Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 1996"

The long twentieth century: money, power, and the origins of our times

Abstract: This work traces the epochal shifts in the relatiohsip between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period The author synthesizes social theory, comparative history and historical narrative in this account of the structures and agencies which have shaped the course of world history over the millennium Borrowing from Braudel, Giovanni Arrighi argues that the history of capitalism has unfolded as a succession of "long centuries" - ages during which a hegemonic power deploying a novel combination of economic and political networks secured control over an expanding world-economic space But this is not simply history confined to the "longue duree" The modest beginnings, rise and violent unravelling of the links forged between capital, state power and geopolitics by hegemonic classes and states are explored Arrighi argues that a specific logic governed the concentration of power and eventual surrender of control over the strategic sites of commercial, financial and political power From this perspective, he explains the changing fortunes of Florentine, Venetian, Genoese, Dutch, English and, finally, American capitalism The book concludes with an examination of the forces which have shaped and are now poised to undermine America's world power Giovanni Arrighi is the author of "The Geometry of Imperialism", and the co-author of "Antisystemic Movements" and "Dynamics of Global Crisis"

Losing Control?: Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization

Abstract: From the Publisher: What determines the flow of labor and capital in this new global information economy? Who has the capacity to coordinate this new system, to create a measure of order? And what happens to territoriality and sovereignty, two fundamental principles of the modern state? Losing Control? is a major addition to our understanding of these questions. Examining the rise of private transnational legal codes and supranational institutions such as the World Trade Organization and universal human rights covenants, Saskia Sassen argues that sovereignty remains an important feature of the international system, but that it is no longer confined to the nation-state. Sassen argues that a profound transformation is taking place, a partial denationalizing of national territory seen in such agreements as NAFTA and the European Union. Two arenas stand out in the new spatial and economic order: the global capital market and the series of codes and institutions that have mushroomed into an international human rights regime. As Sassen shows, these two quasi-legal realms now have the power and legitimacy to demand accountability from national governments, with the ironic twist that both depend upon the state to enforce their goals.

Toward Consolidated Democracy

Abstract: It is necessary to begin by saying a few words about three minimal conditions that must obtain before there can be any possibility of speaking of democratic consolidation. First, in a modern polity, free and authoritative elections cannot be held, winners cannot exercise the monopoly of legitimate force, and citizens cannot effectively have their rights protected by a rule of law unless a state exists. In some parts of the world, conflicts about the authority and domain of the polis and the identities and loyalties of the demos are so intense that no state exists. No state, no democracy.

Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China

Abstract: Linear history and the nation-state Bifurcating linear histories in China and India the campaigns against religion and the return of the repressed secret brotherhood and revolutionary discourse in China's Republican revolution the genealogy of Fengjian or feudalism - narratives of civil society and state provincial narratives of the nation - federalism and centralism in modern China critics of modernity in India and China.

Approaches to world order

Abstract: Part I. Overviews: 1. Beyond international relations theory: Robert W. Cox and approaches to world order Timothy J. Sinclair 2. Influences and commitments Part II. Theory: 3. The idea of international labour regulation 4. Realism, positivism 5. On thinking about future world order 6. Social forces, states and world orders 7. Gramsci, hegemony and international relations: an essay in method 8. Towards a post-hegemonic conceptualisation of world-order: reflections on the relevancy of Ibn Khaldun 9. 'Take six eggs': theory, finance, and the real economy in the work of Susan Strange Part III. Interpretations: 10. The global political economy and social choice 11. 'Real socialism' in historical perspective 12. Structural issues of global governance: implications for Europe 13. Middlepowermanship, Japan, and future world order 14. Production and security 15. Global perestroika Part IV. Multilateralism: 16. The executive head: an essay on leadership in international organisation 17. Decision making with Harold K. Jacobsen 18. Ideologies and the new international economic order: reflection on some recent literature 19. Labour and hegemony 20. Labour and hegemony: a reply 21. Multilateralism and world order 22. Globalisation, multilateralism and democracy.

Africa and the International System: The Politics of State Survival

Abstract: African independence launched into international politics a group of the world's poorest, weakest, and most artificial states. How have such states managed to survive? To what extent is their survival now threatened? Christopher Clapham shows how an initially supportive international environment has - as a result partly of political and economic mismanagement within African states themselves, partly of global developments over which they had no control - become increasingly threatening to African rulers and the states over which they preside. The author also reveals how international conventions designed to uphold state sovereignty have often been appropriated and subverted by rulers to enhance their domestic control, and how African states have been undermined by guerrilla insurgencies and the use of international relations to serve essentially private ends. He shows how awkward, how ambiguous, how unsatisfactory, and often how tragic, has been the encounter between Africa and Western conceptions of statehood.

State sovereignty as social construct

Abstract: 1. The social construction of state sovereignty Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber 2. Contested sovereignty: the social construction of colonial imperialism David Strang 3. Beyond the sovereignty dilemma: quasi-states as social construct Naeem Inayatullah 4. The sovereign state system as political-territorial ideal: historical and contemporary considerations Alexander Murphy 5. Sovereignty and the nation: constructing the boundaries of national identity Roxanne Lynn Doty 6. Sovereignty, nationalism and regional order in the Arab states system Michael Barnett 7. Popular sovereigns, bound states: the practices, structures and geopolitics of Philadelphian systems Daniel Deudney 8. Hierarchy under anarchy: informal empire and the East German state Alexander Wendt and Daniel Friedheim 9. Reconstructing the analysis of sovereignty concluding reflections and directions for future research Cynthia Weber and Thomas J. Biersteker.

State infrastructure and productive performance

Abstract: Recent research on productivity growth has focused on public infrastructure and its impact on economic growth and productivity. The authors construct a model of firms' technology and behavior, taking advantage of the analytical framework provided in the cost-function-based applied production-theory literature, and apply it to state-level data for U.S. manufacturing. They find that infrastructure investment provides a significant return to manufacturing firms and augments productivity growth. The net benefits of infrastructure investment may or may not be positive, depending upon the social costs of infrastructure investment and the relative growth rates of output and infrastructure. Copyright 1996 by American Economic Association.

The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract: Much of today's political rhetoric decries the welfare state and our maze of government regulations. Critics hark back to a time before the state intervened so directly in citizens' lives. In The People's Welfare , William Novak refutes this vision of a stateless past by documenting America's long history of government regulation in the areas of public safety, political economy, public property, morality, and public health. Challenging the myth of American individualism, Novak recovers a distinctive nineteenth-century commitment to shared obligations and public duties in a well-regulated society. Novak explores the by-laws, ordinances, statutes, and common law restrictions that regulated almost every aspect of America's society and economy, including fire regulations, inspection and licensing rules, fair marketplace laws, the moral policing of prostitution and drunkenness, and health and sanitary codes. Based on a reading of more than one thousand court cases in addition to the leading legal and political texts of the nineteenth century, The People's Welfare demonstrates the deep roots of regulation in America and offers a startling reinterpretation of the history of American governance. |This analytical study describes the growth of a close but uneasy relationship between the United States and Taiwan during the first half of the 1950s. Accinelli focuses on the importance of the Taiwan issue in United States' relations with the People's Republic of China and Great Britain.

Nations Against the State: The New Politics of Nationalism in Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland

Abstract: List of Tables - List of Figures - Preface and Acknowledgements - Nations, Nationalism and the State - Challenges to the State - The New Territorial Politics - Quebec - Catalonia - Scotland - Conclusion - Bibliography - Index

Civil Society: Challenging Western Models

Abstract: Introduction Political society and civil anthropology Chris Hann 1. Money, morality and modes of civil society among American Mormons Elizabeth Dunn 2. How Ernest Gellner got mugged on the streets of London, Or civil society, the media and the quality of life Peter Loizos 3. Anti-semitism and fear of the public sphere in a post-totalitarian society: East Germany Susanne Spuelbeck 4. The shifting meanings of civil and civic society in Poland Michal Buchowski 5. Bringing civil society to an uncivilised place: Citizenship regimes in Russia's Arctic frontier David G. Anderson 6. The social life of projects: Importing civil society to Albania Steven Sampson 7. Civic culture and Islam in urban Turkey Jenny B. White 8. Gender, state and civil society in Jordan and Syria Annika Rabo 9. The deployment of civil energy in Indonesia: Assessment of an authentic solution Leo Schmit 10. Community values and state co-operation: Civil society in the Sichuan countryside John Flower and Pamela Leonard 11. Making citizens in postwar Japan: National and local perspectives John Knight Index.

Challenging the state : crisis and innovation in Latin America and Africa

Abstract: The 1980s and 1990s posed great challenges to governments in Latin America and Africa. Deep economic crises and significantly heightened pressure for political reform severely taxed their capacity to manage economic and political tasks. These crises pointed to an intense need to reform the state and redefine its relationship to the market and civic society. This book examines the paradox of states that have been weakened by crisis just as their capacity to encourage economic development and provide for effective governance most needs to be strengthened. Case studies of Mexico and Kenya allow the author to analyse the opportunities available for political leadership in moments of crisis, and the constraints on action provided by leadership goals and existing political and economic structures. She argues that while leaders and political structures are often part of the problem, they can also be part of the solution in building more efficient, effective, and responsive states.

Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa

Abstract: Sovereignty, according to the authors, can no longer be seen as a protection against interference, but as a charge of responsibility where the state is accountable to both domestic and external constituencies. In internal conflicts in Africa, sovereign states have often failed to take responsibility for their own citizens' welfare and for the humanitarian consequences of conflict, leaving the victims with no protection or assistance. This book shows how that responsibility can be exercised by states over their own populations and by other states in assistance to their fellow sovereigns. The authors present a framework that should guide both national governments and the international community in discharging their respective responsibilities. They develop broad principles by examining identity as a potential source of conflict, governance as a matter of managing conflict, and economics as a policy field for conflict prevention. Considering conflict management, political stability, economic development, and social welfare as functions of governance, they also develop strategies, guidelines, and roles for its responsible exercise. Approaching conflict management from the perspective of the responsibilities of sovereignty provides a framework for evaluating government accountability. It proposes standards that guide performance and sharpen tools of conflict prevention rather than simply making post hoc judgments on success or failure. The authors demonstrate that sovereignty as responsibility is both a national obligation and a global imperative.

Political inclusion and the dynamics of democratization

Abstract: Once universal adult citizenship rights have been secured in a society, democratization is mostly a matter of the more authentic political inclusion of different groups and categories, for which formal political equality can hide continued exclusion or oppression. It is important, however, to distinguish between inclusion in the state and inclusion in the polity more generally. Democratic theorists who advocate a strategy of progressive inclusion of as many groups as possible in the state fail to recognize that the conditions for authentic as opposed to symbolic inclusion are quite demanding. History shows that benign inclusion in the state is possible only when (a) a group's defining concern can be assimilated to an established or emerging state imperative, and (b) civil society is not unduly depleted by the group's entry into the state. Absent such conditions, oppositional civil society may be a better focus for democratization than is the state. A flourishing oppositional sphere, and therefore the conditions for democratization itself, may actually be facilitated by a passively exclusive state, the main contemporary form of which is corporatism. Benign inclusion in the state can sometimes occur, but any such move should also produce exclusions that both facilitate future democratization and guard against any reversal of democratic commitment in state and society. These considerations have substantial implications for the strategic choices of social movements.

Enterprise reform in China: agency problems and political control

Abstract: The past reforms of state-owned enterprises in China delegated many effective control rights to managers while maintaining ultimate control rights for the Party and government. The result is that either the agency costs are high because managers lack accountability or the political costs are high because the government causes political interference. Reform of state-owned enterprises in China should aim at reducing both political and agency costs, which can be done through depoliticization, effective corporate governance, and deserialization. In particular, China needs an ownership transformation with a combination of privatization, denationalization, and pluralization; a state assets management system to limit political influence from the government; and corporatization to establish effective corporate governance which may take a variety of forms.

The two faces of civil society : NGOs and politics in Africa

Abstract: A comparative study of two Kenyan NGOs, the Undugu Society of Kenya and the Green Belt Movement, demonstrates that civil society may either oppose an oppressive state or accommodate it. These examples demonstrate the disparate roles NGOs can take in the context of contemporary African politics.

The Germans: Power Struggles and the Development of Habitus in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract: Preface by Eric Dunning and Stephen Mennell. Introduction. 1. Civilization and Informalization. 2. A Digression on Nationalism. 3. Civilization and Violence: On the State Monopoly of Physical Violence and its Transgression. 4. The Breakdown of Civilization. 5. Thoughts on the Federal Republic. Editorial Postscript by Michael Schroter. Notes. Index.

The State against Society: Political Crises and Their Aftermath in East Central Europe

Abstract: In a comparative analysis of the major political crises in post-1945 East Central Europe (Hungary 1956-63, Czechoslovakia 1968-76, Poland 1980-89), this text challenges the notion that state-socialist regimes are politically stable due to their pervasive institutional and ideological control over their citizens. The book maintains that the nature and consequences of these crises can better explain the distinctive experiences of East Central European countries under communist rule than can the formal characteristics of their political and economic systems or their politically-dependent status. The book explores how political crises reshaped party-state institutions, redefined relations between party and states institutions, altered the relationship between the state and various groups and organizations within society, and modified the political practices of these regimes. It shows how these events transformed cultural categories, produced collective memories, and imposed long-lasting constraints on mass political behaviour and the policy choices of ruling elites. These crises, it argues, shaped the political evolution of the region, produced important cross-national differences amon

Nationhood and political theory

Abstract: Part 1 Introduction. Part 2 The case against nationalism: romantic-collectivist nationalism liberal-individualistic nationalism nationalhood as a tacit assumption in political theory. Part 3 Democratic theory - government by the people: the geographic limits of the people membership of the people collective identity. Part 4 Social justice - looking after our people: boundaries and bonds social solidarity and effective government. Part 5 Liberal universalism - a national heritage?: political theory, political community and nationhood. Part 6 What is a nation?: nations as states nations as cultural communities nations and subjective identity nations as ethnic groups modernization and nation-building nation-building and modernization. Part 7 Power from the people - nationhood and political community: nations as mediators nations as worlds nations as batteries English/British nationhood. Part 8 Nationhood, patriotism and universalism: states without nations the state as a "service station" constitutional patriotism universal principles and particluar polities republican patriotism. Part 9 Nationalism versus liberal democracy: national variations nationalism as politics the modern prince the dialect of nationhood nations under threat? Part 10 Nationhood and political theory: beneath and beyond the nation-state defending the nation-state national liberalism? realism, utopianism and muddling through nationalist realism universalist utopianism neo-Hobbesian realism muddling through.

Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Nationalism in Classical Social Theory. 2. The Political Character of Nationalism. 3. National Identity. 4. Nationalism, Racism and Fascism. 5. Nations without a State. 6. States without a Nation. 7. Globalization, Modernity and National Identity. Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Paradigm Shifts and Policy Networks: Cumulative Change in Agriculture*

Abstract: This article presents an alternative trajectory to policy paradigm change to that outlined by Peter A. Hall's social learning model, in which unsuccessful efforts by state officials to respond to policy failures and anomalies in the existing paradigm eventually trigger a broader, societal, political partisan debate about policy principles. From this society-wide contestation over policy goals, problems, and solutions, a new policy paradigm emerges. Drawing on the conceptual tools of policy feedback and policy networks, this article describes an alternative route to paradigm shift in which change is negotiated between state actors and group representatives. Discussions of change are largely confined to sectoral policy networks and the result is a more managed series of policy changes that culminate in a paradigm shift. This argument for a second, cumulative trajectory to paradigm shift is developed by examining agricultural policy change in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Australia.

State sovereignty as social construct: The sovereign state system as political-territorial ideal: historical and contemporary considerations

Abstract: A whole history remains to be written of spaces – which would at the same time be the history of powers (both of these terms in the plural) – from the great strategies of geopolitics to the little tactics of the habitat. Michel Foucault From the perspective of the late twentieth century, the territorial structure of the international state system appears to be one of the great constants in human affairs. Faith in the stability of the system has been shaken somewhat by the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but few observers seriously question the system itself. People generally accept the assumption that the land surface of the earth should be divided up into discrete territorial units, each with a government that exercises substantial authority within its own territory. There may be disagreement over how much authority state leaders should have, but it is generally assumed that the political map of the future will look much like that of today, aside from some adjustments in certain unstable areas. Assumptions about the constancy of the dominant political-territorial order are not the sole province of more casual analysts of the political world; they pervade the academic literature on politics and government as well. It is true that some scholars are raising questions about the implications for the sovereign authority of state leaders of growing economic interdependence and the internationalization of environmental protection and human rights.

The European Nation State. Its Achievements and Its Limitations. On the Past and Future of Sovereignty and Citizenship

Abstract: . The “global success” of nation states is currently brought into play by the new requirements of multicultural differentiation and globalization. After commenting on the common concepts of “state” and “nation” and discussing the formation of nation states, the author explains the particular achievement of the national state and the tension between republicanism and nationalism built into it. The challenges that arise from the multicultural differentiation of civil society and from trends towards globalization throw light on the limitations of this historical type.

The modern state

Abstract: Introduction 1. Modern States 2. Placing the State in Modernity 3. States and Societies 4. State and Economy 5. States and Citizens 6.States and the International Order 7. States of the Twenty-First century 8. Conclusion

Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives

Abstract: A world characterized by ethno-nationalist struggles, civil wars, and political violence has led anthropologists to examine in more detail the relationships between state violence, ideas about "culture", and the activities of human rights organizations. This text considers recent theoretical insights into the politics of identity and traces the concrete interconnections created by the globalization of human rights. Drawing on case studies from around the world - Guatemala, Mauritius, Amazonia, Hawaii, Iran, the United States and Mexico - this collection documents how transnational human rights discourses and legal institutions are materialized, imposed, resisted and transformed in a variety of contexts.