor. Iranbuilt up close militaryand economic ties with the United States.Using oil for "resource diplomacy,"Iranhad improvedand balancedits relationshipwith the Soviet Union (Sicker 1988:98-106). Iran'stensions with Iraqwere considerablyreducedafter the two countries signed the Algiers agreement in 1975, in which Iraq made substantialterritorialconcessions to Iranover the Shattal-Arab,a long disputedborderarea,and in returnIranpledged to end its aid to the Kurdishrebellion within Iraq (Abdulghani 1984:152-55). The absence of severe geopolitical strains surrounding Iranprior to 1979 clearly facilitated the stability of the territorialpower of the state. During the revolutionaryperiod, authorIran'sregional power-prestigewas never seriously challenged, and Iran'sterritorial ity remainedeffective, as indicatedby the fact that the adjacentregional powers basically remainedneutraland refrainedfrom direct interventionin Iran'sinternalaffairs, thus discouragingIran'sdissident ethnic groups (such as the Kurdsand Baluchis) from mobilizing in pursuitof secession. Unlike the cases of the Soviet Union andYugoslavia,Iran'sinternal revolutionsimply led to one form of state breakdowncharacterized the change of hands by between elite groups in controlling the state's administrativeapparatus. Some may argue that Iran did not disintegratebecause it was less ethnically divided within its territorial boundariesthanwas the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia.But as suggested by the state-centertheory on the territorial power of the state, the political mobilization of ethnonationalismis a productratherthan a cause of declining central state power. Therefore, what really mattersis the capacity of the central state's coercion ratherthan ethnic division itself. It has been common in world history for territoriallyconcentratedethnic groups to keep their languages and culture alive, or achieve a certain degree of autonomy or even self-rule, underthe overarchingpower of the centralstate.As we have discussed in the cases of the Soviet Union andYugoslavia,it is only when geopolitically inducedstrains drive the central state power in a downhill trajectory,shattering the legitimacy of the unified national identity, that ethnoregionalismis given an opportunityto mobilize into political action for independence. China From 1989 through the early 1990s, the prevailing prediction was that China, like the Soviet Union and its East Europeancommunistallies, would soon disintegratebecause, as some argued, rising public grievances indicated that the government had lost its legitimacy, and more important,the ruling party was caught in an ideological crisis of "grand failure"in communism.A close examinationof China as a territorialstate, ratherthan an ideological entity, however, reveals thatthe crisis in China was of a differentkind thanthat faced by the Soviet Union. Although the internaltensions remainedhigh in both countries,

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a severe geopolitical strainwas clearly missing in the case of China. In fact, China, in the late 1970s and throughoutthe 1980s, was generally favored by the geopolitical conditions surroundingit, unlike the Soviet Union. By all accounts, China's political crisis in 1989, characterizedby localized large-scale public protests, did not stem from any geopolitical strains.Instead, quite similar to Iranin some respects, it was largely a crisis of administrationcaused by internaltension arising from populardemand for political change as economic reform deepened, a typical example of a country that undergoes changes in a transition economy. Moreover, the prodemocracy movement itself was more spontaneous than carefully planned, thus the movement itself was far from being an effective political organization(Li 2000b). It lacked a strong oppositional leadershipor separation-oriented territorialauthoritylike the ones in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and therefore was quickly suppressed by the government. When internaltension was not sufficient to escalate into a full-scale revolution, the overwhelming geopolitical advantagesthat the state had enjoyed ensured that the central administrationhad more resources at its disposal for effective domestic control. From the geopolitical viewpoint, in contrastto the case of Yugoslavia, the decline and demise of the Soviet Union was a blessing, not a curse, for the stability of China. China's geoposition started improving in the late 1970s when the United States normalized its relation with China and when the Soviet military was mired in Afghanistan.The strategic change in U.S. policy toward China came as a result of the geopolitical decline of the United States in the aftermathof the Vietnam war, and the need for an ally in confrontations with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. On the other hand, the protractedwar in Afghanistandiverted a great deal of the Soviet Union's attentionand resources away from China. Consequently,the changed balances of power in a multistatecompetition reduced the immediate danger to China's security from both sea and steppe (Li 1993). As a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which virtually eliminated any serious threatfrom the north, China was more strongly favored in the 1990s in terms of its geopositional and resourceadvantagesrelative to adjacentstates. China was thus more able to concentrateits resourceson strengtheningits coercive administrativeapparatus, partly explaining why the internalstability of China has steadily improved since the 1989 political turmoil. It furtherappearsthat China's territorialpower will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.The returnof Hong Kong in 1997 andof Macao in 1999 to Chinahas already boosted the legitimacy of the centralstate, which in turnprovides a favorableenvironment in which economic reformscan be carriedout and succeed. Recently, China's well-heeded threatto take back Taiwan,which Chinaregardsas a renegadeoffshore island province, an outcome of the civil war in 1949, is unmistakablya sign of a rising territorialpower. Like the situation in Iran in 1979, the territorialpower of China in 1989 was strong, helping to deter any serious ethnoseparatistattemptsfrom challenging the central authority, even though the nation itself was plunged into a temporarychaos. Again, it is not that, as some argued,China was immune from fragmentationbecause of its small ethnic minority population;the whole history of Chinahas been rife with separatistwars, and until now potential threats to China's territorialintegrity have been coming from the vast northern and northwesternperipheries where the Mongols, Muslims, Uighurs, and Tibetans are concentrated.Yet as long as China remains geopolitically strong, hardly any separatist movement could escape a fatal blow from the central authority.As China's geopolitical fortunes accumulate,abundantresources acquiredfrom both internaland external capital marketsfurtherassist China in exerting a tighter control over its peripheries.Apparently, this very power of geopolitics has promotedthe integrationof economic relations among China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,therebymakingit even more difficult for Taiwanto move toward independence (Li 2000a).

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State fragmentation is a complex issue, particularly in the modern world. Consider other cases in the twentieth century: the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905, Ireland from the United Kingdom in 1922, Singapore from Malaysia in 1965, and East Timor from Indonesia in 1999. To explain these cases, which involved secessions achieved through relatively peaceful rather than violent means, apparently requires a more refined version of the theoretical framework. But what is certain is that we cannot fully comprehend all those successful secessions without reference to the territorial dimension of the state. The core of geopolitics never disappears, even though social contexts vary from one case to another. In a revolutionary situation, when many causal mechanisms appear, it is geopolitical forces that are likely to be the most critical in pushing the state toward fragmentation.

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