Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 1984"

Southern Politics in State and Nation

Abstract: More than thirty years after its original publication, V. O. Key's classic remains the most influential book on its subject. Its author, one of the nation's most astute observers, drew on more than five hundred interviews with Southerners to illuminate the political process in the South and in the nation.Key's book explains party alignments within states, internal factional competition, and the influence of the South upon Washington. It also probes the nature of the electorate, voting restrictions, and political operating procedures. This reprint of the original edition includes a new introduction by Alexander Heard and a profile of the author by William C. Havard. "A monumental accomplishment in the field of political investigation." Hodding Carter, New York Times "The raw truth of southern political behavior." C. Vann Woodward, Yale Review "[This book] should be on the 'must' list of any student of American politics." Ralph J. Bunche V.O. Key (1908-1963) taught political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Harvard universities. He was president of the American Political Science Association and author of numerous books, including American State Politics: An Introduction (1956); Public Opinion and American Democracy (1961); and The Responsible Electorate (1966)."

The State and Political Theory

Abstract: Martin Carnoy clarifies the important contemporary debate on the social role of an increasingly complex State. He analyzes the most recent recasting of Marxist political theories in continental Europe, the Third World, and the United States; sets the new theories in a context of past thinking about the State; and argues for the existence of a major shift in Marxist views.Originally published in 1984.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Thomas M. Callaghy has written a truly admirable study of state formation in Africa that is at once bold and provocative. Focusing specifically on Zaire, the study boldly and convincingly situates the state formation process in contemporary Africa within a comparative and historical framework that is astutely informed by the current theoretical debates on the state and by a judicious blend of analytic categories derived from Weberian sociology, Marxist analysis, organization theory, modernization and development approaches, and world-system and dependency-underdevelopment perspectives. This ambitious framework is operationalized with the help of an impressive array of extant theoretical and empirical studies, enriched by primary data collected in Zaire. It is also a provocative study, for Callaghy proceeds from what, at first blush, seems to be a preposterous assumption that the state formation process in contemporary Africa is similar to and comparable with the state formation process in Latin America and especially seventeenth-century France. The central thesis of the study is that the state formation process in contemporary Africa is no different than in early modern Europe and early postcolonial Latin America, or, for that matter, anywhere else. Methodologically, therefore, the "state formation experience of other areas and periods is indeed germane to the study of state formation process in Africa and ... the use of comparative perspective helps to highlight key aspects of African politics today that have been neglected or inadequately conceptualized" (pp. xixii). Everywhere, the process of state formation entails a struggle between a group of centralizing elites and a diverse set of powerful and autonomous internal and external groups over the location and distribution of political power and economic resources. Essentially, this is a struggle for sovereignty, for domination over internal societal groups and autonomy vis-a-vis external actors and forces. Everywhere the struggle proceeds slowly, unevenly and incrementally, involving a varying mix of conflicting and complementary interests, confrontational and cooperative strategies, and coercive and cooptive techniques. Nowhere is the eventual outcome of this struggle predetermined or unambiguous. This central thesis is methodically elaborated in two crisply written and tightly argued parts of the book, comprised of eight chapters which are liberally footnoted, often with long explanatory notes. Part I elucidates the comparative and analytic perspectives which inform the study. Part II focuses directly on the statesociety struggle in Zaire. Chapter I employs the current theoretical debates on the state to categorize Mobutu's Zaire as the contemporary African variant of an "early modern" absolutist authoritarian state with a strong organic-statist orientation and associated but weak corporatist structures linking state and society. Comparison with Latin America serves to emphasize the quintessentially uninstitutionalized character of this state in which state structures, societal configurations (especially class and ethnicity), and state-society relations are all in flux and in the process of formation. Zaire in this respect conforms not to the bureaucratic-authoritarian model of contemporary Latin America or Bonapartist France, in which state

The hegemon's dilemma: Great Britain, the United States, and the international economic order

Abstract: Liberal international trade regimes do not emerge from the policies of one state, even a hegemonic one. Trade liberalization among major trading states is, rather, the product of tariff bargains. Thus, hegemons need followers and must make concessions to obtain agreements. The liberal trade regimes that emerged in both the 19th and the 20th centuries were founded on asymmetric bargains that permitted discrimination, especially against the hegemon. The agreements that lowered tariff barriers led to freer trade not free trade; resulted in subsystemic rather than global orders; and legitimated mercantilistic and protectionist practices of exclusion and discrimination, and thus did not provide a collective good. Moreover, these trade agreements (and trade disputes as well) had inherently international political underpinnings and did not reflect economic interests alone. Trade liberalization also required a certain internal strength on the part of the government. Furthermore, only a complete political rupturing of relations, such as occurs in wartime, can destroy such a regime. A hegemon's decline cannot do so alone. These arguments are developed in a historical reassessment of the evolution of the international trading order since 1820. Eras commonly seen as liberal, such as the 1860s, are shown to have included a good deal of protection, and eras seen as protectionist, such as the 1880s, are shown to have been much more liberal than is usually believed.

Welfare capitalism and the social security act of 1935

Abstract: A central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy, or more specifically, how political power gets translated into economic power. Recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis, which contends that class-conscious capitalists manipulate the polity so that government comes to pursue policies favorable to capitalism. Alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class. The Social Security Act of 1935, which represented the beginning of the welfare state in the United States, was a conservative measure that tied social insurance benefits to labor force participation and left administration of its public assistance programs to the states. In this paper the Social Security Act is used as a case study to adjudicate between several competing theories of the state. The analysis demonstrates that the state functions as a mediating body, weighing the priorities of various interest groups with unequal access to power, negotiating compromises between class factions, and incorporating working-class demands into legislation on capitalist terms. A central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy, or more specifically, how economic power gets translated into political power. Recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis, which stresses the strategies of class-conscious capitalists to manipulate the polity. Alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class. The core agenda of those espousing some variant of corporate liberalism has been to explain how major economic interests manipulated the polity in the twentieth century, so that government came to pursue policies favorable to capitalism (Domhoff, 1979; Kolko, 1963; O'Connor, 1973; Useem, 1983). According to this perspective, capitalists rationally pursued a series of policies designed to allow them control of the political process, resulting in a synthesis of politics and economics. For example, Kolko (1963) has argued that the regulatory "reforms" of the Progressive Era, traditionally explained as a respose to muckraker's criticism, were actually desired by large industry as a way, not only of controlling

Personal Rule: Theory and Practice in Africa

Abstract: Personal rule has been a compelling facet of politics at least since the time of Machiavelli. It is the image not of a ruler but of a type of rulership.' Personal rule is a dynamic world of political will and activity that is shaped less by institutions or impersonal social forces than by personal authorities and power; it is a world, therefore, of uncertainty, suspicion, rumor, agitation, intrigue, and sometimes fear, as well as of stratagem, diplomacy, conspiracy, dependency, reward, and threat. In other words, personal rule is a distinctive type of political system in which the rivalries and struggles of powerful and wilful men, rather than impersonal institutions, ideologies, public policies, or class interests, are fundamental in shaping political life. Indicators of personal regimes in sub-Saharan Africa are coups, plots, factionalism, purges, rehabilitations, clientelism, corruption, succession maneuvers, and similar activities which have been significant and recurring features of political life during the past two decades. Furthermore, there is no indication that such activities are about to decline in political importance. Whereas these features are usually seen as merely the defects of an otherwise established political orderwhether capitalist, socialist, military, civilian, or whatever-we are inclined to regard them much more as the integral elements of a distinctive political system to which we have given the term "personal rule."2 It is ironic that in the twentieth century a novel form of "presidential monarchy" has appeared in many countries of the Third World. The irony consists in the contradiction of what is perhaps the major tendency in the evolution of the modern state during the past several centuries: the transformation of political legitimacy from the authority of kings to the mandate of the people.3 What has happened in the

The Republic of St. Peter: The Birth of the Papal State, 680-825

Abstract: The Republic of St. Peter seeks to reclaim for central Italy an important part of its own history. Noble's thesis is at once original and controversial: that the Republic, an independent political entity, was in existence by the 730s and was not a creation of the Franks in the 750s. Noble examines the political, economic, and religious problems that impelled the central Italians--and a succession of resolute popes--to seek emancipation from the Byzantine Empire. He delineates the social structures and historical traditions that produced a distinctive political society, describes the complete governmental apparatus of the Republic, and provides a comprehensive assessment of the Franco-papal alliance.

Government and Politics in Africa

Abstract: Preface - Changes in Country Names - Introduction: African Politics since Independence - Colonialism and the Colinial Impact - Nationalism and the Transfer of Power - State and Society - Political Parties - Administration - The Military - Revolutionary Movements and Revolutionary Regimes - Regional Groups, The OAU and the South African Issue - Conclusions: Ideology, the Post-Colonial State and Development - Suggestions for Further Reading - Bibliography - Index

State apparatus : structures and language of legitimacy

Abstract: Originally published in 1984, State Apparatus contributes to the debate on the theory of the state through posing questions regarding the state’s form, function, and apparatus. The book begins by setting out the theoretical and methodological problems and reviewing the various Conservative, Liberal and Marxist theories in light of these. It discusses state activity, using specific case studies to clearly illustrate key points, such as the development of welfare systems in North America and Western Europe. It also explores the use of language under the state, the role of the legal apparatus within a capitalist system, and the "local state". The book concludes with a discussion of democracy and the crisis of legitimacy, and the issue of justice and the state. State Apparatus is a detailed and comprehensive text, ideal for those with an interest in the history, theory, form, and function of the state.

Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits

Abstract: For nearly a decade the leaders of the seven major industrial countries the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Canada have met annually to discuss international economic and political issues. Regular summitry of this sort is virtually unprecedented in modern diplomacy. Proponents see the Western summits as providing collective leadership that is vital in a turbulent world, while critics dismiss summitry as distracting and even damaging to political and economic stability."Hanging Together" charts the modern dilemma between economic interdependence and national sovereignty. It assesses the history, decisions, successes, and failures of the seven-power summits from Rambouillet in 1975 to the 1983 meeting at Williamsburg, and looks forward to the 1984 summit in London. The authors show how the growing importance of international commerce and finance has caused national and international politics to become entangled, and how national borders have become more permeable. Born in an era of waning American hegemony, the summits reveal the tension between American leadership and collective Western management of the world economy. The authors also trace the struggles of heads of state to balance the conflicting imperatives of personal authority and bureaucratic expertise. Because summits involve the power and prestige of each country's highest authorities, summitry reveals in concentrated form how these conflicts are expressed and managed.As a blend of contemporary history and political economy, "Hanging Together" demonstrates that summits are not isolated annual encounters, but part of a continuous process of international and domestic negotiation about the most important and controversial issues facing all governments today."

But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction

Abstract: This is a comprehensive examination of the use of violence by conservative southerners in the post-Civil War South to subvert Federal Reconstruction policies, overthrow Republican state governments, restore Democratic power, and reestablish white racial hegemony. Historians have often stressed the limited and even conservative nature of Federal policy in the Reconstruction South. However, George C. Rable argues, white southerners saw the intent and the results of that policy as revolutionary. Violence therefore became a counterrevolutionary instrument, placing the South in a pattern familiar to students of world revolution.

The Expansion of the State

Abstract: The state has come to be a major focus of political and historical sociology in recent years. In the growing literature, there appears to be an underemphasis on the cultural and institutional contexts of the state's emergence and expansion. Two distinct issues are crucial: (a) the evolution of society as a collective actor, including the establishment of sovereignty and the expansion of its jurisdiction; and (b) the degree to which this sovereignty and jurisdiction are structured within a particular bureaucratic organization. We first review studies of the emergence of states in formerly stateless polities. We then discuss the processes of state formation and nation building in the Western system. Finally, we review more specialized theoretical works concerning classes, the world economy, and the construction of national institutions. The literature discussed has added considerably to macrosociology. More work is needed, however, in which the state is viewed as an institution that is essentially cultural in nature and that derives from a wider rationalizing project.

Land and class in Kenya

Abstract: policy; in the golden age of the 1970s, Nigeria could wield its 'oil weapon* to discipline recalcitrant neighbours and even intimidate Britain. A third shared outlook is a certain disposition to question Nigeria's credentials as a genuinely non-aligned state, despite the evident changes since the civil war; here, the discussion is hampered by the absence of any clear and consistent definition of non-alignment. Finally, there is general recognition of Nigeria's global dependence, though opinions differ concerning how serious this is. Overall, this book offers a series of highly informative and occasionally provocative interpretations of salient aspects of Nigerian foreign policy. In addition, the bibliography is excellent and the index adequate.

Developmental states and socialist industrialisation in the third world

Abstract: Development Economics as a discipline and the idea of the state as the organiser of economic activity are inseparable. Basic concepts and distinctions are put forward to unravel the complex question of the role of the state in the industrialisation process. These are then used to examine the state in three waves of socialist industrialisation which shows a strong capacity to mobilise and direct economic, social and political resources. The typically pervasive state may, however, outlive its historically progressive role and become a bastion of economic irrationality and political authoritarianism.

A new history of Korea

Abstract: Preface to the Translation Author's Prefaces Maps, Charts, and Tables Chapter 1: The Communal Societies of Prehistoric Times 1. The Paleolithic Age 2. Neolithic Man in Korea 3. Society and Culture in the Neolithic Period Chapter 2: Walled-Town States and Confederated Kingdoms 1. The Use of Bronze and the Formation of Walled-Town States 2. The Formation and Development of Old Chosõn 3. The Formation of Confederated Kingdoms 4. Society and Polity in the Confederated Kingdoms 5. Culture in the Confederated Kingdoms Period Chapter 3: Aristocratic Societies Under Monarchical Rule 1. The Development of the Three Kingdoms 2. The Foreign Relations of the Three Kingdoms 3. Political and Social Structure of the Three Kingdoms 4. The Aristocratic Culture of the Three Kingdoms Chapter 4: The Fashioning of an Authoritarian Monarchy 1. The Silla Unification and the Founding of the Parhae Kingdom 2. The Government and Society of Unified Silla 3. The Flourishing of Silla Culture 4. The Society and Culture of Parhae Chapter 5: The Age of Powerful Gentry Families 1. Contradictions Within the Bone-Rank Status System 2. The Rise of Powerful Local Gentry 3. The Later Three Kingdoms Peasant Uprisings 4. Unification by Koryo 5. Culture of the Gentry Period Chapter 6: The Hereditary Aristocratic Order of Koryo 1. Beginnings of Kory 's Aristocratic Order 2. The Aristocratic Ruling Structure 3. Aristocratic Society and the Economic Structure 4. Foreign Relations 5. Aristocratic Culture 6. Disturbances in the Aristocratic Order Chapter 7: Rule by the Military 1. The Military Seize Power 2. Peasant and Slave Uprisings 3. The Military Rule of the Ch'oe 4. The Struggle with the Mongols 5. The Culture of the Age of the Military Chapter 8: Emergence of the Literati 1. The Pro-Yuan Policy and the Powerful Families 2. Growth of the Power of the Literati 3. The Founding of the Choso (Yi) Dynasty 4. The Culture of the New Literati Class Chapter 9: The Creation of a Yangban Society 1. The Development of Yangban Society in Choson 2. Administrative Structure of the Yangban Bureaucratic State 3. Social and Economic Structure of the Yangban Bureaucratic State 4. Foreign Policy of Early Choson 5. Yangban Bureaucratic Culture Chapter 10: The Rise of the Neo-Confucian Literati 1. Changes in Society under Rule by the Meritorious Elite 2. Emergence of the Neo-Confucian Literati 3. The Struggle Against the Japanese and Manchus 4. The Culture of the Neo-Confucian Literati Chapter 11: The Emergence of Landed Farmers and Wholesale Merchants 1. Government by Powerful Lineages 2. Changes in the System of Tax Collection 3. Economic Growth 4. Sirhak and Other New Intellectual Concerns 5. New Modes of Expression in the Arts Chapter 12: Instability in the Yangban Status System and the Outbreak of Popular Uprisings 1. Government by In-Law Families 2. Tremors in the Yangban Status System 3. Peasant Resistance 4. Development of a Popular Culture 5. The Reforms and Isolation Policy of the Taewon'gun Chapter 13: Growth of the Forces of Enlightenment 1. Enlightenment Policy and Reaction Against It 2. The Reform Movement of the Progressive Party 3. The Revolutionary Uprising of the Tonghak Peasant Army 4. The Reform of 1894 5. Commerce, Industry, and Currents of Thought in the Enlightenment Period Chapter 14: Nationalist Stirrings and Imperialist Aggression 1. Activities of the Independence Club 2. Japanese Aggression and the Struggle of the "Righteous Armies" 3. Japanese Economic Aggression and Korean Capital 4. The Patriotic Enlightenment Movement 5. The March First Movement Chapter 15: Development of the Nationalist Movement 1. Changes in Japan's Colonial Policy 2. Native Capital and the Condition of Korean 3. The Korean National Movement Enters a New Phase 4. The Preservation of Korean Culture Chapter 16: The Beginnings of Democracy 1. The Liberation of Korea, August 15, 1945 2. The Establishment of the Republic of Korea 3. The Korean War 4. The April 1960 Revolution Dynastic Lineages Select Bibliography Index-Glossary

Self-Help: The State and Peasant Leverage in Kenya

Abstract: The literature on general peasant–state relations in history, in Africa today, or in Kenya in particular, tells us that the peasants have little systematic political leverage over state policy. While I broadly agree with this assessment, I would like to comment on an exception. The changing nature of self-help in Kenya is analysed in order to argue, first, that peasants, in collaboration with other classes in self-help, have had some leverage on state policy and budgets in the realm of basic needs; second, that the fact of peasant initiative and political strength over time has served to alter subtly some aspects of everyday peasant–state relations to peasant advantage; and third, that self-help has historically been a doubleedged political sword. But, before proceeding to the Kenya context, it is essential to review theoretical and empirical aspects of peasant political weakness in contemporary Africa.

The Disappearing ‘We’

Abstract: There is a model of transcendental arguments with which we are all familiar, which I shall call anti-sceptical. A transcendental argument for a conclusion X, on the anti-sceptical model, proceeds by arguing that for a condition Y to be possible, X must be the case. Since the value of a transcendental argument is thought to consist in its ability to combat scepticism, Y should be a condition the sceptic must accept and X a condition he calls into doubt. Some transcendental arguments let Y be the condition of speaking a language and then argue that the sceptic's very ability to state his doubts about X show that X must be the case. The strongest form of transcendental argument is thought to let Y be self-conscious experience. For no interesting sceptic can deny that we have such a mental life; so if the transcendental argument is valid, it is thought, the sceptic is genuinely undermined. The paradigm of a transcendental argument is thought to be Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the categories. However, had Kant thought that the Transcendental Deduction merely showed that for experience to be possible it must conform to the categories, he would have considered his argument a failure.' Indeed, before he even mentions the need for a Transcendental Deduction, Kant has already argued that all our thinking must conform to the categories. Kant argues, in the Analytic of Concepts, chapter one, that every act of the understanding is a judgement and every judgement must employ its associated category. So if self-conscious experience involves any thinking, it will have to employ the categories. The Transcendental Deduction, by contrast, aims to show that we are entitled to employ the concepts which Kant has already argued we must employ in any thinking. It is, of course, possible to see that the Transcendental Deduction is concerned with the legitimation of

Karl Marx and the Satanic Mills: Factory Politics Under Early Capitalism in England, the United States, and Russia

Abstract: This paper sets out from a theoretical paradox in Marx's analysis of capitalism: that the working class is the victim of the logic of capitalism: that the working class is the victim of the logic of capitalism and at the same time os supposed to rise up against that logic. Traditional resolutions of this paradox are inadequate; the resolution proposed here involves the distinction within the sphere of production between the labor process and the factory regime. By a series of comparisons of textile industries in 19th-century England, United States, and Russia, the article highlights four factors that shape factory regimes: the labor process, market forces, the reproduction of labor power, and the state. It shows how an examination of factory regimes can account for the absorption of working-class radicalism in England after 1850 and the deepening of working-class radicalism in Russia after 1905, culminating in the revolution-ary movements of 1917. Finally, it presents the implications for Marxism of this ...

Some Conventional Orthodoxies in the Study of Agrarian Change

Abstract: The paper presents a critical review of two major approaches to the analysis of agrarian societies in light of evidence taken from the scholarly literature on Africa. The first approach posits the existence of “natural” societies; the second, of “peasant” societies. The existence of such “precapitalist” societies is often invoked to account for patterns of change in contemporary rural societies. The author argues that these approaches are overly culturally and economically determined, and that they undervalue the importance of the state. Many of the so-called precapitalist features of these societies are themselves found to be products of the societies' encounter with agents of capitalism. Moreover, many result from the efforts of states to secure domination and control over rural populations.

Popular Legitimacy in African Multi-Ethnic States

Abstract: The historical development of the modern state is marked by, among other important changes, the transformation of political legitimacy from the authority of princes to the mandate of the people, from dynastic to popular legitimacy. Since states are the creatures not only of their domestic environment but also of international society, we must distinguish between internal and international legitimacy. Martin Wight defines the latter as ‘the collective judgement of international society [i.e. other states] about rightful membership of the family of nations’. According to him, the convention of international legitimation that has predominated since 1945 is based on the combined and paradoxical principles of majority rule, which rejects the legitimacy of colonialism, and territorial integrity, which nevertheless accepts territorial divisions established under colonialism. We define internal legitimacy as the recognition of a state and its government as rightful by its population, which during the modern era has increasingly meant a popular recognition democratically expressed.

Urbanization and Historical Change in China

Abstract: Historians used to believe that the Chinese imperial state was powerful enough to extend direct control over the lives of all its people, taxing them unmercifully and bending them by force to its will. We now know that in fact the Qing bureaucracy that ruled China from 1644 until 191 1 was a relatively weak extractive and coercive organization, at least during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.' This discovery has encouraged scholars to turn their attention away from the Chinese court and provincial administration, and down toward the local level, where the vision of a unified polity gives way rapidly to a highly varied landscape of local cultures and peoples. As they discarded old conceptions of a monolithic, authoritarian state, China scholars in the United States began turning to other paradigms and metaphors to analyze and describe China's presocialist society. Specifically, they began looking beyond the formal structures of governmental authority to other patterns of action and thought in modern Chinese history. One of the

Old age and the welfare state

Abstract: The modern welfare state is above all a welfare state for the elderly. An overwhelming proportion of its services and benefits go to them. The current crisis of the welfare state is also, therefore, a crisis of policy concerned with the aged. The essays in this volume examine not only interventions by governments on behalf of the old, but the very basis and history of the welfare state itself. From a variety of perspectives ranging from structural functionalism to neomarxism, they examine old age policy in six advanced industrial nations -- the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, West Germany, and France. The essays in Part One deal with the process of making public policy on old age and changes in it during the current economic crisis. Contributions in the second part examine the impact of existing policies on older people. The focus of the essays on social, economic, and political aspects amounts to a new approach in gerontology that has been called by some the political economy of ageing. This book is unique in providing research on the relationship between old age policy and the larger class structure, economy, and state apparatus of more than one country. It will become a classic in the field, and an example of how sociology can be relevant to deal with our current social and economic crisis.' -- "Manuel Castells, University of California at Berkeley"

Rethinking Local Politics

Abstract: In Britain, as in all other developed industrial nations, the scale and scope of state activity has expanded dramatically during this century. Before the First World War, total state expenditure represented one-eighth of the country’s Gross National Product; today it accounts for over half. As the state has assumed an increasing degree of responsibility for an increasing range of provisions, so its organisation has become ever more complex. The specific focus of this chapter is on just one aspect of this complex organisation — the relation between central government and elected local authorities. It is important to remember, however, that the modern state apparatus consists of much more than simply elected agencies of government. Nobody in Britain elects the civil service mandarins in Whitehall, the military chiefs, the High Court judges, the Chief Constables, the heads of the nationalised industries, or the chairmen of the bewildering array of boards, commissions and authorities which are today responsible for developing and implementing many aspects of economic and social policy; yet all of these people occupy crucially powerful positions within the state system.

East and Central Africa

Abstract: In the 1940s it was the racial composition of the East and Central African societies that presented the critical obstacle to African advance. Although there was in 1940 a distinction in the British mind between the ‘colonies of settlement’, Kenya, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, on the one hand, and the ‘colonies of administration’, Uganda, Tanganyika and Nyasaland, on the other, the settler presence dominated the region in such a manner as to preclude the easy adoption of the ‘West African’ solution in the face of the demand for African independence. Power was nevertheless transferred to African not European hands, and by 1964 all these territories save Southern Rhodesia were independent African states. A year later, the settler rebellion in Southern Rhodesia dispelled any remaining illusions of Britain's effective control over that territory. Independence, therefore, represented a fundamental landmark in this period, opening up new arenas for African participation and removing significant political, although not economic, constraints. The crucial effect, for the first post-colonial decade at least, was upon the internal balance of power once the colonial arbiter had withdrawn. The independence settlement conferred control of the institutions of state upon the dominant nationalist leadership, but it did not necessarily ensure its continued authority. Its legitimacy depended upon a complex internal political balance so that those who inherited the colonial mantle had both to nurture that legitimacy and to build the new state. The first decade of independence was therefore concerned primarily with the distribution of power in the post-colonial state, although the nature of the conflict was frequently obscured by the rhetoric of development.

A Politics of Failure: The Political Geography of Ghanaian Elections, 1954–1979

Abstract: Although the geography of elections is a major growth point of modern geography, this research area has neglected an important category of elections, those occurring in Third World states. This paper seeks to rectify this limitation by analyzing Ghanaian elections. Studying such Third World elections, however, requires rethinking many theoretical issues on the nature of the state and the political party. This paper outlines a political economy argument for interpreting the electoral geography of Third World countries. The Ghanaian case study is set within a world-systems framework in which the location of peripheral states in the worldeconomy can result in an unstable “politics of failure.'’Ghana is treated as a classic case of the politics of failure. We show how the cultural geography of Ghana is filtered through its political geography in attempts to create a new economic geography.