States against nations : meritocracy, patronage, and the challenges of Bureaucratic selection

1 Introduction | 1

1.1 Building States and Nations | 5

1.2 The Argument in Brief | 10

1.3 The Challenge of Bureaucratic Selection in Asia | 23

1.4 A Comment on Method | 27

1.5 Summary | 28

2 State-Building, Nation-Building, and a Theory of How Bureaucratic Selection Affects Both | 32

2.1 Concepts and Definitions: State-Building and Nation-Building | 34

2.2 Puzzling over Bureaucratic Recruitment | 44

2.3 A Theory of Competence and Conflict | 47

2.4 States against Nations in Broader Perspective | 70

3 Why Reform? Meritocratic Recruitment in Comparative and Historical Perspective | 75

3.1 Paths toward Reform: The United Kingdom and the United States | 78

3.2 Distributional Consequences of Reform: China and India | 91

3.3 Whither Civil Service Reform in Indonesia? | 100

4 Explaining the Heightened Demand for Government Jobs | 108

4.1 The Public Sector Wage Premium | 111

4.2 The Elasticity of Demand for Government Jobs | 115

4.3 Status-Seeking and Its Indivisibility | 121

4.4 Conclusion | 124

5 The Effect of Selection via Meritocracy in Contemporary Indonesia | 125

5.1 Meritocracy’s Thwarted Ambitions: An Applicant-Side Mechanism | 127

5.2 Representational Imbalances: Citizen-Side Mechanisms | 144

5.3 Conclusion | 152

6 Meritocracy and Patronage in Colonial Southeast Asia | 155

6.1 Varieties of Indigenous Recruitment | 158

6.2 The Representational Consequences of Patronage and Meritocracy | 165

6.3 Representation, Resentment, and Nation-Building in Dutch East Indies | 174

6.4 Conclusion | 183

7 Global Statistical Analyses: Some Indirect Tests | 185

7.1 Concepts and Measurement | 187

7.2 Bureaucratic Selection, Between-Group Inequality, and Conflict | 194

7.3 Conclusion | 200

8 Conclusion | 201

8.1 Reviewing the Arguments | 203

8.2 State-Building against Nation-Building? | 208

8.3 Concluding Implications | 211