A State Both Strong and Weak
About: This article is published in The American Historical Review.The article was published on 2010-06-01. It has received 9 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: State (functional analysis).
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TL;DR: In the decades between 1850 and 1950, the United States (US) decisively transformed its place in the world economic order and became the world's undisputed industrial leader and hegemonic provider of capital.
Abstract: In the decades between 1850 and 1950, the United States (US) decisively transformed its place in the world economic order. In 1850, the US was primarily a supplier of slave-produced cotton to industrializing Europe. American economic growth thus remained embedded in established patterns of Atlantic commerce. One hundred years later, the same country had become the world’s undisputed industrial leader and hegemonic provider of capital. Emerging victorious from the Second World War, the US had displaced Britain as the power most prominently situated — even more so than its Cold War competitor — to impress its vision of a global political economy onto the world. If Britain’s industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century marked the beginning of a ‘Great Divergence’ (Pomeranz) of ‘the West’ from other regions around the world, American ascendance in the decades straddling the turn of the twentieth century marked a veritable ‘second great divergence’ (Beckert) that established the US as the world’s leading industrial and imperial power.
44 citations
DOI•
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: This dissertation explains why that drastic transition occurred, and how one group of citizens won the right to obtain publicly funded health services, and shows how privileges were won in the twentieth century United States.
Abstract: Paying the Price of War: United States Soldiers, Veterans, and Health Policy, 1917-1924 Jessica L. Adler During eight turbulent years in the World War I era, policy makers, soldiers, and veterans laid the groundwork for the extension of government sponsored medical care to millions of former service members. In the process, they built a pillar of the American welfare state. Legislation and rehabilitation plans formulated shortly after the U.S. entered the Great War aimed to minimize the government’s long-term obligations to veterans, but within less than a decade, those who had served gained conditional access to their own direct assistance agency and a national system of hospitals. This dissertation explains why that drastic transition occurred, and how one group of citizens won the right to obtain publicly funded health services. The story of wartime health policies has a variety of larger implications. It shows how veterans’ welfare shifted from centering on pension and domicile care programs rooted in the nineteenth century to the provision of access to direct medical services; how rehabilitation and citizenship rights were conceived of and perceived at the dusk of the Progressive Era; how race, class, and gender shaped the health-related experiences of soldiers, veterans, and caregivers; how shifting ideals about hospitals and medical care influenced policy; and how interest groups capitalized on the tense political and social climate to bring about change. On a general level, an examination of the roots of a nationwide veterans’ hospital system demonstrates how privileges were won in the twentieth century United States. It reveals a moment of state expansion, but it also illustrates the wider tendency of the U.S. government to award entitlements selectively. Given those factors, the policies that paved the way for the advent of a veterans’ medical system deserve to be considered – alongside later federal assistance programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – as foundational in the development and shape of the American welfare state.
35 citations
Dissertation•
01 Oct 2011
TL;DR: In California, the processus entier de la peine capitale en Californie depuis la fin du XIXe siecle, lorsque les executions sont transferees derriere les murs des penitenciers d'Etat, jusqu'a nos jours.
Abstract: La these propose l'etude du processus entier de la peine capitale en Californie depuis la fin du XIXe siecle, lorsque les executions sont transferees derriere les murs des penitenciers d'Etat, jusqu'a nos jours. L'etude se fonde sur les archives penitentiaires et les demandes de grâce des condamnes. La these est construite en croisant l'apport de M. Foucault sur le pouvoir de punir et de N. Elias sur le processus de civilisation. Il s'agit d'expliciter la disjonction temporelle grandissante entre condamnation a mort et execution. La premiere partie, juger, presente l'evolution de la procedure penale. L'acte de juger se complexifie avec la disparition progressive du droit de grâce et son remplacement par la confrontation complexe entre les cours californiennes et federales. La seconde partie, incarcerer, disseque la maniere dont les condamnes a mort ont ete traites dans les mois puis les annees precedant leur execution. Une incarceration d'un type nouveau apparait avec la surveillance croissante des gardiens, medecins et psychiatres. A mesure que le temps d'incarceration s'allonge, les condamnes du " couloir de la mort " finissent par arracher des droits comparables a ceux des longues peines. La troisieme partie, executer, explicite les mutations dans la methode et l'organisation de l'execution. La Californie pratique d'abord la pendaison avant d'adopter, en 1938, la chambre a gaz consideree alors comme moderne et indolore. En 1992, une juge federale bannit le gazage. La Californie adopte alors l'injection letale. Cette derniere technique ne resout pas les questions entourant la dignite de l'execution.
33 citations
32 citations
TL;DR: The field of early American political economy has quietly grown in the last decade, as historians have used a flexible framework to analyze how a wide variety of economic practices and ideas related to formal and informal political formations. as discussed by the authors highlights some of the common themes and questions driving recent work, delineates how histories of political economy both fit within and diverge from new histories of capitalism, and offers suggestions for further study.
Abstract: The field of early American political economy has quietly grown in the last decade, as historians have used a flexible framework to analyze how a wide variety of economic practices and ideas related to formal and informal political formations. Using capacious definitions of “political economy,” historians have followed in the footsteps of their sources, early American political economists, who, unsure of the range of the mechanisms and forces they were trying to describe, were wary of too narrowly delimiting their field of investigation. In contrast to other methodological approaches to early American economic practice, historians investigating political economy have largely been keen to “keep early America weird,” recognizing the unfamiliar and the dissonant in the past while generating important new perspectives on topics of perennial interest, such as the links between slavery and economic growth, and opening new inquiries into state-formation, market-creation, and the import of the early republic’s global connections. This essay highlights some of the common themes and questions driving recent work, delineates how histories of political economy both fit within and diverge from new histories of capitalism, and offers suggestions for further study.
18 citations