Alan Whaites

Alan Whaites is a British political theorist most associated with work on the state and State-building.
Early work
Journal articles include:`Let's get civil society straight' originally appearing in journal form and then as part of an Oxfam politics on development reader. Argues that civil society had become a panacea for policy-makers. Also `NGOs,' Civil Society and the State,' arguing that civil society should be viewed within the context of the wider state. he became global advocacy director with the large international Christian NGO, World Vision International. He left the organisation in 2004 and joined the UK Government's Department for International Development (DfID).
There are no major academic or pure political science papers from this period in journal literature. World Vision did produce a number of policy reports and Whaites is credited with authoring several of these. Whaites also launched World Vision's development journal, Global Future, during this period. Some of his papers and the editorial direction of Global Future offer indications of his evolving thinking on the State; including discussions of issues that have now become familiar themes within Whaites' work. These include the questioning of traditional theoretical approaches to state-society relations and the impact on states of donor/international policy prescriptions.
Perhaps the key work from this period is `Masters of their own Development'. Whaites was associated with a long-running campaign by development organisations for the reform of the World Bank and IMF and `Masters of their own Development' summarises some of this experience, making it of interest to students of multilateral agencies as well as students of the state. Also useful is Precarious States. Whaites produced a book in 2002 titled `Development Dilemmas' which connected his early work on civil society to globalisation and also to increased pressures for accountability in the civil society sector.
Whaites' model of the state
(PDF) </ref> This model attempts to explain the relationship between state and society (such as the Social Contract). The model points to three essential `areas' that determine the nature of how states work (whether good or bad). The first is a Political settlement, the second is the degree of commitment of political elites to a few key state `survival functions' (such as taxation and security) and the third is the willingness of elites to respond to public expectations. The model is summarized in the paper:'
The model argues that if elites form a political settlement which then emphasizes survival functions this is likely to create pressures to respond to expectations. It argues that some political settlements are formed in ways that reduce incentives to strengthen state functions. These are uneasy settlements where elites lack leadership or a state-building vision and instead the loose relationships create pressures to use mechanisms such as Patrimonialism. It lists a number of factors that are likely to influence the direction that the three key areas are likely to take and which will determine the nature of the overall state-building dynamic. The model offers a typography and definition of political settlements. The model was published as a think piece with comments from the original panel of expert advisers.
Alternative views and understandings can be found in more recent work, including an OECD-DAC paper offering guidance for state-building published in 2011 and also the 2011 World Development Report (published by the World Bank). Both offer important variations on the idea of state-building and the dynamics that shape state functions.

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