(a) "The post-colonial state was thought of an entity that stood outside and above society as an autonomous agency." Explain. (20…

(a) The post-colonial state as an autonomous entity

Hamza Alavi ("The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh", New Left Review, 1972) argued that the colonial power built a hypertrophied bureaucratic-military apparatus to subordinate all domestic classes, which independent states inherited while indigenous classes stayed weak. This "overdeveloped state" acquired relative autonomy, with the military-bureaucratic oligarchy mediating among three propertied classes: the indigenous bourgeoisie, the landed classes and the metropolitan bourgeoisie. Alavi drew on the Marxist debate on relative autonomy (Miliband, Poulantzas), not on Weber. Development planning, as in India's Five Year Plans and the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, expressed the idea of the state as an agent of modernisation standing above society. In practice, autonomy was limited. Myrdal (Asian Drama, 1968) called South Asian states "soft states" unable to enforce policy, and the Rudolphs (In Pursuit of Lakshmi, 1987) called India a "weak-strong state". Pranab Bardhan argued that public resources were shared among a dominant coalition of industrial capitalists, rich farmers and professionals including the bureaucracy. In many African states, bureaucracy decayed into neo-patrimonial rule, with clientelism and what Richard Joseph (1987) called "prebendalism", treating public office as private income. Peter Evans's "embedded autonomy" (1995) offers a corrective: East Asian developmental states succeeded not by standing above society but through coherent bureaucracies with dense ties to business. The post-colonial state thus had structural autonomy from any single class, but remained enmeshed in and constrained by social power.

(b) Emergence and tenets of neo-realism

Neo-realism emerged with Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979) as a reply to classical realism, which Morgenthau rooted in flawed human nature and which seemed subjective and unable to explain systemic continuities such as Cold War bipolar stability. Building on Man, the State and War (1959), which distinguished three "images" of the causes of war, Waltz borrowed microeconomic analogies of firms in a market to build a parsimonious systemic theory. Structure has three elements: the ordering principle (anarchy, i.e. no central authority), the character of units (functionally undifferentiated) and the distribution of capabilities. The core tenets are that states are rational unitary actors prioritising survival; the system is self-help; behaviour is explained by the distribution of capabilities rather than by human nature or domestic ideology; states balance rather than bandwagon; and bipolarity is more stable than multipolarity. Anarchy generates the security dilemma (John Herz, 1950), and states care about relative rather than absolute gains (Joseph Grieco). Neo-realism split into defensive realism (Waltz), where states seek an appropriate balance of power, and offensive realism (Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001), where uncertainty drives great powers to maximise power and seek regional hegemony. Critics note its failure to anticipate the peaceful end of the Cold War, and neoclassical realists such as Gideon Rose reintroduced domestic variables.

(c) Complex interdependence and transnational actors

Keohane and Nye (Power and Interdependence, 1977), building on their Transnational Relations and World Politics (1972), challenged state-centric realism with complex interdependence, which has three features: multiple channels of contact (interstate, transgovernmental and transnational); no hierarchy among issues, so military security does not always dominate economic or environmental agendas; and the reduced utility of military force among interdependent states. They distinguished sensitivity (how quickly change in one country affects another) from vulnerability (the cost of adjusting), noting that asymmetric interdependence can itself be a source of power. Transnational actors are central here. Multinational corporations reshape supply chains, economic governance and regulatory regimes; INGOs such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace mobilise opinion, frame norms and hold states accountable on human rights and climate; epistemic communities of scientists influence multilateral agreements; and terrorist and illicit networks bypass state frontiers. Recent events qualify the liberal optimism: Farrell and Newman's "weaponized interdependence" (2019) describes how states exploit control of financial and technological hubs, as in the sanctions on Russia after 2022 and the tariff and export-control conflicts of 2025.