The Return to the State

1988 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 853-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Almond
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Paradigmatic Shift ◽  
The Third ◽  
Professional History

Three important questions are raised by the “return to the state” movement of recent years. First, are the pluralist, structural functionalist, and Marxist literatures of political science societally reductionist, as this movement contends? Second, does the neostatist paradigm remedy these defects and provide a superior analytical model? Third, regardless of the substantive merits of these arguments, are there heuristic benefits flowing from this critique of the literature? Examination of the evidence leads to a rejection of the first two criticisms. The answer to the third question is more complex. There is merit to the argument that administrative and institutional history has been neglected in the political science of the last decades. This is hardly a “paradigmatic shift”; and it has been purchased at the exorbitant price of encouraging a generation of graduate students to reject their professional history and to engage in vague conceptualization.

scholarly journals POLITICAL POLICE OF KOSTROMA PROVINCE AND ITS CADRE PERSONNEL IN 1826–1867

2020 ◽  
pp. 221-227
Author(s):  
Gennadiy G. Bril’ ◽  
Leonid N. Zaytsev
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Order ◽  
State Security ◽  
The Third ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Russian Empire

The article examines the process of origin and formation of the political police of Kostroma Province in the mid-19th century. Special attention is paid to the issue of its staffi ng and the wide use of army offi cers for service in the political police. The chronological framework covers a little-studied period of activity of the political police in Kostroma Province. The authors of the article note that the Highest orders of military ranks that had a special place in the appointment of the headquarters and chief offi cers of the political police. On the basis of archival materials, the main directions of service activities of the highest ranks of the political police in the region are analysed. The article reveals the contribution of the gendarmes’ Corps chiefs to the protection of public order during the period under review. The author reveals the attitude of the authorities to literacy among the lower ranks of the gendarmerie. On the basis of historical and archival documents, it is concluded that the successful career of offi cers was promoted by conscientious performance of their offi cial duties, their «excellent-diligent and zealous service». It is concluded that special attention was paid to discipline among the gendarmes. The political police were independent of other branches of government, and were subordinate only to the headquarters of the gendarmes’ corps and the third division of His Imperial Majesty’s own offi ce. Gaps in the historical and legal coverage of the work of the state security Agency in the province of the Russian Empire at the fi rst stage of its existence are fi lled.

The State and Violence

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 293-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Human History ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Social Orders

Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge 2009) offers a theory of the evolution of the modern state and an even more ambitious framework “for interpreting recorded human history.” The book raises fundamental questions about the political structuring of violence, the functions of the rule of law, and the establishment and maintenance of political order. In doing so, it speaks to a range of political scientists from a variety of methodological and subfield perspectives. We have thus invited four prominent political science scholars of violence and politics to comment on the book: Jack Snyder, Caroline Hartzell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Larry Diamond.

The regional dimensions of state failure

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 951-972 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFAN WOLFF
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Analytical Model ◽  
International Security ◽  
State Failure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThe academic and policy debate on state failure reaches back to the early 1990s. Since then, its empirical and analytical sophistication has grown, yet the fact that state failure is a regional phenomenon, that is, that it occurs in clusters of geographically contiguous states, has largely been overlooked. This article first considers the academic and policy debates on state failure in the Political Science/International Relations and Development Studies literatures, and offers a definition of state failure that is derived from the means of the state, rather than its ends. Subsequently engaging with existing scholarship on the concept of ‘region’ in international security, the article develops a definition of ‘state failure regions’. Further empirical observation of such regions and additional conceptual reflections lead to establishing an analytical model for the study of state failure regions and allow indentifying a number of concrete gains in knowledge and understanding that can result from its application.

Concluding Remarks to Part 3

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Sphere ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 15 summarizes the chapters which addressed the third sphere, the relationship of labor to the political community. It reiterates that since Israel was established, the labor market’s borders have become ever more porous, while the borders of the national (Jewish) political community have remained firm: the Jewish nationalism which guides government policy is as strong as ever. NGOs, drawing on a discourse of human rights, are able to assist some non-citizens but this discourse also resonates with the idea of individual responsibility: the State is no longer willing to support “non-productive” populations, who are now being shoehorned into a labor market which offers few opportunities for meaningful employment, and is saturated by cheaper labor intentionally imported by the State in response to powerful employer lobbies. These trends suggest a partial reorientation of organized labor’s “battlefront”, from a face-off with capital to an appeal to the public and state.

Communism and Clientelism: Rural Politics in China

1985 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean C. Oi
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Political System ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Career Mobility ◽  
The State ◽  
Middle Level ◽  
Rural Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Elite Level

Despite its widespread currency in political science, the concept of clientelism has rarely found its way into the literature on communist systems. Students of communist politics regularly note the importance of personal ties, and many recognize the significance of informal bonds in economic and political spheres atalllevels of society. Some even apply the term “clientelism” to the political behavior they describe. Yet these studies are generally limited to elite-level politics, to factionalism, career mobility, recruitment patterns, and attainment of office at the top- to middle-level echelons of the bureaucracy.2Few have considered clientelism as a type of elite-mass linkage through which the state and the party exercise control at the local level, and through which individuals participate in the political system.

A Discussion of Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 521-522
Author(s):  
Christina Wolbrecht
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interpretive Theory

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.

A Discussion of Katherine J. Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 523-524
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Dudas
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
The Public ◽  
Interpretive Theory

The policies of Republican Governor Scott Walker have come to symbolize a resurgent assault on the public sector, and on public employee unions in particular, by the Republican Party. The fact that this is happening in Wisconsin, the state that in the last century was considered the “laboratory of Progressivism,” makes the politics surrounding these policies all the more compelling. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Katherine J. Cramer analyzes the “politics of resentment” surrounding these developments. Employing an ethnographic “method of listening,” Cramer furnishes thick description of the political language employed by rural Wisconsinites, and proceeds to develop an interpretive theory of “political resentment” that illuminates the reasons why lower-class citizens so strongly oppose public policies seeking to offset social and economic inequality. The book is important methodologically and politically. We have thus invited a range of social and political scientists to comment on the book as a work of political science and as a diagnosis of the current political moment.

A Reply to A.G. Hopkins

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLYN M. WARNER
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Scientist

The political scientist who relies upon historiographic sources to propose and test hypotheses runs the risk of riling up not only her peers in the discipline, but also the historians upon whose work she must rely to provide the materials for these hypotheses. It was intellectually satisfying and stimulating to learn that my work has been read not only by scholars in ‘my’ discipline, but also by those in the discipline which made my own analysis possible, and I am grateful for Professor Hopkins' extensive comments. As Hopkins notes, there are differences in the orientation of the two disciplines: political science has as one of its central concerns ‘the state’, while historians are more interested ‘in charting changing relativities in international relations’. As a political scientist, I am indeed interested in identifying the factors which lead to such changes.

Teaching in Vain

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John P. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
German State ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter traces Carl Schmitt’s attempt, in his 1932 book The Concept of the Political, to quell the near civil war circumstances of the late Weimar Republic and to reinvigorate the sovereignty of the German state through a reappropriation of Thomas Hobbes’s political philosophy. The chapter then examines Schmitt’s reconsideration of the Hobbesian state, and his own recent reformulation of it, in light of the rise of the “Third Reich,” with particular reference to Schmitt’s 1938 book The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes.

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