Book Description
The first chapter aims to offer an impression of the vast amount of academic material informing the current debate over social power and the role of the state. Within the opening section, Michael Mann’s work will be considered in relation to these different approaches and the focus of this book positioned therein. Chapter Two deploys Mann’s reworking of Herbert Spencer’s model of ‘compulsory co-operation’ to illuminate the large-scale political changes that became apparent in the Ottoman Empire following its failure to expand during and after the sixteenth century. I argue that while this system was initially highly effective, representing in many ways a much more sophisticated method of imperial rule than the Roman legionary economy discussed by Mann, it was unable to function effectively during territorial contraction. In Chapter Three, the ideological impact of this is traced with a particular focus on the role of the ulema. Here I argue that the intrinsically multi-national orientation of the theocracy was at odds with the centrist modernism of the ‘Turkish’ state elite – a quite different process from the Western European nation-state/Church relationship presented by Mann. Chapter Four outlines the tussle for power in Turkey between the state bureaucracy and the capitalist classes (represented by the Menderes government of the 1950s) and compares it to Mann’s account of the emergence of class-consciousness in Western Europe. Chapter Five continues this theme by looking at the role of the military in Turkey since the 1960 coup. It argues that during this period the interests of the bourgeoisie and those of the military began to conflate. The concluding chapter then reiterates and ties together the main points of the narrative by retracing each of the four power networks in Turkey and reflecting upon the validity of Mann’s model.
