Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 1977"

The law of the oppressed: the construction and reproduction of legality in pasargada

Abstract: In a capitalist society the State legal system is in general an instrument of class domination both at the level of the relations of production, as in the factory, and of the relations of reproduction, as in housing. Housing conditions are particularly illustrative of class domination in the squatter settlements of all major cities throughout the capitalist world. Pasargada is the fictitious name of such a settlement in Rio de Janeiro. In a nonrevolutionary situation, and particularly under the yoke of economic and political repression imposed by the fascist State (as in contemporary Brazil), the struggle against housing and living conditions in these settlements is a very hard one. Because of the structural inaccessibility of the State legal system, and especially because of the illegal character of these communities, the dominated classes living in them devise adaptive strategies aimed at securing the minimal social ordering of community relations. One such strategy involves the creation of an internal legality, parallel to (and sometimes conflicting with) State legality-a kind of popular justice. The article describes Pasargada legality from both the inside (through the sociological analysis of legal rhetoric in dispute prevention and dispute settlement) and in its (unequal) relations with the Brazilian official legal system (from the perspective of legal pluralism).

Democracy for the Few

Abstract: Preface 1. Partisan Politics. 2. A Constitution for the Few. 3. Rise of the Corporate State. 4. Wealth and Want in the United States. 5. Institutions and Ideologies. 6. Politics: Who Gets What? 7. Health and Human Services: Sacrificial Lambs. 8. The Last Environment. 9. Unequal before the Law. 10. Political Repression and National Insecurity. 11. The U.S. Global Military Empire. 12. Who Governs? Elites, Labor, and Globalization. 13. Mass Media: For the Many, by the Few. 14. Voters, Parties, and Stolen Elections. 15. Congress: The Pocketing of Power. 16. The President: Guardian of the System. 17. The Political Economy of Bureaucracy. 18. The Supremely Political Court. 19. Democracy for the Few.

Conclusion: domestic structures and strategies of foreign economic policy

Abstract: An inventory of the objectives and instruments which characterize the differing political strategies of six advanced industrial states in the international economy yields three groups of states: the two Anglo-Saxon countries, mercantilist Japan, and the states of the European continent. Corresponding differences exist in the distinctive elements of domestic structure: the coalition between business and the state and the policy networks linking public and private sectors. An historical explanation of these differences is most appropriate. In the future, stresses in the relations between business and the state and contradictions between ruling coalitions and organized labor may lead to changes in political strategies.

Labor and hegemony

Abstract: The United States' notice of withdrawal from the ILO is to be understood in terms of hegemonic power relations. “Tripartism” is an ideology based upon a dominant historical tendency, namely the emergence of a corporative form of state in both developed and underdeveloped countries. The AFL-CIO has participated in the construction of the corporative state in the US and has supported its hegemonic role in the world in concert with American business interests and the CIA. Neither the ILO nor international trade union organizations (especially the ICFTU) has enjoyed a stable relationship with the center of hegemonic power in the labor field, since the AFL-CIO has conducted a unilateral foreign policy. The functionalist strategy of executive leadership asserting the autonomy of an international organization through task expansion in technical fields has been almost totally irrelevant to the issue. Nor has the ILO found an alternative counter-hegemonic base of support, e.g., in the Third World. The existing hegemony has reasserted itself through the ILO program and ideology even as the US has withdrawn material support. Hegemony, which no longer operates through majority votes in international organizations, works instead through bureaucratic controls. This structure of power has prevented the ILO from confronting effectively the real social issues of employment-creation, land reform, marginality, and poverty in general. Initiatives that have been taken to deal with such issues have all ultimately been diverted into programs consistent with the hegemonic ideology and power relations.

State and Local Government

Abstract: Over the last several decades state and local governments have increased their activities in response to a significant rise in the US population and a shift in program and responsibility from the national government to state and local jurisdictions. State and local governments currently provide a host of services to residents including education, transportation, utilities, police, courts and probation. Because there are numerous employment opportunities in state governments, as well as a great variation among states and regions in the U.S., students interested in working for government at the state or local level should explore the many opportunities available in their area.

Getting it together in burgundy, 1675-1975

Abstract: The municipal archives of Dijon occupy several cluttered rooms in the grand old palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. The archives' main door looks out onto the elegant semicircle of the Place de la Liberation, built in the late seventeenth century as the Place Royale. Readers in the high-ceilinged salle de travail have no trouble tallying arrivals and departures. A strident bell sounds in the room so long as the outside door is open. The interruption usually lasts five to ten seconds, as the newcomer closes the street door, crosses the anteroom, fumbles with the inner door, and enters. In bad weather arrivals are more disruptive; after the long bell stops sounding, visitors stomp their feet unseen, remove their boots and hang up their raincoats before presenting themselves for inspection. Exists are equally distracting, for they mirror the entries precisely: thud, shuffle, stomp, ring. Distractions, however, are few. Not many people come to the archives: a few city employees, an antiquarian or two, an occasional student from the university, now and then an itinerant historian. Those few have riches before them. They have the surviving papers of the capital of Burgundy, both as an independent power and as a major French province. The archives are especially full up to the point at which the centralization of the Revolution shifted the balance of power, and paperwork, toward the state's own bureaucracy. Among the thousands of bundles in the pre-revolutionary collection, 167 fall into series I. Series I includes Police, in the broad old-regime meaning of defense against all manner of public ills. Its topics are sanitation, public health, fire protection, asylums, pursuit of beggars, vagrants and criminals,

Simple Model of Negotiation A Sociological Point of View

Abstract: The objective of the paper is to state a simple theory of negotiation, one that is both realistic and testable. The basis of this theory is the notion, stated most clearly by sociologist George Homans, that men strive to create and maintain the conditions of justice. To this notion is added the fact that the well-known Nash solution to bargaining games not only is consistent with Homan's notion of justice but also is reached frequently in experimental negotiations. Given these ingredients, the paper hypothesizes that negotiators view the midpoint between their past demands and offers as just and strive to achieve it. Various implications of this hypothesis are explored.

Government and Society

Abstract: Since the days when the interest of historians was principally focused on forms of government the age of absolutism has been a label commonly attached to the period of European history between 1660 and 1789. Mercantilism as practised on the continent of Europe was an essential concomitant of absolutism and developed in every state pari passu with the growth in the monarch's power. To the Germans, mercantilism seems an integral part of the Enlightenment because of the rational and secular nature of its thinking. The Cameralism or mercantilism of central Europe was distinguished from its French counterpart because the study of its doctrines constituted an academic discipline which was obligatory for all the holders of administrative posts, and because the rulers themselves were its most receptive students. Civilization in the age of absolutism rested on a peasant base. In the major continental countries the Physiocrats' gospel appealed most strongly to the governments that found themselves in difficulties.

Comparative politics: Notes and readings

Abstract: INTRODUCTION: ON COMPARING NATIONS. 1. How and Why Compare. Roy C. Macridis, The Search for Focus. Robert H. Bates, Area Studies and the Discipline. Mark Blyth, Interests and Ideas. Robert D. Putnam, The Public Role of Political Science. PART ONE. POLITICAL CHANGE AND THE STATE. 2. Modernization/Globalization. Karl Marx, British Rule in India. Samuel H. Beer, Dynamics of Modernization. Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization. H. V. Savitch, What is New About Globalization? 3. State and Identity. Max Weber, What is a State? Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In Liah Greenfeld, Varieties of Nationalism Donald L. Horowitz, A Right to Secede? 4. Governing Globalization. John Gerard Ruggie, Territoriality and Beyond. Jurgen Habermas, Nation-State or Global State? Anne-Marie Slaughter, Everyday Global Governance. Marc F. Plattner, Sovereignty and Democracy. 5. Revolution and Protest. S. N. Eisenstadt, Frameworks of the Great Revolutions. Francois Furet, On Revolutions: French, American, and Russian. Kurt Schock, Nonviolent Action. Bernard E. Brown Revolution and Anomie. PART TWO. PATTERNS OF LEGITIMACY. 6. Democracies. Susan J. Pharr, Robert D. Putnam, and Russell J. Dalton, Trouble in the Advanced Democracies? Russell J. Dalton, Susan E. Scarrow, and Bruce E. Cain, The New Politics in Advanced Democracies. Bernard E. Brown, Worker Democracy: A Test Case 7. Transition to Democracy. Guillermo O?Donnell, Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies. Thomas Carothers, The End of the Transition Paradigm. Larry Diamond, Universal Democracy? 8. Authoritarianism: Old and New. Aristotle, On Democracy and Tyranny. Andrew C. Janos, What Was Communism? Lilia Shevtsova, Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in Russia. Andrew J. Nathan, Authoritarian Resilience in China. 9. The Challenge of Islamism. Lisa Wedeen, Beyond the Crusades. Walter Laqueur, The Terrorism to Come. Fareed Zakaria, Islam, Democracy, and Constitutional Liberalism. PART THREE. POLITICAL DYNAMICS, DECISIONS, AND EFFICACY. 10. Political Parties. Robert Michels, The Iron Law of Oligarchy. Richard Gunther and Larry Diamond, Species of Political Parties. Seymour Martin Lipset, The Americanization of the European Left. Piero Ignazi, The Rise of New Political Parties. 11. Do Institutions Matter? James March and Johan Olsen, Institutional Perspectives. Arend Lijphart, Constitutional Design for Divided Societies. Nathan J. Brown, Judicial Review. 12. Political Performance. Joel D. Abernach and Bert A. Rockman, Governance and Outcomes. Herbert Simon, Organizations and Markets. Graham Wilson, In a State? Robert A. Dahl, Equality vs. Inequality.

The government of South Australia

Abstract: PREFACE In recent years there has been a relative flood of literature on Australian government and politics, especially on electoral politics. Much of this literature has virtually ignored the basic sub-units of Australian politicsmthe states, although events in the federal arena in the past decade have more often than not been sparked off or impelled by events, parties or personalities in the states. This study of South Australian politics is intended to close the gap. In many ways South Australia has a unique political history. The qParadise of Dissentq had no convicts and no gold rush, and it began self-government with the most progressive constitution of the colonies. Equally, it has had a different contemporary political history. The picture of South Australia under (Sir) Thomas Playford from the 1930s to the mid- 1960s was that of a politically somnolent state with political change ignored rather than resisted. By 1976, a virtual revolution had apparently occurred: leadership has been transformed, with the dynamism and charisma of Donald Allan Dunstan dominating political life; South Australia leads the nation in progressive legislation, especially in social and individual behavioural fields; the party system has been transformed, with the once-hegemonic Playford-L.C.L. divided into three warring parties, and the Labor Party increasingly appearing as the qnatural governmentq. Yet this transformation has occurred in the context of marked stability of electoral behaviour. This book sets out to provide the basic information about the workings of South Australian politics and government. It also outlines and attempts to analyse the aspects of politicsmboth formal and informalmwhich make South Australia unique. To achieve this, I have depended on many and various people who are too numerous to list, or, in some cases, would prefer not to be listed. My greatest debts are due to those in government, in parties, in libraries, who took an interest in the project and assisted in many diverse ways; to Colin Hughes who ensured that the research and the writing did not gather dust, and ultimately to my family who had to share a house with South Australian politics.n

The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays

Abstract: 1. The Foundations of Sovereignty 2. The Problem of Administrative Areas 3. The Responsibility of the State in England 4. The Personality of Associations 5. The Early History of the Corporation in England 6. The Theory of Popular Sovereignty 7. The Pluralistic State 8. The Basis of Vicarious Liability 9. The Political Ideas of James I

Observations on Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Europe

Abstract: Before, during, and immediately after World War II, the viability of states was much discussed in political literature. Recently, however, that issue has waned as the international community has lowered its threshold requirements and definitions of what constitutes viability. States that would formerly have been deemed nonviable by virtue of their small size, awkward and indefensible frontiers, or meager human and material resources, are now normally and as a matter of course subsidized and sustained by the international community. Corresponding to this process in political life, there has occurred a simultaneous shift in the focus of political theory and political analysis away from the question of viability, and toward the issue of legitimacy as particularly important and problematical. The attention currently devoted to this problem of political legitimacy stems in part from a widespread sense that the contemporary state, while viable enough in terms of that older concern and its newer standards, is nevertheless somehow out of phase with the world's travails-seemingly too small and weak to solve such global issues as inflation, yet apparently too big and remote to evoke that cathartic trust, identification, and admiration of its subjects which the state requires if its political system is to function. This essay probes some of the problems-of theory and of policy-confronting state authorities in contemporary Europe as they seek to achieve, sustain, and enhance their always vulnerable legitimacy.

Civic Religion and National Community in Thailand

Abstract: In recent years a number of historians, political scientists, and sociologists have been searching for a better way of approaching the study of the religious ideas, sentiments, and symbols associated with the life of modern national communities. It has become increasingly evident that the older procedure of making a clear distinction between specifically religious communities and religion on the one hand, and the state and politics on the other, then analyzing the interaction between the two, is no longer sufficient. However, no widely accepted alternative way of viewing the problem has emerged.

The Origins and Development of Racial Anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy

Abstract: When the Italian Fascist government unveiled its policy of racial anti-Semitism in 1938 many European observers were surprised and dismayed. Italy had generally been considered the one European state in which anti-Semitism had not played an important role historically. The number of Jews in Italy had always been relatively small: during the Fascist period they constituted little more than 0.1 percent of the Italian population, and these had been well dispersed and integrated into various sectors of Italian life. Moreover, Italians had a reputation for humaneness and tolerance. Most observers therefore assumed that when Mussolini adopted his racial policy he was merely emulating the German example or had succumbed to Nazi pressure. They regarded the introduction of racial antiSemitism in Italy as an alien intrusion, as an abomination to the Italian mentality and the height of Fascist folly. But racial anti-Semitism was no more anomalous to the Italian mind than the development of Fascism itself, and the one grew logically and naturally out of the other.' While racial anti-Semitism was largely unforeseen and probably unwanted by most Italians, it evolved from Fascist principles and policies which they generally supported. Mussolini's efforts to remake postwar Italy from a weak, disunited state into a strong, disciplined nation appealed to Italians; and they applauded his promises to transform them from a nation of museum keepers presiding over the ruins of an ancient civilization into a vigorous breed of warriors destined to create a new, imperial civilization. Yet few Italians probably realized the extent to which militarism, racism, and anti-Semitism would become an essential part of that nationalist and imperialist program.2

Federalism in the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform

Abstract: T HE Progressive era has long been recognized as one of substantial contribution to social legislation. Working through state and national legislatures, reformers rewrote child labor laws and safety and factory inspection statutes. They cast the society's response to industrial accident and death into the new form of workmen's compensation. They limited working hours for some women and, in a few cases, for men. In some states night work became illegal. By 1915 several states had passed minimum wage legislation. Of the major reform goals of the period, only compulsory health insurance failed to win enactment. The history of this avalanche of social legislation has been described as a struggle between social justice progressives and conservative state and national court systems;' as a conflict between ideas of voluntarism and compulsion and individual and collective responsibility;2 and as a political process involving interest groups, particularly business and labor.3 A structural approach, emerging from the work of historians of child labor reform, is as yet neither fully articulated nor tested. According to this model, legislative social reform suffered from a temporary incongruity between economic and political systems. While business increasingly operated in both national and regional markets, the political

The post‐colonial state and its’ Tanzanian version

Abstract: Joining debate with Alavi, Leys and Saul, it is argued here that to analyse the post colonial state it is necessary to know not only generally which classes influence it, but the effect these classes have on the state and society and the relative position of each. A distinction should be made between the rulingclass and the governingclass, the former having always been the metropolitan bourgeoisie, while the latter has developed from the colonial administration to the post‐colonial State with a sophisticated array of instruments to control society, including the development of a form of state monopoly capitalism. An analysis of the Tanzanian state illustrates this argument. The rise to power of the new governing class, the nizers(Africanders) is examined to show that the various ‘progressive’ measures undertaken by the State (nationalisation, ‘socialist’ villages) have been methods adopted by the governing class to extend its control. Whatever the anti‐capitalist nature of the ideology, and the well‐meani...

The Limits of Cost-Benefit Analysis as a Guide to Priority-Setting in Rehabilitation.

Abstract: Policy makers and program managers concerned with targeting resources to meet the rehabilitation needs of the nation cannot rely on the backlog of 18 cost-benefit studies to decide among alternative kinds and amounts of investment. Overly simplistic forecasting of the future earnings of rehabilitants, the insufficiencies of data concerning the benefits and costs of rehabilitation, and the extreme sensitivity of the cost-benefit model's results to its untested underlying assumptions argue against priority-setting based on intuitively appealing class-specific calculations that appear to show greater rates of return for investments in some kinds of disabled persons over others. Until substantial upgrading of the state of the art along certain recommended lines takes place, the political process looks like the only sensible and fair way to approach choice and the assertion ofpriorities.

Political humor in a dictatorial state: the case of spain1

Abstract: Political humor is examined as a response of individuals to the conditions typical of dictatorial regimes. The trading of jokes and stories with anti-regime content helps to mitigate anxiety and the sense of helplessness encountered in highly controlled political contexts. Furthermore, the joke-teller engages in a form of nonviolent resistance that is difficult to counteract by the agencies of state authority. Material for this essay is drawn from the period of Franco rule in Spain, due allowances being made for the specific cultural and political attributes of time and place. I While the material in this essay is contemporary, in the sense that it belongs to our own times, it is also very much historical, since it concerns a recent past sharply separated from the present by a major political discontinuity. I will be discussing oral political humor during the long dictatorship of Francisco Franco Bahamonde, the man who ruled Spain for almost forty years prior to his death on November 20, 1975. Political analysts often refer to those long decades as the era of Francoism, franquismo in Spanish, and the term is quite appropriate since it was an individual, rather than a distinctive ideology or a given set of institutions, that chiefly characterized the period. Generalisimo Franco Commander of the Armies, Chief of State for life, Caudillo, and head of the Falange - made it a policy to delegate only administrative functions while retaining full personal control of the machinery of government. He was the state, and it is thus in no sense surprising that the political humor we shall be examining has Franco as its central theme.

In Defense of the Consent Theory of Political Obligation and Authority

Abstract: The consent theory of political obligation and authority (the Consent Theory below) is much more plausible than its many critics have realized. However, its plausibility can only be appreciated if the precise and limited scope of the theory within a complete theory of reasons for political obedience is recognized. These are the two claims I will try to substantiate in this paper. To understand the scope of the Consent Theory let us note the following characteristics of political obligation and political authority. 1. To have political authority is for someone, A, to be in authority over some others, B and C; and for A to have authority over B and C is necessarily for A to have the right to make demands (in certain areas of conduct) on B and C and for the latter to have an obligation to meet these demands. The right of A to make these demands and B's and C's obligation to meet them are correlatives. Hence, if a state has political authority, the right to govern, then there must be someone who has a correlative obligation. It is this particular obligation of the citizens to obey the state, the correlative of political authority, to which I refer by the term 'political obligation.' Since political obligation and political authority are correlatives, whatever is the logical basis of one must also be the logical basis of the other. When I speak, below, of a political authority relationship, I will be referring to the two correlatives which make it up. 2. One can distinguish between conclusive reasons for doing something and a (not necessarily conclusive) reason for doing it. To be under political obligation is for there to be a (not necessarily conclusive) reason for obeying the state. This must be so since it is possible to be under political obligation and yet to be morally justified in disobeying the state. Two sorts of cases are worth mentioning. One is

States, Ancient and Modern

Abstract: ThisPaper has a fairly clear overall argument: that the relationship between State and Society in large-scale societies changed dramatically with the advent of industrial capitalism. Prior to that development, the State and the state bureaucracy played a substantially autonomous role vis-a-vis the class structure of civil society. After that its autonomy has been negligible: indeed, for most analytic purposes the State can be reduced to class structure. Such an argument is by no means original. For example, its outlines were commonplace among eighteenth and nineteenth-century theorists. In this paper I draw somewhat on Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. For one particular argument I am indebted to the contemporary sinologist Owen Lattimore. The idea of such a dramatic shift in the history of society is nowadays extremely unfashionable, however. Today theorists usually present essentially the same view of state-society relations throughout human history. Most Marxists reduce the state to being contingent upon the ‘determining’ categories of ‘mode of production’ and ‘class struggle’. Functionalists present a theory of structural differentiation which occurs so early in human evolution that in all recorded history the relationship between, and relative autonomy of, economy and polity are essentially unchanging. Weberians, in arguing for the autonomy of each element of ‘the structure of social action’, also give a picture of the mutual independence of state and economy throughout history. In all three cases, the caution and specificity of the theory of the ‘founding fathers’—Marx, Spencer and Weber—is thrown to the wind.

Doing better and feeling worse: Health in the United States

Abstract: This is a book that will generate debate, discussion, controversy, conflict, and perhaps some legislative reform when the impact of its arguments begins to be felt. Twenty doctors, economists, and political and social scientists were asked by the Rockefeller Foundation to write on health and medical care in the United States. A clue to their opinions about the state of the nation's health is the title of their volume. Doing Better and Feeling Worse.

State supreme courts in state and nation

Abstract: This is the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of state supreme courts. Offering detailed case studies of the Alabama, Ohio, and New jersey supreme courts, G. Alan Tarr and Mary Cornelia Aldis Porter use this information to assess the state courts' relations with federal courts, with state courts in other states, and with other institutions of state government.

The Nationalization of War Industries in France, 1936-1937: A Case Study

Abstract: The nationalization of the French war industries by the Popular Front government in 1936 and 1937 has seldom been examined outside its immediate political context. At the time, conservative spokesmen condemned the measure as just one more step down the road to state socialism. Others, including its major supporter, the French Socialist party, saw the legislation as a major blow against war profiteering and the international trade in arms.' But such one-dimensional judgments obscure another aspect of the nationalization program: its close relationship with the existing pattern of military-industrial affairs in France. Since the beginning of World War I, military technology had become increasingly complex and, at least in the more advanced industrial states, nearly inseparable from the larger national economy. These changes quickly produced serious conflicts between military bureaucrats and civilian businessmen. Important questions included the extent of the state's control over the economy in the name of national defense and the division of labor between the private sector and the government arsenals. These matters were fundamental to the creation and implementation of any nationalization program. Based on research in the archives of the Renault automobile company, the following study offers a glimpse into this process and its place in the unique historical architecture of interwar France.2 Prior to 1914, the production of arms, munitions, and other military equipment had generally been confided to a small number of state arsenals, many dating back to the age of Louis XIV and

Politics in the Post-Military State: Some Reflections on the Pakistani Experience

Abstract: The possibilities of an end to military rule in developing states and of a postmilitary era in these states have only recently started to receive some consideration. In general, movement away from military control of politics is perceived as a matter of choice on the part of military elites and as a question of gradually expanding participation so as not to outstrip the slow accrual of extrabureaucratic power. Pakistan's experiences since 1971 suggest another pattern of transition from military-dominated to civiliandominated politics. Pakistan has been characterized by suddenly expanded participation and by the new civilian leadership's use of demobilization and patrimonial strategies to curtail this participation. Such strategies, patrimonialism in particular, have “dedevelopmental” consequences for the political system.