Political Economy Of Uneven State Spatiality: Conflict, Class, And Institutions In The Postcolonial State Of Pakistan

A theory of the state presupposes the conceptual demarcation between "internal" and "external" actors to the state. In Resnick and Wolff's theory of the state, the contestation between "external" actors (classes/groups) and the conflict between internal actors (state institutions) remains underexplored. This essay expands Resnick and Wolff's analysis by drawing from a case study of the postcolonial state of Pakistan in which the conflict internal to the state, the civil-military contradiction, plays an important role in mediating the political economy of the state-society. To make visible how internal conflict regulates state-society interactions, the essay synthesizes Resnick and Wolff's class analysis of the state with Henri Lefebvre's theory of state spatiality, arguing that the postcolonial state of Pakistan can best be characterized by the notion of "uneven state spaces" and thus illustrating that the state as a "site" is contested from both "external" and "internal" forces.