Corruption as a Diagnostic of Power: Navigating the Blurred Boundaries of the Relational State

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 920-936
Author(s):  
Katharine N. Rankin ◽  
Pushpa Hamal ◽  
Elsie Lewison ◽  
Tulasi Sharan Sigdel
Keyword(s):  
Relational State

scholarly journals Roads to Rule, Roads to Rebel: Relational State Capacity and Conflict in Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200272096367
Author(s):  
Carl Müller-Crepon ◽  
Philipp Hunziker ◽  
Lars-Erik Cederman
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
The State ◽  
Weak State ◽  
Road Maps ◽  
State Capital ◽  
Conflict In Africa ◽  
Relational State

Weak state capacity is one of the most important explanations of civil conflict. Yet, current conceptualizations of state capacity typically focus only on the state while ignoring the relational nature of armed conflict. We argue that opportunities for conflict arise where relational state capacity is low, that is, where the state has less control over its subjects than its potential challengers. This occurs in ethnic groups that are poorly accessible from the state capital, but are internally highly interconnected. To test this argument, we digitize detailed African road maps and convert them into a road atlas akin to Google Maps. We measure the accessibility and internal connectedness of groups via travel times obtained from this atlas and simulate road networks for an instrumental variable design. Our findings suggest that low relational state capacity increases the risk of armed conflict in Africa.

scholarly journals Relational state transition dynamics

2008 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Scollo ◽  
Giuditta Franco ◽  
Vincenzo Manca
Keyword(s):  
State Transition ◽  
Transition Dynamics ◽  
Relational State

Relational State Building in Areas of Limited Statehood: Experimental Evidence on the Attitudes of the Police

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (2) ◽  
pp. 536-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
SABRINA KARIM
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
State Building ◽  
Demographic Characteristics ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
State Expansion ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
State Agents ◽  
Perceptions Of Police ◽  
Relational State

Under what conditions does state expansion into limited statehood areas improve perceptions of state authority? Although previous work emphasizes identity or institutional sources of state legitimacy, I argue that relationships between state agents and citizens drive positive attitude formation, because these relationships provide information and facilitate social bonds. Moreover, when state agents and citizens share demographic characteristics, perceptional effects may improve. Finally, citizens finding procedural interactions between state agents and citizens unfair may adopt negative views about the state. I test these three propositions by randomizing household visits by male or female police officers in rural Liberia. These visits facilitated relationship building, leading to improved perceptions of police; shared demographic characteristics between police and citizens did not strengthen this effect. Perceptions of unfairness in the randomization led to negative opinions about police. The results imply that relationship building between state agents and citizens is an important part of state building.

The changing role of governments and the emergence of the relational state

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Mendoza ◽  
Alfred Vernis
Keyword(s):  
Changing Role ◽  
Relational State

Emerson Attuning: Issues in Attachment and Intersubjectivity

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Davis
Keyword(s):  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Attachment Trauma ◽  
Daniel Stern ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Embodied Selfhood ◽  
Relational State

AbstractThis essay reads Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays in light of attachment theory, in particular the work of Daniel Stern. After providing an overview of attachment theory, it focuses on Stern’s argument that infants begin life in a relational state, gradually organizing a sense of embodied selfhood out of experiences of attuned interactions with other people. This image of subjectivity is presented as a corrective to the dominant conception of subjectivity in critical theory. The essay then uses Stern to argue that Emerson’s work elucidates an experience of early attachment trauma, driving a charged search for intersubjective contact and embodied presence in his work. This search informs Emerson’s response to the nineteenth-century logic of race: he understands race as a term for infinite connection at the level of biology, and responds to it with articulations of a different form of connection found at the level of the individual experience of the body within intersubjective relation. Subjectively oriented and embodied interdependency, visible in both Stern and Emerson, constitute a mode of interconnection crucially different from that which is the focus of actor-network-theory and critical work influenced by it.

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