Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 1988"

Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty

Abstract: Written in the intense political and intellectual ferment of the early years of the Weimar Republic, "Political Theology" develops the distinctive theory of sovereignty that marks Carl Schmitt as one of the most significant political and legal theoreticians of the 20th century.Focusing on the relationship between political leadership, the norms of the legal order, and the state of political emergency, Schmitt argues that the essence of sovereignty lies in the absolute authority to decide when the normal conditions presupposed by the legal order obtain. Because the norms of a legal system cannot govern a state of emergency, they cannot determine when such an exceptional state holds or what should be done to resolve it. Thus every legal order ultimately rests not upon norms, but rather on the decisions of the sovereign.Schmitt underpins this analysis of sovereignty and its commitment to the priority of decisions over norms with a "political theology," which argues that all the important concepts of modern political thought are secularized theological concepts, and a sociology of the concept of sovereignty, which argues that the conceptualization of the jurisprudence of an epoch is linked to the conceptualization of its social structure.He concludes with an attack on liberalism and its attempt to depoliticize political thought by avoiding fundamental moral and political decisions.Schmitt's unerring sense for the fundamental problems of modern politics and his systematic critique of the ideals and institutions of liberal democracy, a critique that has never been answered, distinguish him as one of the most original figures in the theory of modern politics. "Political Theology" is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977)

Abstract: The state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political practice. It is itselfthe mask which prevents our seeing political practice as it is. There is a state-system: a palpable nexus of practice and institutional stucture centred in government and more or less extensive, unified and dominant in any given society. There is, too, a state-idea, projected, purveyed and variously believed in in different societies at different times. We are only making difficulties for ourselves in supposing that we have also to study the state - an entity, agent, function or relation over and above the state-system and the state-idea. The state comes into being as a stucturation within political practice: it starts its life as an implicit construct: it is then reified - as the res publica. the public reifkation. no less - and acquires an overt symbolic identity progressively divorced from practice as an illusory account of practice. The ideological function is extended to a point where conservatives and radicals alike believe that their practice is not directed at each other but at the state; the world of illusion prevails. The task of the sociologist is to demystify; and in this context that means attending to the senses in which the state does not exist rather than to those in which it does. When the state itself it is danger', Lord Denning said in his judgment yesterday, "our cherished freedoms may have to take second place. and even natural justice itself may have to suffer a setback'. 'The flaw in Lord Denning's argument is that it is the government who decide what the interests of the state should be and which invokes 'national security' as the state chooses to define it'. Ms Pat Hewitt. director of the National Council for Civil Liberties, said yesterday'. The Guardian. 18.2.77 ttt**

Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World

Abstract: Why do many Asian, African, and Latin American states have such difficulty in directing the behavior of their populations--in spite of the resources at their disposal? And why do a small number of other states succeed in such control? What effect do failing laws and social policies have on the state itself? In answering these questions, Joel Migdal takes a new look at the role of the state in the third world. "Strong Societies and Weak States" offers a fresh approach to the study of state-society relations and to the possibilities for economic and political reforms in the third world.In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, state institutions have established a permanent presence among the populations of even the most remote villages. A close look at the performance of these agencies, however, reveals that often they operate on principles radically different from those conceived by their founders and creators in the capital city. Migdal proposes an answer to this paradox: a model of state-society relations that highlights the state's struggle with other social organizations and a theory that explains the differing abilities of states to predominate in those struggles.

The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus

Abstract: Art and architecture are mirrors of a society. They reflect the state of its values, especially in times of crisis or transition. Upon this premise Paul Zanker builds an interpretation of Augustan art as a visual language that both expressed and furthered the transformation of Roman society during the rule of Augustus Caesar. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus illustrates how the establishment of monarchy under Augustus Caesar led to the creation of a new system of visual imagery that reflects the consciousness of this transitional age.

Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone

Abstract: The last four years have seen a remarkable resurgence of democracy in the Southern Cone of the Americas. Military regimes have been replaced in Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1985), and Brazil (1985). Despite great interest in these new democracies, the role of the military in the process of transition has been under-theorized and under-researched. Alfred Stepan, one of the best-known analysts of the military in politics, examines some of the reasons for this neglect and takes a new look at themes raised in his earlier work on the state, the breakdown of democracy, and the military. The reader of this book will gain a fresh understanding of new democracies and democratic movements throughout the world and their attempts to understand and control the military. An earlier version of this book has been a controversial best seller in Brazil. To examine the Brazilian case, the author uses a variety of new archival material and interviews, with comparative data from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Spain. Brazilian military leaders had consolidated their hold on governmental power by strengthening the military-crafted intelligence services, but they eventually found these same intelligence systems to be a formidable threat. Professor Stepan explains how redemocratization occurred as the military reached into the civil sector for allies in its struggle against the growing influence of the intelligence community. He also explores dissension within the military and the continuing conflicts between the military and the civilian government.

The Free Economy and the Strong State

Abstract: The slow-down in the pace of accumulation has provided the opportunity for a widespread rejection of Keynesian political economy and an onslaught on the policies, values and organizations of social democracy. There has always been an element among British intellectuals which has never required much inducement to join a collective stampede to the right. We are constantly being told that 'intellectuals' are finally losing faith in socialism (this follows their previous final rejection of it in the early 1950s). They have been converted, even at this late hour, to the need to resist totalitarianism and the British Labour Party, and to reject the beliefs in collectivism and equality that were enshrined in the policies and institutions established in the 1940s. Aside from these 'men who have changed their minds', swayed by the populist clamour of the new right, there has also been in recent years a real intellectual change, a remarkable revival of liberal political economy through the elaboration of the doctrine of the social market economy, a doctrine which, under different labels, has made increasing headway within the Conservative party in the last ten years. The Conservative Government elected in 1979 had a group of ministers in the crucial economic ministries (Treasury, Industry, Trade, Energy), who were all adherents of the doctrine and prepared to govern in accordance with its prescriptions. The term social market economy originated in Germany from the neo-liberal ideas that were current there after 1945. In Britain and America similar ideas have been put forward by a number of theorists including F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, and popularized in Britain by organizations like the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies, by lead writers in the Times and Daily Telegraph, by economic commentators such as Peter Jay, Samuel Brittan, and Patrick Hutber, and by Conservative politicians (Enoch Powell at first; more recently, Keith Joseph).

Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society

Abstract: Critique and Crisis established Reinhart Koselleck's reputation as the most important German intellectual historian of the postwar period. This first English translation of Koselleck's tour de force demonstrates a chronological breadth, a philosophical depth, and an originality which are hardly equalled in any scholarly domain. It is a history of the Enlightenment in miniature, fundamental to our understanding of that period and its consequences.Like Tocqueville, Koselleck views Enlightenment intellectuals as an uprooted, unrealistic group of onlookers who sowed the seeds of the modern political tensions that first flowered in the French Revolution. He argues that it was the split that developed between state and society during the Enlightenment that fostered the emergence of this intellectual elite divorced from the realities of politics.Koselleck describes how this disjunction between political authority proper and its subjects led to private spheres that later became centers of moral authority and, eventually, models for political society that took little or no notice of the constraints under which politicians must inevitably work. In this way progressive bourgeois philosophy, which seemed to offer the promise of a unified and peaceful world, in fact produced just the opposite.The book provides a wealth of examples drawn from all of Europe to illustrate the still relevant message that we evade the constraints and the necessities of the political realm at our own risk.Reinhart Koselleck is Professor of the Theory of History at the University of Bielefeld and author of Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Critique and Crisis is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Legends of People, Myths of State: Violence, Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri Lanka and Australia

Abstract: Preface to the New and Revised Edition Preface to the Paperback Reissue Introduction Chapter 1. Cultures of Nationalism: Political Cosmology and the Passions Part I: Evil and the State: Sinhalese Naitonalism, Violence, and the Power of Hierarchy Chapter 2. Ethnic Violence and the Force of History in Legend Chapter 3. Evil, Power, and the State Chapter 4. Ideological Practice, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Passions Part II: People Against the State: Australian Nationalism and Egalitarian Individualism Chapter 5. When the World Crumbles and the Heavens Fall In: War, Death, and the Creation of Nation Chapter 6. But the Band Played "Waltzing Maltilda": National Ceremonial and the Anatomy of Egalitarianism Chapter 7. Ethnicity and Intolerance: Egalitarian Nationalism and Its Political Practice Chapter 8. Nationalism, Tradition, and Political Culture Notes References

The free economy and the strong state : the politics of Thatcherism

Abstract: Preface - A Crisis of Hegemony - The New Right - From Butler to Thatcher - The Thatcher Government 1979-1990 - The Pursuit of Power - The Struggle for Hegemony - The Conservative Party after Thatcher - Notes and References - Further Reading

Neorealism and Neoliberalism

Abstract: The classic dialectic between Realist and Liberal theories of international politics, as expressed by Robert O. Keohane, ed., in Neorealism and Its Critics and Richard Rosecrance The Rise of the Trading State, can be transcended. Neither paradigm singularly explains international behavior: Realism is the dominant approach, but liberal theories of transnationalism and interdependence help to illuminate how national interests are learned and changed. Keohane and fellow critics argue that Neorealism—articulated definitively in Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979)—elegantly systematizes Realism, but concentrates on international system structure at the expense of system process. Focused tightly on the concept of bipolarity, Waltz's theory tends toward stasis; the unit (state) level unproductively becomes an analytical “dumping ground.” As a Neoliberal counterpoint, Rosecrance's argument does not go far enough. In the tradition of commercial liberalism, he argues that an open trading system offers states maneuverability through economic growth rather than through military conquest. He tempers his argument with Realist considerations of prudence, but fails to clarify Realist-Liberal links in his theory, or to explore fully the connections between power and non-power incentives influencing states' behavior. A synthesis of Neorealism and Neoliberalism is warranted: a systemic theory using the former to analyze at the level of structure, the latter more often at the level of process.

The construction and deconstruction of educational policy documents

Abstract: This article begins with a critique of the traditional technical‐empiricist approach to policy analysis in which official documents issued by agencies of the state are interpreted as expressions of political intention, that is as proposed courses of action to be discussed by the public before being implemented as official policy. It is argued that this traditional approach to policy is based upon idealist assumptions about the nature of language itself which take it to be a transparent vehicle for the transmission of information, thoughts and values. An alternative approach to the analysis of policy documents is outlined based on theories of discourse that have been developed from within a materialist conception of language. It is suggested that some policy documents legitimate the power of the state and contribute fundamentally to the ‘engineering’ of consent. Such texts contain divergent meanings, contradictions and structured omissions, so that different effects are produced on different readers. An im...

The Politics of Local Government

Abstract: The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in political and ideological conflict in local government. This book analyzes this context and examines both the operation of elected local authorities and the rise of a complex and fragmented non-directly elected local governement. It examines key issues in detail and concludes with a critical assessment of theories of the local state and an examination of future trends.

Institutions, the Economy, and the Dynamics of State Elections

Abstract: As the U.S. states develop their political institutions and take greater responsibility for their economic well-being, two concerns that have long driven research on national elections—electoral insulation and economic accountability—should become central in research on state elections. I investigate institutionalization's effects on the vulnerability of state elections to major periodic forces—coattails, turnout, and economic conditions—and how political responsibility for economic growth is apportioned between presidents and governors in state elections. The investigation relies upon dynamic models of state legislative and gubernatorial outcomes estimated with a pooled data set comprised of most states and elections in the years 1940–82. The results, which have important implications for state government more broadly, indicate that institutionalization has substantially insulated legislative elections against major threats and that state legislators and governors have less to fear from their state economies than is often thought, but also that state elections are becoming more susceptible to swings in the national economy.

War, Revolution, and the Growth of the Coercive State

Abstract: Modern states are powerful, resilient institutions, the most durable of which have established and consolidated their rule through conquest, revolution, and war. Successful involvement in violent conflict leads to the development of militarized and police states and reinforces elite political cultures that favor the use of coercion in future disputes. If warfare has unfavorable outcomes, elites will prefer noncoercive strategies in the future. From these and other propositions are derived models of the processes by which garrison states emerge and persist in autocracies and democracies. States with high material capabilities are more likely to become garrison states than weaker states, which tend to avoid international conflict and to rely on accommodation in internal conflicts. States with low political capabilities are susceptible to revolutionary overthrow and the establishment of revolutionary garrison states. The role of diversion of domestic conflicts to the external environment also is considered. ...

Society against the state : essays in political anthropology

Abstract: "The thesis is radical," writes Marshall Sahlins of this landmark text in anthropology and political science. "We conventionally define the state as the regulation of violence; it may be the origin of it. Clastres's thesis is that economic expropriation and political coercion are inconsistent with the character of tribal society - which is to say, with the greater part of human history."Can there be a society that is not divided into oppressors and oppressed, or that refuses coercive state apparatuses? In this beautifully written book, Pierre Clastres offers examples of South American Indian groups that, although without hierarchical leadership, were both affluent and complex. In so doing he refutes the usual negative definition of tribal society and poses its order as a radical critique of our own Western state of power.Born in 1934, Pierre Clastres was educated at the Sorbonne; throughout the 1960s he lived with Indian groups in Paraguay and Venezuela. From 1971 until his death in 1979 he was Director of Studies at the fifth section of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and held the Chair of Religion and Societies of the South American Indians there.Robert Hurley is the translator of the History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault and cotranslator of Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

Toward Black Undergraduate Student Equality in American Higher Education

Abstract: Introduction--Contemporary Barriers to Black Student Equality in Higher Education by Michael T. Nettles Factors Related to Black and White Students' College Performance by Michael T. Nettles Black and White Students' Performance and Experiences at Various Types of Universities by Michael T. Nettles The Education of Black Students on White College Campuses: What Quality the Experience? by Walter R. Allen Some Cost and Benefit Considerations for Black College Students Attending Predominantly White Versus Predominantly Black Universities by Jomills Henry Braddock, II, and James M. Partland The Role of Colleges and Universities in Increasing Black Representation in the Scientific Professions by Willie Pearson, Jr. The Role and Responsibility of the Federal Government: Strategies for Achieving Qualitative Equality at the National Level by Cynthia G. Brown The State Role in Achieving Equality of Higher Education by John B. Williams The Role of Private Interests Groups in Achieving Equality for Black Students in Higher Education by Reginald Wilson Conclusion: Strategies for Action by A. Robert Thoeny

States, War, and Capitalism: Studies in Political Sociology

Abstract: 1. The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results 2. States, Ancient and Modern 3. State and Society, 1180-1815: An Analysis of English State Finances 4. Capitalism and Militarism 5. War and Social Theory: Into Battle with Classes, Nations and States 6. The Roots and Contradictions of Modern Militarism 7. Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship 8. The Decline of Great Britain.

The Segmentary State in Africa and Asia

Abstract: Segmentary state was the concept coined to fit Alur society into the theory of political anthropology of the 1940s. Fortes and Evans-Pritchard made the first giant step in the comparative analysis of African political systems, but supposedly centralized states and stateless segmentary lineage systems were the only ones to receive full consideration. Nadel had already distilled the voluminous Eurocentric literature on the theory and philosophy of the state, overburdened as it was with Hegelian growth, to produce a precise empirically oriented and workable definition of the state for anthropologists. Alur society did not fit or even approximate anywhere within the range of the model provided. But the model formulated in 1956 under Alur inspiration was an awkward and cumbersome derivation of Nadel's rather than a clear model in its own right. It would be simpler and better to define the segmentary state as one in which the spheres of ritual suzerainty and political sovereignty do not coincide. The former extends widely towards a flexible, changing periphery. The latter is confined to the central, core domain.

Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942

Abstract: In the early twentieth century, the Chinese state made strenuous efforts to broaden and deepen its authority over rural society. This book is an ambitious attempt to offer both a method and a framework for analyzing Chinese social history in the state-making era. The author constructs a prismatic view of village-level society that shows how marketing, kinship, water control, temple patronage, and other structures of human interaction overlapped to form what he calls the cultural nexus of power in local society. The author's concept of the cultural nexus and his tracing of how it was altered enables us for the first time to grapple with change at the village level in all its complexity. The author asserts that the growth of the state transformed and delegitimized the traditional cultural nexus during the Republican era, particularly in the realm of village leadership and finances. Thus, the expansion of state power was ultimately and paradoxically responsible for the revolution in China as it eroded the foundations of village life, leaving nothing in its place. The problems of state-making in China were different from those of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe; the Chinese experience heralds the process that would become increasingly common in the emergent states of the developing world under the very different circumstances of the twentieth century.

The South African economy: Its growth and change

Abstract: The second edition of this reference book has been completely updated and includes a new chapter on trade unions in South Africa, recent legislation affecting economic growth, the role played by the State in South African affairs through the tricameral system, and the development of the Black States. The authors are not slow to criticize those whom they perceive to be retarding the economic growth of South Africa.

The modern social conflict

Abstract: Revolutions are melancholy moments in history - brief gasps of hope that remain submerged in misery and disillusionment. This is true for great revolutions, like 1789 in France or 1917 in Russia, but applies to lesser political upheavals as well. They are preceded by years of repression, arrogant power, and malign neglect of people's needs. A stubborn old regime clings to privilege. By the time it begins to reform, it lacks both credibility and effectiveness. Conflict builds into a state of tense confrontation, like a powder keg. When a spark is thrown, an explosion takes place and the old edifice begins to crumble. People are caught up in an initial mood of elation, but it does not last. Normality catches up. If this is so, why do revolutions occur? In this completely revised edition of "The Modern Social Conflict", Ralf Dahrendorf explores the basis and substance of social and class conflict. Ultimately, he finds that conflicts are fundamentally about enhancing life chances; that is, they concern the options people have within a framework of social linkages, the ties that bind a society, which Dahrendorf calls ligatures. The book offers a concise and accessible account of conflict's contribution to democracies, and how these democracies must change if they are to retain their political and social freedom. The new, completely revised edition takes conflict theory past the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and into the present day. About the original 1988 edition, Stanley Hoffmann stated that "Ralf Dahrendorf is one of the most original and experienced social and political writers of our time..."The Modern Social Conflict" is both a survey of social and political conflict in Western societies from the eighteenth century to the present and a tract for a new 'radical liberalism.'" And Saul Friedlander, wrote that "Ralf Dahrendorf has written a compelling book which, no doubt, will stimulate considerable discussion. It is the brilliant contribution of a convinced liberal to the study of conflict within contemporary democratic society."

Creating Capitalism: The State and Small Business Since 1945

Abstract: Part I Forms of Capitalism and the State: The Italian Case, 1945-1975 The Problem - Its Contours and Explanations The Petite Bourgeoisie on Trial Patterns of State Support I - Bountiful but Bounded Patterns of State Support II - Beyond Employment The Social Project The Internal Challenge. Part II The Creative State in Retrospect and Prospect Giantism and Geopolitics Re-creating Micro Capitalism. Appendices.

War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages

Abstract: This is a study of two topics of central importance in late medieval history: the impact of war, and the control of disorder. Making war and making law were the twin goals of the state, and the author examines the effect of the evolution of royal government in England and France. Ranging broadly between 1000 and 1400, he focuses principally on the period c.1290 to c.1360, and compares developments in the two countries in four related areas: the economic and political costs of war; the development of royal justice; the crown's attempt to control private violence; and the relationship between public opinion and government action. He argues that as France suffered near breakdown under repeated English invasions, the authority of the crown became more acceptable to the internal warring factions; whereas the English monarchy, unable to meet the expectations for internal order which arose partly from its own ambitious claims to be `keeper of the peace', had to devolve much of its judicial powers. In these linked problems of war, justice, and public order may lie the origins of English `constitutionalism' and French `absolutism'.

Political parties and elections in American states

Abstract: This well-regarded examination of the political party and election systems in the fifty states is now available from CQ Press. Written by two distinguished scholars, the book is unique in its focus on state-level politics. Throughout, Jewell and Morehouse explain how and why parties vary from state to state in how they operate and compete. The authors examine, among other topics, differences in political cultures, levels of two-party competition, and the rules and practices that affect party nominations and other aspects of politics. The authors also describe the interaction between state and national party organizations and demonstrate how much state party competition and state elections are affected by national trends. Underlying the work is Jewell and Morehouse's belief that the state political parties are alive and well; that they're adapting to aid today's candidates; and that there is close competition between the parties in an increasing number of states. Campaign finance at the state level is emphasized throughout the book. The authors describe the role of state parties in raising money and distributing it to candidates as well as the increasing importance that money plays in gubernatorial and state legislative elections. Many tables in the book provide cross-state data, enabling students to compare their home states with other states.

Cicero's social and political thought

Abstract: In this close examination of the social and political thought of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.), Neal Wood focuses on Cicero's conceptions of state and government, showing that he is the father of constitutionalism, the archetype of the politically conservative mind, and the first to reflect extensively on politics as an activity.

Authoritarian States, Capital-Owning Classes, and the Politics of Newly Industrializing Countries: The Case of Indonesia

Abstract: In the past three decades, the Suharto regime has presided over the rapid industrialization of Indonesia and the development of its capital-owning classes A complex relationship between state and capital has emerged, based upon structural factors (the need to maintain investment, economic growth, and a revenue base) as well as instrumental factors (the involvement of officials in business as state managers of capital and private investors) Recently, however, significant tensions have emerged between the interests of the regime and its officials on the one hand, and the interests of various elements of the capital-owning classes on the other, in response to broader structural pressures for economic changeThese tensions and pressures are a challenge to the pact of domination between state officials and their corporate allies, the system monopolies and protection from which corporate capital emerged, and the nature of political domination exerted by officials over the state apparatus Although the growing social and economic power of the capital-owning classes is not being converted into formal instrumental control over the state apparatus, economic strategies and political and economic alliances are being restructured, resulting in important shifts in the nature of Indonesian authoritarianism