{"product_id":"9781139508070","title":"External Intervention and the Politics of State Formation: China, Indonesia, and Thailand, 1893-1952","description":"This book explores ways foreign intervention and external rivalries can affect the institutionalization of governance in weak states. When sufficiently competitive, foreign rivalries in a weak state can actually foster the political centralization, territoriality and autonomy associated with state sovereignty. This counterintuitive finding comes from studying the collective effects of foreign contestation over a weak state as informed by changes in the expected opportunity cost of intervention for outside actors. When interveners associate high opportunity costs with intervention, they bolster sovereign statehood as a next best alternative to their worst fear - domination of that polity by adversaries. Sovereign statehood develops if foreign actors concurrently and consistently behave this way toward a weak state. This book evaluates that argument against three 'least likely' cases - China, Indonesia and Thailand between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.","brand":"Cambridge University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47122125521136,"sku":"9781139508070","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781139508070_p0.jpg?v=1763700116","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781139508070","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}