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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).


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TL;DR: The Company-State as discussed by the authors explores the early English East India Company as a form of polity and corporate sovereign well before its supposed transformation into a state and empire in the mid-eighteenth century.
Abstract: The Company-State rethinks the nature of the early English East India Company as a form of polity and corporate sovereign well before its supposed transformation into a state and empire in the mid-eighteenth century. Taking seriously the politics and political thought of the early Company on their own terms, it explores the Company's political and legal constitution as an overseas corporation and the political institutions and behaviors that followed from it, from tax collection and public health to warmaking and colonial plantation. Tracing the ideological foundations of those institutions and behaviors, this book reveals how Company leadership wrestled not simply with the bottom line but with typically early modern problems of governance, such as: the mutual obligations of subjects and rulers; the relationship between law, economy, and sound civil and colonial society; and the nature of jurisdiction and sovereignty over people, commerce, religion, territory, and the sea. The Company-State thus reframes some of the most fundamental narratives in the history of the British Empire, questioning traditional distinctions between public and private bodies, "commercial" and "imperial" eras in British India, a colonial Atlantic and a "trading world" of Asia, European and Asian political cultures, and the English and their European rivals in the East Indies. At its core, The Company-State offers a view of early modern Europe and Asia, and especially the colonial world that connected them, as resting in composite, diffuse, hybrid, and overlapping notions of sovereignty that only later gave way to more modern singular, centralized, and territorially- and nationally-bounded definitions of political community. Given growing questions about the fate of the nation-state and of national borders in an age of "globalization," this study offers a perspective on the vitality of non-state and corporate political power perhaps as relevant today as it was in the seventeenth century. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/history/9780195393736/toc.html

153 citations

Book
19 Dec 2003
TL;DR: Renationalizing the State: Class and Nation and the Party-state 3. Rewriting National History: The 'Zeng Guofan Phenomenon' 4. Reconstructing a Confucian Nation: TheConfucian Revival 5. Repossessing the Mother Tongue: Chinese Characters, Traditional Forms and Cultural Linguistics 6. Reclaiming the 'Othered' China: Nationalist Appropriations of Postcolonialism
Abstract: 1. Rethinking Nation and Nationalism: Concepts, Positions and Approaches 2. Renationalizing the State: Class and Nation and the Party-state 3. Rewriting National History: The 'Zeng Guofan Phenomenon' 4. Reconstructing a Confucian Nation: The Confucian Revival 5. Repossessing the Mother Tongue: Chinese Characters, Traditional Forms and Cultural Linguistics 6. Reclaiming the 'Othered' China: Nationalist Appropriations of Postcolonialism

153 citations

BookDOI
26 Feb 2010
TL;DR: The authors in this paper take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization.
Abstract: Despite recent political movements to establish democratic rule in Latin American countries, much of the region still suffers from pervasive violence. From vigilantism, to human rights violations, to police corruption, violence persists. It is perpetrated by state-sanctioned armies, guerillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-protection. The everyday presence of violence contrasts starkly with governmental efforts to extend civil, political, and legal rights to all citizens, and it is invoked as evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The contributors to this collection take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization. The contributors—anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians—explore how individuals and institutions in Latin American democracies, from the rural regions of Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the urban centers of Brazil and Mexico, use violence to impose and contest notions of order, rights, citizenship, and justice. They describe the lived realities of citizens and reveal the historical foundations of the violence that Latin America suffers today. One contributor examines the tightly woven relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, while another contextualizes violence in Rio de Janeiro within the transnational political economy of drug trafficking. By advancing the discussion of democratic Latin American regimes beyond the usual binary of success and failure, this collection suggests more sophisticated ways of understanding the challenges posed by violence, and of developing new frameworks for guaranteeing human rights in Latin America. Contributors : Enrique Desmond Arias, Javier Auyero, Lilian Bobea, Diane E. Davis, Robert Gay, Daniel M. Goldstein, Mary Roldan, Todd Landman, Ruth Stanley, Maria Clemencia Ramirez

153 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that US-hosted educational exchange programs are one mechanism whereby citizens of non-democratic states might experience life firsthand in a democratic country and their experiences may impact the political institutions and influence political behavior in their home countries.
Abstract: Democratic governance depends not only on the building of democratic institutions but also on citizens’ knowledge about how these institutions should function in their everyday lives. I argue that US-hosted educational exchange programs are one mechanism whereby citizens of nondemocratic states might experience life firsthand in a democratic country. Their experiences may impact the political institutions and influence political behavior in their home countries. In order for this process to take place, I argue that at least three contextual conditions are important: (i) the depth and extent of social interactions that occur while abroad, (ii) the sharing of a sense of community or common identity between participants and their hosts, and (iii) the attainment of a politically influential position by the exchange participant when they return home. In this article, I test these hypotheses and find support for what advocates of soft power often contend: US-hosted exchange programs can play an important role in the diffusion of liberal values and practices across the borders of authoritarian states. The current war in Iraq has illustrated the difficulties of imposing democratic institutions in states where democratic norms are underdeveloped and citizens have little previous experience of the everyday functioning of democratic practices. One consequence has been calls for the United States to engage in a ‘‘war of ideas’’ with nonliberal forces that have impeded the spread and development of democratic norms and practices. But how might the United States actually ‘‘fight’’ such a war? Soft power advocates, US policy makers, and scholars have frequently claimed that US-hosted educational exchange programs might provide one strategy for the United States to effectively engage its ideational adversaries (e.g., Nye and Owens 1996; Nye 2004; Williams 2004; Rice 2006; US White House 2006; Phillips and Brooks 2008). While such claims are made, there has been little attempt to systematically evaluate them. Exceptions are a few studies that have argued that attendance by foreign military officers at US military schools has had a positive impact on the development of democratic institutions (Cope 1995; Gibler and Ruby 2002; Atkinson 2006; Miller 2006). The research presented in this article complements and expands the scope of these studies by empirically evaluating the impact of both military and civilian exchanges. When we think about what is meant by liberal practices, two observable phenomena come to mind: first, whether a state’s institutions are democratic or authoritarian, and second, whether leaders respect the life and fundamental liberties of their citizens. Building the political institutions of democracy is certainly

152 citations

Book
13 Mar 2003
TL;DR: Schreurs et al. as discussed by the authors used case studies to explore why these different policy approaches emerged and what their implications are, examining the differing ideas, actors, and institutions in each state.
Abstract: A decade of climate change negotiations almost ended in failure because of the different policy approaches of the industrialized states. Japan, Germany, and the United States exemplify the deep divisions that exist among states in their approaches to environmental protection. Germany is following what could be called the green social welfare state approach to environmental protection, which is increasingly guided by what is known as the precautionary principle. In contrast, the US is increasingly leaning away from the use of environmental regulations, towards the use of market-based mechanisms to control pollution and cost-benefit analysis to determine when environmental protection should take precedence over economic activities. Internal political divisions mean that Japan sits uneasily between these two approaches. Miranda A. Schreurs uses a variety of case studies to explore why these different policy approaches emerged and what their implications are, examining the differing ideas, actors, and institutions in each state.

152 citations


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