Political Institutions in Liberia

1911 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
George W. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Modern State ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Good Will ◽  
The Government

Liberia will long be a source of permanent interest to the government and people of the United States, not only because it was founded and fostered by American citizens, but because there is going on there in the interest of the African races one of the unique struggles in modern state-building, in an endeavor to perpetuate in West Africa a government fashioned after the American democracy in which liberty shall be limited and regulated by law.Under the most unfavorable circumstances the Liberian people have entered upon a grave and stupendous undertaking. The high political ideas and principles which they represent, the ardor and fidelity with which they have maintained them for nearly three quarters of a century against European opposition and in the midst and in the presence of the overwhelming numbers and dissimilar civilization of their African kinsmen, entitle them to the sympathetic consideration and good will of all liberty-loving nations.

The Dream Machine

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Katy Hull
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Interest Groups ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
The Government ◽  
Corporate State

This chapter focuses on the fascist sympathizers' accounts of the destruction of democracy and the creation of the corporate state in Italy. In the late 1920s, Herbert Schneider, Richard Washburn Child, Anne O'Hare McCormick, and Generoso Pope presented a three-part argument about democracy and political reform in Italy and the United States. First, they harked back to the time of a multiparty system in Italy to imply a cautionary tale for the United States. Even if American democracy had not sunk to the same nadir as Italian democracy, a lack of congressional expertise, the rise of special interest groups, and popular disillusionment meant that it was experiencing similar symptoms of decay, they suggested. Second, they insisted that, through the corporate state, the fascist government had adapted political institutions to contemporary exigencies, enabling expert and efficient management of economic problems, and advancing policies in the direction of the general good. Last, these observers argued that the United States, too, needed to look beyond its preexisting institutions of government to create a state that was adept at dealing with the problems of modernity. They used fascist Italy to transport Americans to a different place, where policies were better managed, and the government was more popular, than in the United States.

scholarly journals Warlords, the United States, and the state of anarchy in Afghanistan

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Shah Azami
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Illegal Mining ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact

As part of its “War on Terror”, the United States (US) provided immense sums of money and advanced equipment to Afghan warlords in order to defeat and dismantle the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Nearly two decades after the 2001 US-led intervention in Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime, the US continues supporting the warlords in various ways. As the intervention was also aimed at establishing a functioning state and reconstruction of the war-torn country, the US needed the support of local warlords to achieve its goals. However, over time, warlords and warlordism became a major challenge to the postTaliban state-building project and in many ways undermined the overall security and the state monopoly on violence. These warlords, who had been mostly expelled and defeated by the Taliban regime, returned under the aegis of the B52 bombers, recaptured parts of the country and reestablished their fiefdoms with US support and resources. They not only resist giving up the power and prestige they have accumulated over the past few years, but also hamper the effort to improve governance and enact necessary reforms in the country. In addition, many of them run their private militias and have been accused of serious human rights abuses as well as drug trafficking, arms smuggling, illegal mining and extortion in the areas under their control or influence. In many ways, they challenge the government authority and have become a major hurdle to the country’s emerging from lawlessness and anarchy. This paper explores the emergence and reemergence of warlords in Afghanistan as well as the evolution of chaos and anarchy in the country, especially after the US-led intervention of late 2001. It also analyzes the impact of the post-9/11 US support to Afghan warlords and its negative consequences for the overall stability and the US-led state-building process in Afghanistan.

A Model Republic? The United States in the Italian Revolutions of 1848

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
National Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter examines how protagonists of the Italian revolutions of 1848, including Giuseppe Montanelli and Carlo Cattaneo, engaged with American political institutions by looking at the cases of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Sicily. Before discussing the role played by the United States of America in Italian political thought of 1848, the chapter considers Italian experience of the revolutions of 1820–1821 and 1830–1831, both of which marked a watershed for the peninsula's national movement. It shows that Italian revolutionaries addressed the United States with very different emphasis, illustrating how references to the United States could serve very different ideological purposes. With respect to Tuscany's long history of engagement with the United States, there were far fewer references to American political institutions than for instance in Sicily, where the revolutionaries adopted a monarchical constitution. The chapter also analyzes Cattaneo's involvement in the Revolution in Lombardy and his understanding of American democracy.

American Democracy Reconsidered: Part I

1973 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. J. Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Government ◽  
The State ◽  
City Government ◽  
State Governments ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government ◽  
The One

In his celebrated study of American democracy written in 1888, Lord Bryce reserved his most condemnatory reflections for city government and in a muchquoted passage asserted: ‘There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the National government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption and mismanagement which mark the administration of most of the great cities'sangeetha.

4 The Administrative State in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Novak William J
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
American State

This chapter examines the idea of the Continental State in a common-law context, by focusing in particular on the American state. Building on some very recent historical and theoretical work on the American state, the chapter explores the conscious effort of the United States to create a modern state based loosely on the Continental model. It argues that American ideas and institutions were not created in isolation. Rather, from the beginning, American intellectuals, jurists, and state reformers engaged in an extended trans-Atlantic dialogue concerning matters of politics, law, and statecraft. This was especially true of the period that experienced the most extensive transformations in American governance and statecraft — the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Accordingly, this chapter takes a close look at the American tradition of law and state building in this formative era — from 1866 to 1932.

The “Hearts and Minds” Fallacy: Violence, Coercion, and Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline L. Hazelton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
Government Benefits ◽  
The U.S

Debates over how governments can defeat insurgencies ebb and flow with international events, becoming particularly contentious when the United States encounters problems in its efforts to support a counterinsurgent government. Often the United States confronts these problems as a zero-sum game in which the government and the insurgents compete for popular support and cooperation. The U.S. prescription for success has had two main elements: to support liberalizing, democratizing reforms to reduce popular grievances; and to pursue a military strategy that carefully targets insurgents while avoiding harming civilians. An analysis of contemporaneous documents and interviews with participants in three cases held up as models of the governance approach—Malaya, Dhofar, and El Salvador—shows that counterinsurgency success is the result of a violent process of state building in which elites contest for power, popular interests matter little, and the government benefits from uses of force against civilians.

Concepts in the Language of Politics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Körner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Constitutional Government

This chapter examines references to the United States of America in the Risorgimento's political language by focusing on concepts such as constitutional government, political representation, and federalism. It first considers the question of natural rights in a constitutional government before discussing the ways in which Italians assimilated and translated American ideas into the historical context of their experiences in the context of the more general Italian assessment of American political institutions. The chapter focuses on the works of Giuseppe Mazzini and other prominent political thinkers such as Cesare Balbo, Vincenzo Gioberti, and Gian Domenico Romagnosi. It also looks at Luigi Angeloni's 1832 pamphlet entitled Schifezze politiche proposte dal dottor Carlo Botta, in which he condemned Botta's antirepublican attitudes, and Antonio Rosmini's critique of American democracy.

NEW ORLEANS IS NOT THE EXCEPTION: Re-politicizing the Study of Racial Inequality

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Frymer ◽  
Dara Z. Strolovitch ◽  
Dorian T. Warren
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
The United States ◽  
Color Line ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Normal Functioning ◽  
The Public

Although political science provides many useful tools for analyzing the effects of natural and social catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, the scenes of devastation and inequality in New Orleans suggest an urgent need to adjust our lenses and reorient our research in ways that will help us to uncover and unpack the roots of this national travesty. Treated merely as exceptions to the “normal” functioning of society, dramatic events such as Katrina ought instead to serve as crucial reminders to scholars and the public that the quest for racial equality is only a work in progress. New Orleans, we argue, was not exceptional; it was the product of broader and very typical elements of American democracy—its ideology, attitudes, and institutions. At the dawn of the century after “the century of the color-line,” the hurricane and its aftermath highlight salient features of inequality in the United States that demand broader inquiry and that should be incorporated into the analytic frameworks through which American politics is commonly studied and understood. To this end, we suggest several ways in which the study of racial and other forms of inequality might inform the study of U.S. politics writ large, as well as offer a few ideas about ways in which the study of race might be re-politicized. To bring race back into the study of politics, we argue for greater attention to the ways that race intersects with other forms of inequality, greater attention to political institutions as they embody and reproduce these inequalities, and a return to the study of power, particularly its role in the maintenance of ascriptive hierarchies.

The Rôle of Political Science

1943 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Anderson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Executive Leadership ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern Trend ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Constitutional Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
Political Question

Custom has decreed that the president of this Association, as almost his final act before leaving his briefly-held office, shall deliver an address to those of his colleagues who are hardy enough to assemble to hear him. In this address he endeavors to give something of his best thought concerning some political question. Thereby he generally contrives, also, to convey to his fellow-members something of a feeling of corporate unity and a sense of professional direction.As my thoughts have turned recently toward the consideration of political science as a whole, as a unified discipline, and as a factor in the government of man, I thought I would discuss with you the question of the rôle of political science in the conduct and preservation of what we now call democratic government.Standing before you a year ago, President Frederic Austin Ogg spoke thoughtfully and with eloquence of American democracy after the war. He directed his remarks in part to the gloomy predictions of various speculative writers who prophesy the end in our age of democracy and constitutional government. With masterly competence, he showed that the modern trend toward strong executive leadership is not at all the same as a drift into dictatorship. In the United States this trend primarily means that the executive office is being developed to fulfil its true function in a democracy that intends to become stronger, more active, and more efficient.

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