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Discussion starter, but something I'm sincerely interested in and don't have strong opinions about: do modern Western states (e.g., the US, UK, Japan) have more or less state capacity than they did 20, 40, 60 years ago?
The concept of state capacity seemed to enter mainstream geopolitics wonkery about a decade or so ago, and I find it very useful. I'm sure most of you have heard of it, but in short it refers to the ability of the state to accomplish its policy goals through the use of military, industrial, infrastructural, economic, and informational resources. Each of these is important, but I'd flag that informational resources have a special role insofar as they directly feed into the efficiency by which other resources can be deployed for ends. For example, a piece of infrastructure like a new dam or a rail network may advance policy goals or it may be a waste of time and money, and informational resources will help the state predict which will be the case.
Two other key points to note. First, state capacity of course does not only refer to internal state capacity (i.e., resources proper to the state), but also the ability of the state to persuade or coerce domestic non-state actors such as corporations to co-operate with the state's goals. Most of the major players in WW2 - Britain, the United States, but also Germany and Japan - drew most of their state capacity from these more indirect mechanisms. Second, state capacity is hard to directly assess for the simple reason for it is a fact about potentiality rather than actuality: outside of wars or similar crises, there are good reasons both political and pragmatic for the state not to use the full force of its coercive power.
Recent or ongoing test cases for state capacity in the West include the COVID pandemic, ramping up of basic munitions production like 155mm artillery rounds (especially in Europe), and the new vogue for industrial policy in critical industries like ship-building in the US. My gut instinct is that right now, state capacity in the West is historically at a very low ebb, possibly lower than it has been for more than a century, and that this may be helpful for understanding the behaviour of governments. However, I don't have strong confidence in this assessment, and would love to hear what others think.
Maybe we should distinguish between state capacity and realized results?
The US has the power to find and remove drug dealers from circulation if it wanted to. If drug addicts can find dealers, so can police. There are open-air drug markets in several US cities, it's not hard to find them. When Xi went to San Francisco they cleaned everything up for him.
The US chooses not to maintain safety in its cities, it chooses not to arrest drug dealers at scale. But when Jan 6th happened, then they actually were serious about jailing the rioters/protesters. They found ways to imprison people who weren't even there and keep them in prison, they stopped messing around.
I think state capacity in the West has declined but not nearly as much as the willingness to use said capacity. There's definitely massive malaise and grifting but there's also a lot of deliberate apathy, that's the anarcho-tyranny part. I think this is dangerous because there are a lot of fairly relaxed policymakers and leaders who know that they're not running things efficiently. They might well think 'if there's a major crisis, we'll rev up the engine to full power and show the world what we can do'. But the engine is rusty and the oil should've been changed ages ago. The state machinery isn't used to high-performance operations anymore, the engine might jam or explode if they try. There'll be a huge performance gap between expectations and reality. It reminds me of how Britain and the United States were thought to be the best prepared for a pandemic at the start of COVID, then everyone ran around like a headless chicken for 6-9 months.
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