ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a way of evaluating and comparing the political strength of nations in terms of their ability to extract human and material resources from their societies and their political flexibility to extract new resources. Public-sector enterprises can use the state apparatus to impose their own objectives and policy preferences on the government. Then the original use of public-sector enterprises to intervene in the economy and society is not a source of government political strength. The ability of a Third World government to adjust to international economic shocks depends to a large degree on its capacity to insulate itself from or adjust to domestic political claims and international pressures that might prevent stabilization and adjustment measures from having their intended impact on the economy. To assert that one country's political system is more effective than another's means that it is better able, ceteris paribus, to extract and allocate material and human resources from society to serve national objectives.
