scholarly journals Governing Dahiya: Interrogating the State in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-36
Author(s):  
Fouad Gehad Marei
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The State ◽  
State Failure ◽  
Weak State ◽  
Empirical Examination ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
Empirical Inquiry ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Governing System ◽  
Post War

Lebanon, a multi-confessional country with an established consociational democracy, is facing the threat of slipping into state failure as it grapples with its soaring political and economic crisis. The country’s governing system has come under increased and perhaps unprecedented scrutiny since the outbreak of popular protests in 2019 as many accuse an oligarchic political and sectarian elite of subordinating the State to their private interests. Based on an empirical examination of the politics of post-war reconstruction in Beirut’s southern suburbs, this article examines regimes of rule beyond the limitations of the seemingly dichotomous categories of State and non-state. The empirical inquiry presented in this article argues for a state analysis that is less concerned with discerning and deciphering where the State begins (or ought to begin) and where its non-state other(s) end (or ought to end), but is concerned instead with unpacking the real and messy workings of government. Rather than relativising the weak-state thesis, this article seeks to extend and complicate our understanding of the State (in Lebanon and beyond) by locating regimes of rule within a broader, dynamically evolving social whole.

FISCAL ROLE OF EXCISE TAX ON EXCISE GOODS MANUFACTURED IN UKRAINE IN CONDITIONS OF CONSTANT CHANGES IN TAX LEGISLATION AND PANDEMIC COVID-19

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Rudenko ◽  
◽  
Tatiana Tuchak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
The State ◽  
Excise Tax ◽  
Tax Revenues ◽  
Tax Legislation ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Legislative Framework ◽  
Main Factors

The article analyzes the fiscal role of the excise tax on excisable goods (products) produced in Ukraine in the context of permanent changes in the tax legislative framework and within the framework of the global crisis through the coronavirus disease COVID-19. The concept of excise tax has been substantiated, a list of excisable products (goods) has been provided in accordance with legislative acts, the payers of this tax have been specified. The most important events and transactions that influenced the amount of tax revenues from excise tax are investigated. The authors believe that the main reason for the changes in the administration process and the receipt of the excise tax are the European integration transformations and the conditions of the global socio-economic crisis. Based on the difficult economic situation in the state, some legislative acts regulating the collection of excise tax from excisable products produced in the country were considered. It was revealed that a moratorium on the payment of excise tax was imposed on the territory of the studied state for a certain period. This event made its own adjustments to the proceeds from the payment of excise tax on excisable products (goods) produced domestically, and also allowed domestic producers to move from the place of economic stagnation. In Ukraine, they began to actively manufacture and sell antiseptic and disinfectants of their own production to protect citizens. According to the data of the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, the authors analyzed the indicators of tax revenues for each type of excisable products (goods) of domestic production. It was revealed from which products more tax was received during the study period. The main factors that influenced the receipts of excise tax from excisable goods produced on the territory of Ukraine in the period of 2019, as well as for 9 months of 2020, have been determined.

Party and Democracy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Organizational Development ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The State ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Mass Public ◽  
Post War ◽  
Totalitarian Regimes

The book integrates philosophical, historical, and empirical analyses in order to highlight the profound roots of the limited legitimation of parties in contemporary society. Political parties’ long attempts to gain legitimacy are analysed from a philosophical–historical perspective pinpointing crucial passages in their theoretical and empirical acceptance. The book illustrates the process through which parties first emerged and then achieved full legitimacy in the early twentieth century. It shows how, paradoxically, their role became absolute in the totalitarian regimes of the interwar period when the party became hyper-powerful. In the post-war period, parties shifted from a golden age of positive reception and organizational development towards a more difficult relationship with society as it moved into post-industrialism. Parties were unable to master societal change and favoured the state to recover resources they were no longer able to extract from their constituencies. Parties have become richer and more powerful, but they have ‘paid’ for their pervasive presence in society and the state with a declining legitimacy. The party today is caught in a dramatic contradiction. It has become a sort of Leviathan with clay feet: very powerful thanks to the resources it gets from the state and to its control of societal and state spheres due to an extension of clientelistic and patronage practices; but very weak in terms of legitimacy and confidence in the eyes of the mass public. However, it is argued that there is still no alternative to the party, and some hypotheses to enhance party democracy are advanced.

Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
International Monetary System ◽  
The State ◽  
Real Economy ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City

The aim of this book has been to evaluate the relationship between Britain’s financial sector, based in the City of London, and the social democratic economic strategy of post-war Britain. The central argument presented in the book was that changes to the City during the 1960s and 1970s undermined a number of the key post-war social democratic techniques designed to sustain and develop a modern industrial economy. Financial institutionalization weakened the state’s ability to influence investment, and the labour movement was unable successfully to integrate the institutionalized funds within a renewed social democratic economic agenda. The post-war settlement in banking came under strain in the 1960s as new banking and credit institutions developed that the state struggled to manage. This was exacerbated by the decision to introduce competition among the clearing banks in 1971, which further weakened the state’s capacity to control the provision and allocation of credit to the real economy. The resurrection of an unregulated global capital market, centred on London, overwhelmed the capacity of the state to pursue domestic-focused macroeconomic policies—a problem worsened by the concurrent collapse of the Bretton Woods international monetary system. Against this background, the fundamental social democratic assumption that national prosperity could be achieved only through industry-led growth and modernization was undermined by an effective campaign to reconceptualize Britain as a fundamentally financial and commercial nation with the City of London at its heart....

State Sponsored Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asha Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
British Council ◽  
Material Condition ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
Satanic Verses ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
Post War ◽  
Archival Work

Debates about the value of the ‘literary’ rarely register the expressive acts of state subsidy, sponsorship, and cultural policy that have shaped post-war Britain. In State Sponsored Literature, Asha Rogers argues that the modern state was a major material condition of literature, even as its efforts were relative, partial, and prone to disruption. Drawing from neglected and occasionally unexpected archives, she shows how the state became an integral and conflicted custodian of literary freedom in the postcolonial world as beliefs about literature’s ‘public’ were radically challenged by the unrivalled migration to Britain at the end of Empire. State Sponsored Literature retells the story of literature’s place in modern Britain through original analysis of the institutional forces behind canon-formation and contestation, from the literature programmes of the British Council and Arts Council to the UK’s fraught relations with UNESCO, from GCSE literature anthologies to the origins of The Satanic Verses in migrant Camden. The state did not shape literary production in a vacuum, Rogers argues, rather its policies, practices, and priorities were inexorably shaped in turn. Demonstrating how archival work can potentially transform our understanding of literature and its reading publics, this book challenges how we think about literature’s value by asking what state involvement has meant for writers, readers, institutions, and the ideal of autonomy itself.

Reversal of Fortunes: Transformations in State-NGO Relations in Bangladesh

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 579-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lamia Karim
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
Nobel Peace Prize ◽  
Grameen Bank ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Weak State ◽  
The Government ◽  
Relationship Of

In 2011, the government of Bangladesh began an investigation into the financial dealings of the Grameen Bank that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. This disciplining of a world-renowned institution and its founder by the state reconfigures the altered relationship between the state and NGOs in Bangladesh. This article investigates this about-face between the state and NGOs from the 1990s, when their relationship was characterized as ‘partners in development’, to the late 2000s when the state saw the leading NGOs and their leaders as potential political adversaries. In Bangladesh, the former relationship of a weak state vis-à-vis the powerful, western-funded NGO has been recalibrated. Under the present condition of authoritarian rule, the state is willing to accept the role of the NGO as a development actor but not as a political contender. This article examines this shifting relationship between the state and NGOs.

Die Macht der Institution

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

This volume examines Arnold Gehlen’s theory of the state from his philosophy of the state in the 1920s via his political and cultural anthropology to his impressive critique of the post-war welfare state. The systematic analyses the book contains by leading scholars in the social sciences and the humanities examine the interplay between the theory and history of the state with reference to the broader context of the history of ideas. Students and researchers as well as other readers interested in this subject will find this book offers an informative overview of how one of the most wide-ranging and profound thinkers of the twentieth century understands the state. With contributions by Oliver Agard, Heike Delitz, Joachim Fischer, Andreas Höntsch, Tim Huyeng, Rastko Jovanov, Frank Kannetzky, Christine Magerski, Zeljko Radinkovic, Karl-Siegbert Rehberg and Christian Steuerwald.

Criticality, Empathy and Welfare in Educational Discourses

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.V. Varghese
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Market Failure ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Indian Context ◽  
Educational Processes ◽  
Post War

Criticality is the ability to question current theories and practices in any sector to make them more receptive to social realities. Empathy is the ability to identify with what someone else is thinking or feeling. Empathy forms the foundation for welfare state and its liberal social welfare programmes. The state-led development strategies during the post-war period stemmed from a belief in the idea of welfare state and in the redistribution of resources and opportunities in favour of the deprived groups. The market-led globalisation process has put brakes on the scope of welfare provisions even in democratic societies. The public-funded stimulus packages during the recent economic crisis helped save economies from market failure and reinforced the need for state intervention even for an efficient functioning of markets. Based on an analysis of global trends and Indian context, this paper argues for the need of the educational processes to develop criticality in thinking and empathy in action to help develop a support base for public policies benefiting the poor and the disadvantaged.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document