Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 1976"

Custom as a Source of International Law

Abstract: The attitude of international lawyers towards customary international law is somewhat similar; they invoke rules of customary international law every day, but they have great difficulty in agreeing on a definition of customary international law. This chapter deals with the relationship between treaties and custom. In the North Sea Continental Shelf cases the International Court treated the Truman Proclamation and similar claims by other States as State practice which had given rise to a rule of customary law. Anthony D'Amato argues that claims and other statements by States are likely to conflict with one another, and that physical acts do not suffer from this defect. Assertions made in abstracto concerning the content of existing law are sometimes found in resolutions passed by the representatives of States at the meetings of international organizations. In the Nottebokm case the International Court relied partly on the fact that national laws provide for naturalization only when there is a genuine link.

Collective Human Rights of Peoples and Minorities

Abstract: MOST international rights are conferred by international law on corporate entities. First and foremost among these entities are States, but international rights are also enjoyed (when certain conditions precedent are met) by international organisations 1 as well as by political units (such as colonies or protectorates) which are actually States in statu nascendi.2 Corporate entities benefit from a legal personality, yet, of course, they do not exist in reality. If we pierce the corporate veil of the legal personality, we find behind it the physical personalities of human beings serving as organs of the States or the other entities. Indirectly, therefore, State rights are human rights. In the final analysis, human beings are the subjects of all international rights. This, however, is not what is meant when we refer to international human rights. The rights which we have in mind are exceptional within the international legal system. They are accorded to human beings directly, without the interposition of the legal personality of a corporate entity. International law thereby protects the interests of the human being as such, and in fact protects them vis-a-vis a corporate entity, namely, the State. Human rights imply corresponding duties which devolve on States: direct rights of human beings infer limitations on the powers of States. Any subject-matter which comes within the ambit of international human rights is automatically excluded from the domain reserved for the domestic jurisdiction of States.

The socialist industrial state: Towards a political sociology of state socialism

Abstract: Before beginning the study of the social system I have chosen to call 'state socialism', it is necessary to define the term and to describe the societies to which it is held to apply. A society may be defined as a behavioural system having three components : a distinct set of central or dominant value and beliefs, a number of social institutions, and patterns of interactions between individuals and institutions. What, then, are the distinguishing features of state socialism? The dominant values are those ofMarxism-Leninism,andthepeculiar institutions of the system stem from the state-owned means of production which determine man's relationship to property. The values laid down in the charter of the society are those of socialism : that is, a system of beliefs focused on the ultimate perfectibility of man, on the determining influence of class forces operating through the laws of historical and dialectical materialism. In state-socialist societies, the dominant institution is the Communist Party, which is considered to lead the working class and provides an authoritative interpretation of the laws of historical development, which in turn legitimate the Party's own political power. The appellation state focuses on the central role played by government and Party institutions in the process of these societies : not only do ownership and control of the means of production legally reside with the state, but it has the authority to mobilise the population to achieve the goals defined in the 'official charter'. In the patterns of interactions between institutions, the state (government and ruling party) plays a dominant role. Let us now turn from analytical concepts to consider some historical generalisations.

The Eighteenth–Century Debate on the Sovereignty of Parliament

Abstract: I hope to show in this paper that the national debate in the press and in parliament about the doctrine of the sovereignty of parliament is of crucial importance to a proper understanding of the politics and, still more, of the political ideology of eighteenth-century Britain. The significance that this doctrine had come to assume by the later eighteenth century becomes clearly apparent from any study of the dispute between Britain and the American colonies. In the final analysis the most serious point at issue between the mother country and her colonies rested on a fundamental disagreement over the nature and location of sovereignty. The majority of the ruling oligarchy in Britain saw parliament as the creator and interpreter of law and superior to any other rights or powers in the state. To the American colonists it appeared that the arbitrary and absolute power which Hobbes and Filmer had put in the hands of a king had been transferred to the whole legislature of King, Lords and Commons. In rejecting what they regarded as tyranny in another form, the colonists moved towards the concept of divided sovereignty with the people as the ultimate source of authority.

Civil-Military Relations in Sierra Leone: A Case Study of African Soldiers in Politics

Abstract: A striking political reality in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s was the substitution of military officers for civilians as rulers of a large group of countries. Why did this occur? How have the military regimes functioned? Focusing on the West African state of Sierra Leone, Thomas Cox attempts to answer these and other significant questions.

The Puerto Rican Political Economy

Abstract: Puerto Rico became a colony of the United States in 1898 as part of the settlement exacted from Spain in the Treaty of Paris ending the SpanishAmerican War. And, at a time when classical colonialism is on the decline as a means of control and exploitation, Puerto Rico remains a colonized nation, the Puerto Ricans a colonized people. The United States has attempted to disguise its role as colonizer by granting Puerto Rico token self-government and other cosmetic changes such as referring to Puerto Rico as a "free associated state" (Estado Libre Asociado) or, officially, as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The facts, however, remain. Puerto Rico is not a sovereign nation: The United States retains ultimate control and veto power over all decisions that would be within the domain of a truly independent state. This issue of Latin American Perspectives considers some of the important forces that have shaped Puerto Rico's past and present and examines the emerging prospects for the future. This introduction has a two-fold purpose. First, it is designed to provide a brief introduction to Puerto Rico's colonial experience and the economic and class transformations that have occurred as a result of United States hegemony. Second, the articles appearing in this issue are introduced, integrated, and analyzed. The introduction thus serves to make the entire issue self-contained: even the reader with little or no background will be able to more easily read the six articles with better understanding. These articles make important contributions to our understanding of the Puerto Rican situation and are representative of a growing body of analysis that is attempting to move beyond the bounds of past research on Puerto Rico.

The Red Cross as transnational movement: conserving and changing the nation-state system

Abstract: The Red Cross, a transnational movement, has taken action in conflict situations that both conserves the authority of states and also circumscribes state behavior in the name of fundamental human rights. On the one hand, the Red Cross, principally through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), is cooperative toward states and acts discreetly in matters regarded by states as sensitive. On the other hand, the Red Cross has promoted the law of armed conflict to limit states and has accepted quasi-supranational authority in international armed conflict in the form of the right of automatic ICRC access to certain detainees. On the basis of this right, or sometimes on the basis of bypassing legal issues, the ICRC is able to transcend the “sovereignty” of states (and non-state parties as well). While the Red Cross movement is highly fragmented and encompasses a number of non-cosmopolitan elements, the historical impact of the movement has been to help liberalize the nation-state system, largely through the actions of the ICRC, while reinforcing fundamental authority within that system.

Peasants in ancient Roman society

Abstract: The political power of the smallholder in democratic Athens was without parallel in the ancient world. The Roman peasant was a ‘peasant of obligation’, charged with the duty of supporting a militarist and oligarchic state with supplies and manpower, but without security of tenure over his land. The failure of successive governments under the Republic to protect peasant proprietors against the incursions of large landowners, and to resettle them on the land, caused recruitment problems, social dislocation and eventually political revolution. The concentration of estates continued in Imperial times. Small allotments were regularly awarded, mainly to military personnel, and especially on uncultivated or abandoned land, but the resettlement of peasant‐farmers never kept pace with their displacement. When the increasing demands of the government drove the rural population into the arms of the private landowners, the ruin of the peasant proprietor was complete and the collapse of the government assured.

Occupational Segregation and Public Policy: A Comparative Analysis of American and Soviet Patterns

Abstract: The revolutionary leadership which proclaimed the establishment of the new Soviet state in October 1917 promised a radical social transformation to bring about the full equality of women in economic, political, and family life. Soviet efforts to draw women into new economic and political roles, to redefine the relationship between the family and the larger society, and above all to alter deeply ingrained cultural values, attitudes, and behavior represent the first and perhaps the most far-reaching effort ever undertaken to transform the status and role of women.

Equality in Hobbes with Reference to Aristotle

Abstract: It is a policy of Hobbes' polemic to state the crucial point or principle in the boldest form before embarking on qualifications In just this spirit he asserts that men are equal by nature Fifty variations among men in what is ordinarily considered to differentiate significantly—mental or physical powers—become unimportant for the matter at hand: politics Thus, with a swift and elegant force, Hobbes turns the reader's mind away from the tradition of Aristotle's Politics wherein the mental powers among men are different to the extent of dividing mankind into those who are capable of participating in government and those, the natural slaves, whose lack of deliberative capacity condemns them to a servile, nondeliberative existence within the state

Party and Policy in West German Cities

Abstract: For more than a decade, some students of American subnational government have been suggesting that key aspects of state and local political systems, such as the degree of interparty competition and the ostensible political orientation of the controlling party, have little power statistically speaking to account for observed diversities in the scope and direction of local government policy. However, other students of American state and local government have found political variables to be of major importance in shaping policy and have argued that the weakness of political variables has not yet been properly demonstrated.2

Democracy Versus the National Security State

Abstract: It is not possible to understand the national security state and the reasons which give rise to the need for dismantling it without mentioning the profound and wrenching events of the last fifty years. The national security state emerges from war, from fear of revolution and change, from the economic instability of capitalism, and from nuclear weapons and military technology.' It has been the actualizing mechanism of ruling elites to implement their imperial schemes and misplaced ideals.2 In practical terms its emergence is linked to the rise of a bureaucracy that administered things and people in interchangeable fashion without concern for ends or assumptions.3 This state formation matured during a period in which the office of the President became supremely powerful as a broker and legitimating instrument of national security activity.4 This paper argues in somewhat tendentious and breathless form that the state system which has emerged in the United States is a constitutional deformation which menaces the freedom and well being of its citizenry, and which poses a danger to world civilization. What is hanging in the balance in the last twenty-five years of this century is whether the people, scholars, lawyers and judges, and members of the government, can so organize their understanding and their political actions as to avert fascism or Bonapartism, a debilitating arms race that could end in the kind of horror from which there will be no

State and local politics: Government by the people

Abstract: 1. State and Local Politics: Who Governs? 2. American Federalism. 3. State Constitutions: Charters or Straitjackets? 4. Parties and Elections in the States. 5. State Legislatures. 6. State Governors. 7. Judges and Justice in the States. 8. Local Government and Metropolitics. 9. Making State and Local Policy. 10. Staffing and Financing State and Local Governments. Glossary. Notes. Index.

Three 17th Century German Theorists of Federalism: Althusius, Hugo and Leibniz

Abstract: The rise of centralized national states in the 16th century gave rise to the doctrine of sovereignty, or the theory that within a given polity there ought to be a power internally supreme and externally independent. Consequently, the modern state came to be the touchstone of political thinking. Modern states increasingly absorbed medieval noble and ecclesiastical prerogative, centralized power, and liberated themselves from the international influence of the declining Papacy and Holy Roman Empire.2 Even as the sovereign state became the model of acceptable political analysis, the steady decline of the Holy Roman Empire left on the imperial borders the nearly independent areas of the Netherlands and Switzerland, both of which had enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in the Middle Ages.3 Sur-

Peru: the Political Economy of an Intermediate Regime

Abstract: Any attempt to define the changes in the Peruvian political economy that have taken place since 1968 1 must be made in terms of the relationship between the state and domestic capital on the one hand and foreign capital on the other, and must offer an explanation of the way in which this military- controlled state has tended to replace the former and establish a new relationship with the latter. In particular, the confrontation between the government and foreign capital, and the significance of internal ownership reforms cannot be understood without reference to the development of Peruvian capitalism before 1968.

Social Quality of Life Indicators for Small Metropolitan Areas in America

Abstract: The American society is undoubtedly in a great transition period towards a post‐industrial state. While wholeheartedly celebrating the bi‐centennial birthday, uncertainty and confusion still pervade the United States, and a discontent with the quality of life seems to have been growing concomitantly with the technological know how and material wealth among people in America. These phenomena have developed as a result of conflicting values: “operative values” in the industrial state and the “declared values” important in the founding of the nation. While the former is characterised by the indefinite economic persuasion, the latter is highlighted by concerns with equality, justice and freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

Self-Defence and Israel in International Law: A Reappraisal

Abstract: Dean Acheson frankly reconfirmed the right of self-preservation, when he asserted, “…law simply does not deal with … questions of ultimate power—power that comes close to the sources of sovereignty…. No law can destroy the state creating the law. The survival of states is not a matter of law”. It is beyond the law. Given the existence of man's elementary loyalty to autonomous states, the necessity for using force springs from the need of states to depend fundamentally on self-help in order to guarantee their survival and welfare. This search for security in a system of politics without government, forces the state to be dependent upon military self-help.