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 Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State

Abstract: Neorealist theory holds that the international system compels states to adopt similar adaptive strategies—namely, balancing and emulation—or risk elimination as independent entities. Yet states do not always emulate the successful practices of the system's leading states in a timely and uniform fashion. Explaining this requires a theory that integrates systemic-level and unit-level variables: a “resource-extraction” model of the state in neoclassical realism. External vulnerability provides incentives for states to emulate the practices of the system's leading states or to counter such practices through innovation. Neoclassical realism, however, suggests that state power—the relative ability of the state to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society—shapes the types of internal balancing strategies that countries are likely to pursue. State power, in turn, is a function of the institutions of the state, as well as of nationalism and ideology. The experiences of six rising or declining great powe...

Religion, Law and the Growth of Constitutional Thought, 1150-1650

Abstract: To understand the growth of Western constitutional thought, we need to consider both ecclesiology and political theory, ideas about the Church as well as ideas about the state. In this book Professor Tierney traces the interplay between ecclesiastical and secular theories of government from the twelfth century to the seventeenth. He shows how ideas revived from the ancient past - Roman law, Aristotelian political philosophy, teachings of Church fathers - interacted with the realities of medieval society to produce distinctively new doctrines of constitutional government in Church and state. The study moves from the Roman and canon lawyers of the twelfth century to various thirteenth-century theories of consent; later sections consider fifteenth-century conciliarism and aspects of seventeenth-century constitutional thought. Fresh approaches are suggested to the work of several figures of central importance in the history of Western political theory. Among the authors considered are Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padua, Jean Gerson, Nicholas of Cues and Althusius, along with many lesser-known authors who contributed significantly to the growth of the Western constitutional tradition.

Symmetry and Asymmetry as Elements of Federalism: A Theoretical Speculation

Abstract: THIS SHORT ESSAY is mainly speculative. It attempts to highlight a principal weakness in theoretical treatments of the concept of federalism, and to offer modifications of the federal concept. It is not in any sense a complete theoretical statement of federalism. Nor is it meant to survey writings on federalism, although it is generally based on a wide sampling from those writings. Specifically what I want to suggest is that in studies of federalism the prevailing emphases avoid sufficient consideration of the diverse ways in which each member state in a federal system is able to relate to the system as a whole, the central authority, and each other member state. The federal relationship, in any realistic sense, means something very much different to nearly every participant unit in the system. Among the several states in a federal union, cultural, economic, social, and political factors combine to produce variations in the symbiotic connection between those states and the system. Two concepts, both to be explored in greater detail in a later section, can be introduced and their general content suggested here. The first, the notion of symmetry refers to the extent to which component states share in the conditions and thereby the concerns more or less common to the federal system as a whole. By the same token, the second term, the concept of asymmetry expresses the extent to which component states do not share in these common features. Whether the relationship of a state is symmetrical or asymmetrical is a question of its participation in the pattern of social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics of the federal system of which it is part. This relation, in turn, is a significant factor in shaping its relations with other component states and with the national authority.

Belated Feudalism: Labor, the Law, and Liberal Development in the United States

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction: liberalism and labor in developmental perspective 2. The transition to liberalism and the remnant of American labor 3. Belated feudalism: the order of the workplace in late-nineteenth-century America 4. The old order and collective action 5. Masters, servants, and the new American state 6. Conclusion: the state of liberalism Index.

Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe

Abstract: The expansion and politicization of the postcommunist state, even among the reform leaders of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, has confounded early expectations that the state would s...