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).

State Capacity, State Failure, and Human Rights:

Abstract: While it is universally recognized that states are responsible for human rights conditions in their jurisdictions, it is less often noticed that this responsibility has two dimensions, one normative and one empirical. Normatively, most people agree that states ought to prevent human rights abuses. Empirically, however, states may not always be able to do so. In weak and failing states, agency loss and the inability to police effectively can lead to abuses by private individuals and rogue agents of the state. Thus, on balance, weak states typically have worse human rights records than strong ones. This is demonstrated by a global time-series cross-section analysis showing that indicators of state weakness — low tax revenues, corruption, and lack of law and order — all have a negative impact on human rights to personal security. The effect differs for different kinds of rights. Extrajudicial killings are highly sensitive to state capacity, while political imprisonment is more sensitive to democracy. Overall...

Wars do end! Changing patterns of political violence in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: Contrary to common assumption, major forms of large-scale organized political violence in sub-Saharan Africa are declining in frequency and intensity, and the region is not uniquely prone to the onset of warfare. African civil wars in the late 2000s were about half as common compared to the mid-1990s. The character of warfare has also changed. Contemporary wars are typically small-scale, fought on state peripheries and sometimes across multiple states, and involve factionalized insurgents who typically cannot hold significant territory or capture state capitals. Episodes of large-scale mass killing of civilians are also on the decline. That said, other forms of political violence that receive less attention in the academic literature are increasing or persistent. These include electoral violence and violence over access to livelihood resources, such as land and water. While primarily descriptive, the article posits that geo-political shifts since the end of the Cold War are a leading candidate to explain the changing frequency and character of warfare in sub-Saharan Africa.

Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe

Abstract: All over Western Europe, the lot of many non-Western immigrants is one of marginalization, discrimination, and increasing segregation. In this book, the author shows how an excessive respect for "their culture" has been part of the problem. Culture has become a new concept of race, sustaining ethnic identity politics that subvert human rights - especially for women and children. Fearful of being considered racist, state agencies have sacrificed freedom and equality in the name of culture. Comparing her native Norway to Western Europe and the United States, Unni Wilkan focuses on people caught in turmoil, how institutions function, and the ways in which public opinion is shaped and state policies determined. Contradictions arise between policies of respect for minority cultures, welfare, and freedom, but the goal is the same: to create a society commited to both social justice and respect for human rights.

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Abstract: An Economist Best History Book 2017 "History as it should be written."-Barry Cunliffe, Guardian "Scott hits the nail squarely on the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for civilization and political order."-Walter Scheidel, Financial Times Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family-all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

Democracy and Deep-Rooted Conflict: Options for Negotiators

Abstract: The nature of violent conflict in the world has changed in recent decades, both in its actual subject-matter and in the form of its expression. One of the most dramatic changes has been the trend away from traditional inter-state conflict (that is, a war between sovereign states) and towards intra-state conflict (that is, one which takes place between factions within an existing state). Whereas most violent conflicts over the course of the twentieth century have been between states, in the 1990s almost all major conflicts around the world have taken place within states. Between 1989 and 1996, for example, 95 of the 101 armed conflicts identified around the world were such internal disputes. Most of these conflicts were propelled, at least in part, by quests for self-determination or adequate recognition of communal identity rather than by ideology or the conquest of territory. This represents a major shift in the manifestation of human conflict, especially compared to the world wars and major inter-state conflicts fought over the course of this century.