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State (polity)

About: State (polity) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 36954 publications have been published within this topic receiving 719822 citations. The topic is also known as: state (polity).


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, Anderson argues that nations are best understood as "imagined communities," systems of representations whereby people come to imagine a shared experience of identification with an extended community, and that nationalisms are dangerous, not in the sense that they represent relations to political power and to the technologies of violence.
Abstract: All nationalisms are gendered, all are invented, and all are dangerous. Nations are not the natural flowering into time of the organic essence of a people, borne unscathed through the ages. Rather, as Ernest Gellner observes, nationalism "invents nations where they do not exist." Most modern nations, despite their appeal to an august and immemorial past, are for the most part very recent inventions. Benedict Anderson thus argues that nations are best understood as "imagined communities," systems of representations whereby people come to imagine a shared experience of identification with an extended community. Nonetheless, nations are not simply phantasmagoria of mind. The term "imagined" carries in its train connotations of fiction and make-believe, moonshine and chimera. The term "invented community," by contrast, refuses the conservative faith in essence and nature, while at the same time conveying more powerfully the implications of labor and creative ingenuity, technology and institutional power. Nations are elaborate social practices enacted through time, laboriously fabricated through the media and the printing press, in schools, churches, the myriad forms of popular culture, in trade unions and funerals, protest marches and uprisings. Nationalism both invents and performs social difference, enacting it ritualistically in Olympic extravaganzas, mass rallies and military displays, flag waving and costumery, and becoming thereby constitutive of people's identities. The green, black, and gold flag of the African National Congress, or a Palestinian kafiyeh, may be bits of colored cloth, but there is nothing fictive about their power to conjure up the loyalties of life and death, or to provoke the state's expert machinery of wrath. For this reason, nationalisms are dangerous, not, as Eric Hobsbawm would have it, in the sense that they should be opposed, but rather in the sense that they represent relations to political power and to the technologies of violence. Nationalisms are con-

191 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors examines both civil wars and international conflicts, exploring warfare's effect on states, and explores the effect of war on states' economic and social systems. But they do not discuss the role of war in economic development.
Abstract: Examines both civil wars and international conflicts, exploring warfare's effect on states.

191 citations

Book
01 Sep 1985
TL;DR: Buchanan as mentioned in this paper argues that economics as a discipline has little or nothing to contribute to our understanding of normative matter, including justice, fairness, and morality, and that the science of political economy cannot sidestep normative matters or even the question of how alternative systems of constraints can and should be evaluated.
Abstract: Most economists read more than they write. James Buchanan manages to write more than most economists can read. Because his varied writings on social philosophy and political economy are necessarily scattered among publications around the globe, Buchanan’s latest book, Liberty, Market and State, should prove to be a valuable collection to Buchanan watchers. It brings together his writings under therubric of“constitutional political economy,” or what I prefer to call “constitutional economics.” This book is of significance to the readers of this journal for two fundamental reasons. First, it breaks irrevocably with the conventional wisdom among economists, namely, that economics as a discipline, per Se, has little or nothing to contribute to ourunderstanding ofnormative matter, including justice, fairness, and morality. Economists are able to assume the role of the detached observer-analyst largely because the rules of the market and/or political game are assumed to be given, meaning the distribution ofpower, an intrinsically ethical matter, has already been determined. With matters of power given by assumption, economists are largely free to discuss how people trade to improve their lot. “The predictive ‘science of economics,’” Buchanan writes, “is positively valuable to government agents, business firms, andprivate individuals. Persons can ‘play better games’ if they can predict their opponents’ strategy more accurately” (p. 33). However, the realm of the “science of political economy” has, according to Buchanan, a much different purpose: “to evaluate the structure of the constraints, ‘the law,’ with some ultimate objective of redesign or reform aimed at securing enhanced efficiency in the exploitation of the potential mutuality of alternative systems” (p. 33). ,The science of (constitutional) political economy cannot sidestep normative matters or even the question of how alternative systems of constraints can and should be evaluated. Throughout the book, Buchanan espouses general agreement as the critical normative test for adoptions of social systems or reforms in those systems:

191 citations

Book
28 Jun 2011
TL;DR: In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe and finds failed states amid climate disasters as discussed by the authors. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency.
Abstract: From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency. Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism"--a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

191 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper examined the effect of political attributes on the provision of basic human needs, including the size or strength of the national government, the achievement of democratic processes, and the ideological orientation of ruling elites along a left-right dimension.
Abstract: This study examines ways that political processes influence the provision of basic human needs once the effects of aggregate national wealth are removed. Three general explanatory approaches are examined. These are based on the size or strength of the national government, the achievement ofdemocratic processes, and the ideological orientation ofruling elites along a left-right dimension. These three approaches are analyzed by regressing an index of physical well-being, the PQLI, on measures drawn from each perspective for a sample of 1 16 contemporary nations. The findings indicate that political attributes do indeed have an impact on the provision of basic needs even when controlling for aggregate social wealth. Democratic processes are related to positive welfare outcomes irrespective of state strength and ideological norms. For regimes with a roughly centrist ideology, state strength appears to make little noticeable difference one way or another; for those on the left, state strength promotes welfare performance; for those on the right, state strength is found to inhibit the provision of basic needs. How do political processes affect the welfare of individuals? This question in countless variants has motivated students of political economy at least since the advent of the modern nation-state. In its simplest form, the empirical question becomes "What kind of state achieves the highest level of welfare for its citizens?" Although it may seem that there are as many answers as possible dimensions of states, most analyses have centered on one (or more) of three general explanatory approaches. The first focuses on the size or strength of the state apparatus as the essential ingredient in translating productive potential into welfare outcomes. Successful welfare performance hinges on the capability of the state, because the state is considered the one social institution concerned with the material needs of the population as a whole. A second model highlights procedural aspects of the political system rather than the budgetary strength of the state by linking successful welfare outcomes to the relatively even distribution of political power brought about by political democracy. The third approach is distinguished from the other two by its emphasis on the ideological orientation (usually on a left-right continuum) of ruling elites. This model posits welfare

191 citations


Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202214
2021837
20201,140
20191,144
20181,239
20171,447