Showing papers on "State (polity) published in 2020"

The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article

Abstract: A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. The public sphere as a sphere which mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere—that principle of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities. The feudal authorities, to which the representative public sphere was first linked, disintegrated during a long process of polarization. The representative public sphere yielded to that new sphere of "public authority" which came into being with national and territorial states. The bourgeois public sphere could be understood as the sphere of private individuals assembled into a public body, which almost immediately laid claim to the officially regulated "intellectual newspapers" for use against public authority itself.

US State Policies, Politics, and Life Expectancy

Abstract: Policy Points Changes in US state policies since the 1970s, particularly after 2010, have played an important role in the stagnation and recent decline in US life expectancy. Some US state policies appear to be key levers for improving life expectancy, such as policies on tobacco, labor, immigration, civil rights, and the environment. US life expectancy is estimated to be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all US states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies, which would put US life expectancy on par with other high-income countries. Context Life expectancy in the United States has increased little in previous decades, declined in recent years, and become more unequal across US states. Those trends were accompanied by substantial changes in the US policy environment, particularly at the state level. State policies affect nearly every aspect of people's lives, including economic well-being, social relationships, education, housing, lifestyles, and access to medical care. This study examines the extent to which the state policy environment may have contributed to the troubling trends in US life expectancy. Methods We merged annual data on life expectancy for US states from 1970 to 2014 with annual data on 18 state-level policy domains such as tobacco, environment, tax, and labor. Using the 45 years of data and controlling for differences in the characteristics of states and their populations, we modeled the association between state policies and life expectancy, and assessed how changes in those policies may have contributed to trends in US life expectancy from 1970 through 2014. Findings Results show that changes in life expectancy during 1970-2014 were associated with changes in state policies on a conservative-liberal continuum, where more liberal policies expand economic regulations and protect marginalized groups. States that implemented more conservative policies were more likely to experience a reduction in life expectancy. We estimated that the shallow upward trend in US life expectancy from 2010 to 2014 would have been 25% steeper for women and 13% steeper for men had state policies not changed as they did. We also estimated that US life expectancy would be 2.8 years longer among women and 2.1 years longer among men if all states enjoyed the health advantages of states with more liberal policies. Conclusions Understanding and reversing the troubling trends and growing inequalities in US life expectancy requires attention to US state policy contexts, their dynamic changes in recent decades, and the forces behind those changes. Changes in US political and policy contexts since the 1970s may undergird the deterioration of Americans' health and longevity.

States Divided: The Implications of American Federalism for Covid-19.

Abstract: The explosion of the coronavirus onto the global stage has posed unprecedented challenges for governance. In the United States, the question of how best to respond to these challenges has fractured along intergovernmental lines. The federal government left most of the decisions to the states, and the states went in very different directions. Some of those decisions naturally flowed from the disease's emerging patterns. But to a surprising degree, there were systematic variations in the governors' decisions, and these variations were embedded in a subtle but growing pattern of differences among the states in a host of policy areas, ranging from decisions about embracing the Affordable Care Act to improving their infrastructure. These patterns raise fundamental questions about the role of the federal government's leadership in an issue that was truly national in scope, and whether such varied state reactions were in the public interest. The debate reinforces the emerging reality of an increasingly divided states of America. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Varieties of Populist Parties and Party Systems in Europe: From State-of-the-Art to the Application of a Novel Classification Scheme to 66 Parties in 33 Countries

Abstract: Despite the explosion of populism research, there is a shortage of comprehensive analyses of the ideational varieties of populist parties and of the different roles they play in contemporary party systems. In order to overcome such limitations, I provide a state-of-the-art review of the literature on the classification of populist parties and make three innovative contributions to populism research. First, by adopting a truly pan-European perspective to cover, in addition to EU member countries, contexts that are generally overlooked, including but not limited to Liechtenstein, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine, this review article provides an empirical application of the ideational approach to populism to 66 contemporary parties. Second, it highlights the major shortcomings of common approaches to the study of populist parties in contemporary party systems, which almost invariably treat them as ‘challengers’ or ‘outsiders’. Finally, it pushes the agenda further by providing a classification and empirical overview of the three interactive patterns characterizing the 66 populist parties under analysis: non-integration, negative integration and positive integration.

State capitalism(s) redux? Theories, tensions, controversies:

Abstract: This article interrogates the notion of state capitalism, exploring the contributions and limits of the concept as a means of theorizing the more visible role of the state across the world capitali...

Citizen strangers : Palestinians and the birth of Israel's liberal settler state

Abstract: Following the 1948 war and the creation of the state of Israel, Palestinian Arabs comprised just fifteen percent of the population but held a much larger portion of its territory. Offered immediate suffrage rights and, in time, citizenship status, they nonetheless found their movement, employment, and civil rights restricted by a draconian military government put in place to facilitate the colonization of their lands. Citizen Strangers traces how Jewish leaders struggled to advance their historic settler project while forced by new international human rights norms to share political power with the very people they sought to uproot. For the next two decades Palestinians held a paradoxical status in Israel, as citizens of a formally liberal state and subjects of a colonial regime. Neither the state campaign to reduce the size of the Palestinian population nor the formulation of citizenship as a tool of collective exclusion could resolve the government's fundamental dilemma: how to bind indigenous Arab voters to the state while denying them access to its resources. More confounding was the tension between the opposing aspirations of Palestinian political activists. Was it the end of Jewish privilege they were after, or national independence along with the rest of their compatriots in exile? As Shira Robinson shows, these tensions in the state's foundation-between privilege and equality, separatism and inclusion-continue to haunt Israeli society today.

Reconstituting sovereignty: the Young Turks’ efforts to secure external recognition and the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, 1908 - 1923

Abstract: This thesis addresses the question of how states, meaning organised political communities, were historically able to secure their sovereignty through gaining the recognition of other states. As sovereignty refers to the presence of a state’s authority, its existence is premised on states and other internal and external actors recognising claims to sovereignty. Therefore, states, such as the Ottoman Empire, which historically had a different understanding of legitimacy, faced challenges to their sovereignty following the emergence of new global understandings of sovereignty in the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was distinct in that it was the only Islamic state that was not subject to and was able to avoid completely falling under the influence of then-dominant European states. However, the Ottoman Empire still experienced European intervention and there was a desire to end forms of European extraterritorial jurisdiction. Ottoman elites, who were affiliated with the reformist Young Turks, sought to secure recognition of their state’s sovereignty by reconstituting it along novel international standards of legitimate statehood. These standards were based on the concepts of “civilised”, “militarist”, “popular” and “national” statehood, and were reinterpreted by the Young Turks in the course of their efforts to secure the recognition of European powers. These efforts included diplomacy with European powers, institutional reform and conceptual innovation. However, it also involved engaging in practices associated with sovereignty such as the control of territory. In all of these areas, the Young Turks reinterpreted aspects of the existing Ottoman legacy of statehood and international norms, to secure their claim to sovereignty. Therefore, the Ottoman state elites sought to convey an impression of governing a state that could be recognised as sovereign by other European powers. Ultimately, the remnants of the Young Turks, secured international recognition of their state, reconstituted as the nation-state of Turkey in 1923.

On the Origins of the State: Stationary Bandits and Taxation in Eastern Congo

Abstract: A positive demand shock for coltan, a mineral whose bulky output cannot be concealed, leads armed actors to create illicit customs and provide protection at coltan mines, where they settle as “stat...

Some Social Requisites of Democracy

Abstract: This chapter is primarily concerned with explicating the social conditions which serve to support a democratic political system. In order to test some generalizations bearing on the differences between countries which rank high or low in possession of the attributes associated with democracy, it is necessary to establish some empirical measures of the type of political system. Individual deviations from a particular aspect of democracy are not too important, as long as the definitions unambiguously cover the great majority of nations which are located as democratic or undemocratic. The chapter locates European democracies are the uninterrupted continuation of political democracy since World War I, and the absence over the past 25 years of a major political movement opposed to the democratic “rules of the game.” Perhaps the most widespread generalization linking political systems to other aspects of society has been that democracy is related to the state of economic development.

Religious Politics in Turkey : From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP

Abstract: Since the elections of 2002, Erdogan's AKP has dominated the political scene in Turkey. This period has often been understood as a break from a 'secular' pattern of state-building. But in this book, Ceren Lord shows how Islamist mobilisation in Turkey has been facilitated from within the state by institutions established during early nation-building. Lord thus challenges the traditional account of Islamist AKP's rise that sees it either as a grassroots reaction to the authoritarian secularism of the state or as a function of the state's utilisation of religion. Tracing struggles within the state, Lord also shows how the state's principal religious authority, the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) competed with other state institutions to pursue Islamisation. Through privileging Sunni Muslim access to state resources to the exclusion of others, the Diyanet has been a key actor ensuring persistence and increasing salience of religious markers in political and economic competition, creating an amenable environment for Islamist mobilisation.

Civil Society and the Aid Industry : The Politics and Promise

Abstract: Acknowledgements About the Research Team The Editor The Authors The Advisors Acronyms List of Figures, Tables and Boxes Introduction: All Roads Lead to Rome Alison Van Rooy Why Bother About Civil Society? Origins 1. Civil Society as Idea: An Analytical Hatstand? Alison Van Rooy What is Civil Society? Keeping Analysis Separate from Hope 2. Out of the Ivory Tower: Civil Society and the Aid System Alison Van Rooy and Mark Robinson What is Civil Society Supposed to Do? What is the Aid System Doing? What Next? 3. Hungary: Civil Society in the Post-Socialist World Ferenc Miszlivetz and Katalin Ertsey The Metamorphosis of Civil Society Mapping Donor Interventions: Do they Matter in the Big Picture? 4. Sri Lanka: Civil Society, the Nation and the State-building Challenge Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu Mapping Civil Society Mapping Donors Civil Society and the Aid Industry Conclusion 5. Kenya: The State, Donors and the Politics of Democratization Wachira Maina Civil Society in Africa Civil Society and the State in Kenya Today Donor Support for Civil Society Reconstructing the State, Donor and Civil Society Relationships 6. Peru: Civil Society and the Autocratic Challenge Pepi Patron Mapping Civil Society in Peru Mapping Northern Donor Intervention Ideas About Power Relationships 7. The Art of Strengthening Civil Society Alison Van Rooy What We Found Theory The Aid Industry 'Strengthening' Civil Society The Impact on Donors Bibliography Index

What Explains Taxation by Resource-Rich Rebels? Evidence from the Islamic State in Syria

Abstract: Greed-based theories of civil war predict that rebel groups will only engage in taxation and other state-building activities in areas where they lack exploitable resources. However, this prediction...

Regime Threats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya

Abstract: The administrative state is a powerful tool because it can control the population and, in moments of crisis, help leaders put down popular threats to their rule. But a state does not act; bureaucrats work through the state to carry out a leader's demands. In turn, leaders attempt to use their authority over the state to manage bureaucrats in a way that induces bureaucratic behavior that furthers their policy and political goals. Focusing on Kenya since independence, Hassan weaves together micro-level personnel data, rich archival records, and interviews to show how the country's different leaders have strategically managed, and in effect weaponized, the public sector. This nuanced analysis shows how even states categorized as weak have proven capable of helping their leader stay in power. With engaging evidence and compelling theory, Regime Threats and State Solutions will interest political scientists and scholars studying authoritarian regimes, African politics, state bureaucracy, and political violence.

Productive specialization, peaceful cooperation and the problem of the predatory state: lessons from comparative historical political economy

Abstract: This paper reconceptualizes and unbundles the relationship between public predation, state capacity and economic development. By reframing our understanding of state capacity theory from a constitutional perspective, we argue that to the extent that a causal relationship exists between state capacity and economic development, the relationship is proximate rather than fundamental. State capacity emerges from an institutional context in which the state is constrained from preying on its citizenry in violation of predefined rules limiting its discretion. When political constraints are not established to limit political discretion, then state capacity will degenerate from a means of delivering economic development to a means of predation. In addition, we investigate two case studies of economic and political transition: the privatization of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union; and the political unification of Sicily with the Italian peninsula following the Napoleonic Wars. In each case, political and economic transition intended to secure well-defined and well-enforced property rights empowered the predatory capacity of the state. In each case, the attempt to redistribute property rights through political discretion only facilitated predation by the political elite.

Law and Political Economy in a Time of Accelerating Crises

Abstract: Author(s): Harris, Angela; Varellas, James J. | Abstract: In this time of accelerating crises nationally and worldwide, conventional understandings of the relationships among state, market, and society and their regulation through law are inadequate. In this Editors’ Introduction to Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Journal of Law and Political Economy, we reflect on our current historical moment, identify genealogies of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) project, articulate some of the intellectual foundations of the work, and finally discuss the journal’s institutional history and context.

Beyond War and Contracts: The Medieval and Religious Roots of the European State

Abstract: Where does the state come from? Two canonical answers have been interstate wars and contracts between rulers and the ruled in the early modern period. New scholarship has pushed back the historical...

Global GDR? Sovereignty, Legitimacy and Decolonization in the German Democratic Republic, 1960—1989

Abstract: In the two decades following its demise, the GDR—in both historical and popular representation—was largely depicted as an isolated, autarchic entity. A recent wave of research into the global Cold War has begun to challenge this assertion, highlighting the GDR’s links to the extra-European world. Such perspectives nevertheless retain some of the older tropes of the isolationist narrative, viewing the GDR’s engagement with these countries through the narrow lens of a search for legitimacy among its own population. This thesis seeks to expand the scope, viewing the GDR’s relations with what was viewed as a “proto-socialist” world in Africa, Asia and Latin America not a simplistic, historically-fixed policy directed toward a domestic audience, but rather as part of an active political project to reshape global relations. GDR elites viewed their state as fundamentally unviable without international integration: once the project for a united Germany was abandoned in the 1960s, the GDR’s global ambitions took on paramount importance. Rather than an attempt to build legitimacy, this turn was rather imagined through the lens of sovereignty; legitimacy was not a concept in GDR elite’s political arsenal, but they did worry about their nation’s sovereignty, and sought to buttress it through engagement with the proto-socialist world. This thesis examines such engagement from five different vantage-points: looking at how the ideological basis for the project was constructed by foreign policy elites; how the GDR sought to create foreign adherents to the project through educational exchange; how the proto-socialist world—specifically Cuba—became a site for socialist leisure; how citizens engaged with domestic solidarity campaigns which sought to turn them into active participants in the project; and how the proto-socialist world was depicted on television. In doing so, it will show how early hopes for a global socialist world in the 1960s metamorphized as the Cold War progressed, fragmenting into an archipelagic network of increasingly isolated states by the 1980s.

Civil Society and the State in Democratic East Asia : Between Entanglement and Contention in Post High Growth

Abstract: This volume focuses on the new and diversifying interactions between civil society and the state in contemporary East Asia by including cases of entanglement and contention in the three fully consolidated democracies in the area: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The book argues that all three countries have reached a new era of post high-growth and mature democracy, leading to new social anxieties and increasing normative diversity, which have direct repercussions on the relationship between the state and civil society. It introduces a comparative perspective in identifying and discussing similarities and differences in East Asia based on in-depth case studies in the fields of environmental issues, national identities as well as neoliberalism and social inclusion that go beyond the classic dichotomy of state vs "liberal" civil society.

Public opinion on basic income: Mapping European support for a radical alternative for welfare provision:

Abstract: The idea of a universal basic income (BI) is both radical and simple. Obtaining a sufficient citizenship-based income without work obligations is fundamentally opposing the foundations of the welfa...

Beyond the environmental state? The political prospects of a sustainability transformation

Abstract: About half a century ago, modern democratic states started to respond to environmental pressures that had arisen in the wake of rapid industrialization. Initially, governments set up environmental ...

Wealth-destroying states

Abstract: According to the contract theory of the state, individuals give up their freedom to a specialist in violence who then provides public goods, such as private property rights and collective defense. The predatory perspective views the state as expropriating what it can unless individuals develop institutions of collective action to limit the scope of the state. We extend these economic theories of the state by showing how the behavior of rulers depends on political stability, political constraints, self-governance, and foreign intervention. We use evidence from Afghanistan to illustrate how political instability and the absence of meaningful political constraints enables the predatory state. Foreign aid and foreign military intervention amplify the wealth-destroying features of political institutions. Customary self-governance provides public goods locally but is only a partial defense against predatory rulers and can be overwhelmed by predatory self-governing organizations, especially warlords and the Taliban.

Race, Civil Rights, and Immigration Law after September 11, 2001: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims

Abstract: This article is part of a symposium on "Migration Regulation Goes Local: The Role of States in U.S. Immigration Policy." Although only time will tell, September 11, 2001 promises to be a watershed in the history of the United States. Not long after the tragedy, supporters and critics alike saw the federal government as "pushing the envelope" in restricting civil liberties in the name of national security. This article analyzes the nation's response to the horrific loss of life of September 11 and shows how the centralization of immigration power in the hands of the federal government, may exacerbate the civil rights impacts of the enforcement of the immigration laws. The federal government has acted more swiftly and uniformly than the states ever could, with severe consequences for the Arab and Muslim community in the United States. That the reaction was federal in nature - and thus national in scope as well as uniform in design and impact, and with precious few legal constraints - worsened the civil rights impacts. The civil rights deprivations resulting from federal action reveals that national regulation of immigration is a double-edged sword. Although federal law pre-empts state laws designed to regulate immigration or discriminate against aliens, it can also, with few legal constraints, strike out at immigrants across the nation if it sees fit. That in turn suggests that the role of states, as well as the federal government, in the regulation of immigration and immigrants, especially in times of national crisis, deserves most serious attention. The federal government's response to September 11 also demonstrates the close relationship between immigration law and civil rights in the United States. Noncitizens historically have been the most vulnerable to civil rights deprivations, in large part because the law permits, perhaps even encourages, extreme governmental conduct with minimal protections for the rights of noncitizens. Unfortunately, the current backlash against Arabs and Muslims in the United States fits comfortably into a long nativist history. In sum, a complex matrix of "otherness" based on race, national origin, religion, and political ideology contributes to the current attacks on the civil rights of Arabs and Muslims in the United States. As has occurred in the past, the ripple effects of national security measures in the end may adversely affect the legal rights of all noncitizens, not just Arabs and Muslims. Indeed, as we contend in this article, the civil rights deprivations resulting from the war on terrorism may have long term adverse impacts on the civil rights of citizens as well as noncitizens in the United States. To help us better understand the latest "war on terrorism," Part I of the Article analyzes the general demonization of Arabs and Muslims generally in the United States and how the law has been influenced by, and reinforced, the negative stereotypes. This section reviews the federal government's actions directed at Arabs and Muslims in the name of combating terrorism well before September 11. As Professor Edward Said has observed, terrorism in these times "has displaced Communism as public enemy number one." That has translated into a near exclusive focus on "foreign terrorists," particularly Arabs and Muslims. Part II studies the federal government's zealous investigatory methods after September 11 directed at Muslim and Arab noncitizens, with disregard for their civil rights, and the possible long term impacts of that response.

Effects of social distancing on psychological state and physical activity routines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has affected the entire world. Since the reporting of the first cases, Italy has quickly become the country hit second firmest in the world by the coronavirus. Governments’ immediate protective restrictions modified the habit of the individuals and included full lockdowns of cities, travel, restricted social congregations, and suspended schools. The aim of this study was to survey the general community in Italy to better recognize their levels of psychological impact, emotional responses and maintaining their daily exercise or physical activity routines during the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak. 670 adults were invited to complete an online survey collecting information on demographic data, physical and emotional symptoms in the past 14 days, contact history with COVID-19, and keeping regular physical activity. Data analysis was conducted through mixed qualitative and quantitative methods. During the initial phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, more than half of the respondents reported a significant psychological and physical impact. The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing significant challenges to people, families, and countries. For further studies, these findings can be used to advance psychological interventions to reduce the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Political ecology II: Whither the state?:

Abstract: However conceptualised, the institutions and relations associated with the state are clearly crucial to political ecological research. Environmental policies are enacted through state institutions,...

US Policies Increase Vulnerability of Immigrant Communities to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract: The adverse policy environment in the United States (US) has made immigrant communities particularly vulnerable to uncontrolled community spread of COVID-19. Past and recent federal and state policy actions may exacerbate undetected community spread in immigrant communities and commensurate economic impact. Given the importance of immigrants to the US economy and society, and the human toll this pandemic is having on migrants worldwide, federal and state policies should pivot to find ways to improve access to healthcare for immigrants.

Municipality size, political efficacy and political participation: a systematic review

Abstract: It is an old adage that local government is a training ground for democracy. Its human scale means that political amateurs can contribute effectively and meaningfully to the politics of a state. Bu...

State transformation and populism: From the internationalized to the neo-sovereign state?:

Abstract: This article conceptualizes populism as a discourse of international relations that arises as response to state transformation, a phenomenon that encompasses changes in both state-society relations...