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).

Constitutional government in the United States

Abstract: One of the genuine classics of American political science literature, Constitutional Government in the United States is also a subtle and influential criticism of the American founding fathers produced during the Progressive Era. Wilson's interpretation of the Constitution shaped the thought of scholars and students of American politics. His definition of constitutional government and the place of the United States in the development of constitutional theory continues to shape discourse today. Wilson discusses the three branches of government in the United States, the relation between the states and the federal government and party government in a manner quite distinct from the founding fathers. Constitutional Government has its origins in a series of lectures Wilson delivered at Columbia University in 1907. It is carefully organized around three separate but mutually supporting arguments. First, is the idea that constitutional government evolves historically from primitive beginnings of the state toward a universal and ideal form. Second, this idea of historical evolution contains within it an analysis of how and where the Constitution fits into the evolutionary process as a whole. Third, the historical thesis itself provides a prescription for bringing American government, and with it the Constitution, into accord with his first principle of the ideal form of modern government.In his new introduction, Sidney A. Pearson explores how, with Constitutional Government in the United States, Wilson helped create a new genre of political writing using the point of view of a "literary politician." He discusses Wilson's intention to replace the constitutional argument of the founders with one of his own based on the application of Darwinian metaphor in a political science framework. And he examines the differences between the views launched by Wilson and those set forth by James Madison in The Federalist. This is an essential work for all interested in the evolution of American political thought.

Contention and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: This book examines anti-corporate activism in the United States, including analysis of anti-corporate challenges associated with social movements as diverse as the Civil Rights Movement and the Dolphin-safe Tuna Movement. Using a unique dataset of protest events in the United States, the book shows that anti-corporate activism is primarily about corporate policies, products, and negligence. Although activists have always been distrustful of corporations and sought to change them, until the 1970s and 1980s, this was primarily accomplished via seeking government regulation of corporations or via organized labor. Sarah A. Soule traces the shift brought about by deregulation and the decline in organized labor, which prompted activists to target corporations directly, often in combination with targeting the state. Using the literatures on contentious and private politics, which are both essential for understanding anti-corporate activism, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the changing focal points of activism directed at corporations.

The legal status of the Arabs in Israel

Abstract: This study examines how the Israeli legal system copes with two major issues. The first is the tension between the constitutional definition of Israel as both a Jewish state and a democracy committed to equal rights for all its citizens. The second issue is the delicate position of a national minority in a state which, since its establishment, has been involved in a bitter conflict with the Palestine nation to which that minority belongs.

The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation

Abstract: This is a survey of every aspect of Japanese life, political and economic, social and psychological, unravelling the enigma of Japan in the modern world revealing that Japan's amassed wealth has brought little benefit to the ordinary Japanese. The author shows how the docile conformity , near absence of litigation and lack of individualism - characterising Japanese society and culture - originates in political purpose. Japan has the institutions of a parliamentary democracy, yet is effectively a one-party state and the power of the Japanese prime minister is less than that of any other head of government in Asia or the West. Japan is governed to all appearances with no centre of accountable power. Karl van Wolferen has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in Japan for some quarter of a century. Last year he won the Dutch equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

Naturing the Nation: Aliens, Apocalypse, and the Postcolonial State

Abstract: This paper examines the predicament of the postcolonial nation-state through the prism of environmental catastrophe. When are plant 'invaders' likely to become an urgent political issue? And, when they do, what might they reveal of the shifting relations among citizenship, community, and national sovereignty under neo-liberal conditions? Pursuing these questions in the 'new' South Africa, we posit three key features of postcolonial polities in the era of global capitalism: the reconfiguration of the subject-citizen, the crisis of sovereign borders, and the depoliticisation of politics. Under such conditions, we argue, aliens ‐ both plants and people ‐ come to embody core contradictions of boundedness and belonging. And alien-nature provides a language for voicing new forms of discrimination within a culture of 'post-racism' and civil rights.