Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 1981"

The Negro Family: The Case for National Action

Abstract: The removal of legal obstacles to equality of opportunity did not directly lead—and has not yet led—to equal results for African Americans considered as a group. Partly as a result, the demand for greater equality of outcomes has risen—especially in matters economic, where the black-white income gap continues to widen. But already in 1965, in the heady days of the Civil Rights Movement and its legislative victories outlawing overt racial discrimination, a government report called attention to what it called “a new crisis in race relations,” based on the need to help the disintegrating black family in order to attain full group equality for African Americans. The report, written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003), Harvard sociologist, author, diplomat, advisor to four presidents, and three-term senator from the state of New York, called for major federal government programs to aid the black family and to help blacks achieve equal success and status in the United States. The present excerpt comprises the report’s Preface and Chapter 1 (“The Negro American Revolution”). Although widely attacked for what some called “blaming the victim,” the report played a crucial role in expanding the role of the federal government in antipoverty and family welfare programs.

A contemporary critique of historical materialism

Abstract: Preface to the Second Edition - Introduction - The Time-Space Constitution of Social Systems - Domination, Power and Exploitation: An Analysis - Society as Time-Traveller: Capitalism and World History - Time- Space Distanciation and the Generation of Power - Property and Class Society - Time, Labour and the City - Capitalism: Integration, Surveillance and Class Power - The Nation-State, Nationalism and Capitalist Development - The State: Class Conflict and Political Order - Between Capitalism and Socialism: Contradiction and Exploitation - Notes and References - Index

Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies

Abstract: In uneasy partnership at the helm of the modern state stand elected party politicians and professional bureaucrats. This book is the first comprehensive comparison of these two powerful elites. In seven countries--the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands--researchers questioned 700 bureaucrats and 6OO politicians in an effort to understand how their aims, attitudes, and ambitions differ within cultural settings. One of the authors' most significant findings is that the worlds of these two elites overlap much more in the United States than in Europe. But throughout the West bureaucrats and politicians each wear special blinders and each have special virtues. In a well-ordered polity, the authors conclude, politicians articulate society's dreams and bureaucrats bring them gingerly to earth.

The end of liberalism : the second republic of the United States

Abstract: The main argument which Lowi develops through this book is that the liberal state grew to its immense size and presence without self-examination and without recognizing that its pattern of growth had problematic consequences. Its engine of growth was delegation. The government expanded by responding to the demands of all major organized interests, by assuming responsibility for programs sought by those interests, and by assigning that responsibility to administrative agencies. Through the process of accommodation, the agencies became captives of the interest groups, a tendency Lowi describes as clientelism. This in turn led to the formulation of new policies which tightened the grip of interest groups on the machinery of government.

Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India

Abstract: Perhaps the most intransigent problem in the recent history of Indian society remains an adequate understanding of the processes of social change which took place under colonialism. As the continunig controversies within, as much as between, the traditions of modernization theory, Marxism, and the underdevelopment theory make plain, the Indian historical record is peculiarly difficult to grasp with conventional sociological concepts. In the study of Western European society, a focus on the evolution of legal ideas and institutions has proved a useful entry point to social history.The law may be seen to represent a set of general principles through which political authority and the state (however constituted) attempt to legitimize the social institutions and norms of conduct which they find valuable. As such, its history reflects the struggle in society to assume, control or resist this authority. Its study should help to reveal the nature of the forces involved in the struggle and to suggest the implications for social development of the way in which, at any one time, their struggle was resolved. The condition of the law may be seen to crystallize the condition of society. This, of course, could be said of any governing institution. But where the law becomes uniquely valuable is in that, because of its social function, the struggle around it is necessarily expressed in terms of general statements of principle rather than particular statements of private and discrete interest. At the most fundamental level, these principles demarcate the rules on which the contending parties seek to build their versions of society and provide useful clues to their wider, often undisclosed, positions.

Legitimacy in the modern state

Abstract: This analysis of the concept of authority in Western society constitutes a central work in political sociology and a fundamental critique of the process of modernization Schaar proposes that legitimate authority is declining in the modern state Law and order, in a very real sense, is the basic political issue of our time -- one that conservatives have understood with greater clarity than their liberal adversaries Schaar sees what were once authoritative institutions and ideas yielding to technological and bureaucratic orders The later brings physical comfort and a sense of collective power, but does not provide political liberty or moral autonomy As a result, he argues, all modern states exhibiting this transformation of authority into technology are well advanced along the path of a crisis of legitimacy

The capitalist world-economy : essays

Abstract: Some reflections on history, the social sciences, and politics Acknowledgments Part I. The Inequalities of Core and Periphery: 1. The rise and future demise of the world capitalist system: concepts for comparative analysis 2. Three paths of national development in sixteenth-century Europe 3. The present state of the debate on world inequality 4. Dependence in an interdependent world: the limited possibilities of transformation within the capitalist world-economy 5. Semiperipheral countries and the contemporary world crisis 6. The rural economy in modern world society 7. Modernization: requiescat in pace 8. From feudalism to capitalism: transition or transitions? 9. A world-system perspective on the social sciences Part II. The Inequalities of Class, Race and Ethnicity: 10. Social conflict in post-independence Black Africa: the concepts of race and status group reconsidered 11. The two modes of ethnic consciousness: Soviet Central Asia in transition 12. Class and class conflict in contemporary Africa 13. American slavery and the capitalist world-economy 14. Class formation in the capitalist world-economy Part III. Political Strategies: 15. Old problems and new syntheses: the relation of revolutionary ideas and practices 16. Fanon and the revolutionary class 17. An historical perspective on the emergence of the new international order: economic, political, cultural aspects Concluding essay 18. Class conflict in the capitalist world-economy Index.

Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980-81

Abstract: The categories of civil society are not extraneous to the Polish events. The participants themselves and their Western collaborators have characterized their struggle in terms of society against the state. “The state has not been able to successfully dissolve civil society,” writes Smolar in the preface to a volume of writings by Polish dissidents. “The texts … are manifestations of the existence and vitality of civil society in a country ruled by a communist party.” As Kuron put it, “Society organizes itself as a democratic movement and becomes active outside the limits of the institutions of the totalitarian state.” KOR (an acronym for Workers' Defense Committee) is renamed KSS-KOR (Social Self-Defense Committee-KOR) to indicate its support of all initiatives for both interest representation and the defense of civil rights.

Racial Insurgency, the State, and Welfare Expansion: Local and National Level Evidence from the Postwar United States

Abstract: This paper addresses systematically the possible nexus between insurgent political action and the state apparatus, concentrating specifically on the relationship between urban riots and welfare or reliefgiving activity in the postwar United States. The theoretical warrant for the analysis has its genesis in Piven and Cloward's influential thesis relating insurgency and relief giving in capitalist society. This perspective is juxtaposed with the orthodox developmental perspective of welfare institutions, and the causal processes and underlying images of the state are compared. A critical review of the empirical work on the riot-welfare relationship suggests several deficiencies and questions which we attempt to redress and address, respectively, in a cross-level empirical analysis of (a) changes in welfare expenditures from 1960 to 1970 in a panel of U.S. cities and (b) annual changes in national aggretate relief-program categories for the postwar United States (1947-76). The results of the city-level anal...

The Transition to Statehood in the New World

Abstract: Preface Part I. Introduction: 1. Issues in the study of New World state formation Grant D. Jones and Robert R. Kautz Part II. Sociopolitical Factors in State Formation: 2. The chiefdom: precursor of the state Robert L. Carneiro 3. Class conflict and the state in the New World Jonathan Haas 4. The ecological basis for New World state formation: general and local model building Mark N. Cohen 5. The transition to statehood as seen from the mouth of a cave Richard S. MacNeish Part IV. Ideological Factors in State Formation: 6. Religion and the rise of Mesoamerican states Michael D. Coe 7. The nature and role of religious diffusion in the early stages of state formation: an example from Peruvian prehistory Richard W. Keatinge 8. Civilization as a state of mind: the cultural evolution of the Lowland Maya David A. Friedel Works cited Index.

The Political System Besieged by the State

Abstract: HE EDITOR has asked me to address myself to the future of systems analysis in political science over t:he next twenty years. I shall deal with this question in a particularistic way. Instead of examining the whole conceptual framework called systems analysis and pointing up its successes, shortcomings, and future prospects, I shall focus only on the idea of the political system itself. Central to the development of systemrrs analysis as a theoretical approach is a serious commitment to the study of politics as a system of behavior and institutions. It is this idea that is being challenged today by the resurrection of an older concept, that of the state. Given the recent diffusion of the latter notion throughout the social sciences in the United States-it has had a continuing life in other parts of the world-we may well wonder whether the next couple of decades will witness a permanent return to this earlier theoretical approach. The state, a concept that many of us thought had beeni polished off a quarter of a century ago, has now risen from the grave to haunt us once again. Until the 1950s, the state was one of the dominant gross orienting concepts in political science throughout the West, not only in Marxist thinking (with which it is today closely associated), but in conventional social science as well. The idea of a political system had been consciously developed in the 1950s as a way of avoiding the irresolvable ambiguities surrounding the term.' If today the state appears to be challenging the conceptual dominance of the political system, as it does, it is none too soon to raise the question as to where the state may be leading us.

Does Federalism Matter? Political Choice in a Federal Republic

Abstract: This paper builds upon some well-known facts about state government to generate new conclusions about social choice on the national level of a federal republic. Citizens vote against national laws that restrict their state's ability to export costs but support laws that reduce the costs imposed on them. Individuals may seek to extend the laws passed in some states to the entire nation or may oppose preemptive laws because they benefit from variety. Since these motivations are absent in a unitary system, national support for a law will depend upon whether a unitary or a federal structure prevails.

The Hsiung-nu Imperial Confederacy: Organization and Foreign Policy

Abstract: Nomadic states in Inner Asia were generated by external relations with state societies. Because the Hsiung-nu state could not have supported itself by exploiting the relatively undifferentiated and extensive pastoral economy, the state hierarchy was financed by exploiting the resources available from outside of the steppe. The nomads on the steppe were organized into a powerful military force that was used to systematically exploit the Chinese economy. The Hsiung-nu raided the frontier directly and then used the disruptions they caused as a tool to extort trade and subsidies from the Han court, thus maintaining a monopoly on this flow of Han goods to the steppe, which gave it great economic power and stability. The imperial level of Hsiung-nu government was therefore primarily concerned with conducting foreign affairs, organizing military campaigns, and maintaining unity on the steppe, while it ceded power in domestic affairs to indigenous tribal leaders. This created an imperial confederacy that acted as an autocratically ruled state in its dealings with China but that remained federally structured internally. This form of organization proved remarkably stable and provided the model for later empires established by nomads on the steppe.

The new family and the new property

Abstract: In her new stimulating and imaginative book, The New Family and the New Property,** Mary Ann Glendon continues some of the principal ideas elaborated in her well known work, State, Law and Family: Family Law in Tranition in the United States and Western Europe. Enlarging her field of research in our modern work society, she seeks to expose basic tendencies of our time by a comparison of family law with topical developments in labor law, social security and tenancy law. Her emphasis lies in the characteristic description, "new". This is already underscored by its twin usage in the title. Her aim is not to criticize the family as "an apparition of old, unchanged in its core".' On the contrary, she focuses especially on the process of change in family and employment relationships for the maintenance of the individual. With reference to Homer Clark, she connects the "New Family" to a set of legal changes in the 20th century reflecting altered family behavior. As examples, she considers the growing divorce rates, the increase of nonmarital relationships, and the restructuring of the family, which she characterizes by the transition from authoritarian forms of domination to partner relationships and the existence of opportunities of choice not earlier available. She refers to the work of Charles Reich on changes in the nature and forms of wealth. Envisaging a decline in the importance of family bonds for economic sustenance, she emphasizes the growing importance of "new property" in the form of wages, job security, pension rights, insurance, and welfare benefits, all of which she maintains should be legally guaranteed by the government "to aid security and independence" (p.188). Glendon not only finds a close relation between the "New Family" and "New Property", but also subjects each concept to comprehensive comparison. She thus compares the legal rules of the individual states of the U.S.A. with those of the national laws of Western Europe. She also considers the experience of Soviet law, and discovers "partial legal convergence" between Soviet law and U.S. law, an observation which has already been acknowledged by a reviewer2 as "one of the more intriguing comparisons in the book."

The Realists of 1776@@@The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era.

Abstract: Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Preface Chapter 3 Introduction Chapter 4 Government by Congresses and Committees, 1773-1776 Chapter 5 The Role of the Continental Congress, 1775-1776 Chapter 6 \"Choosing the Deputies to Form a Government\": The Making of the First State Constitutions Chapter 7 \"Republic\" and \"Democracy\" in Political Rhetoric Chapter 8 Forms versus Principles of Government: Harnessing Enlightenment Ideas to Anglo-American Institutions Chapter 9 Popular Sovereignty Chapter 10 Liberty Chapter 11 Equality Chapter 12 Property Chapter 13 The Common Good Chapter 14 Representation Chapter 15 The Separation of Powers Chapter 16 Federalism Chapter 17 The State Constitutions' Analogies and Precedents for the United States Constitution Chapter 18 Testing the Republicanism versus Liberalism Hypotheses Chapter 19 Appendixes Chapter 20 Bibliography Chapter 21 Index

The New Deal and the States: Federalism in Transition

Abstract: The author traces trends in state affairs and in American federalism between 1920 and 1940 and focuses as much on the states as he does on the federal government.

Men and Citizens in International Relations

Abstract: In the previous chapter we referred to the juxtaposition of two concepts of obligation within the theory and practice of the modern state. The present chapter begins by referring to the problem of men and citizens within those modern theories of politics concerned with the re-creation of community in a society shaped by the presence of individualism and universalism. We shall attempt to show that the problem of man and citizen within these theories of domestic political community is connected with parallel concerns in the history of international thought as well as being the instigator of one of its most important traditions.

Transnational Corporations and Economic Development

Abstract: In 1965 Kwame Nkrumah published a book which was to exert a powerful influence on thinking about economic development.1 His thesis was that colonialism had been replaced by neo-colonialism, ‘the last stage of imperialism’, the essence of which was that ‘the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside’.2 He went on to argue that ‘giant financial interests’ exercised control over nominally independent states,3 with the result that foreign control was used for ‘the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world’.4

The decline of British economic power since 1870

Abstract: Preface 1. The British Economy 1870-1913: the Descent from Hegemony 2. The British Economy in the 1920s: Growth and Stagnation 3. The British Economy in the 1930s: Recovery on the Dole 4. The Second World War and Its Aftermath: the Bankrupt State 5. The British Economy since 1951: the Political Economy of Failure