Contested boundaries

Focaal ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (68) ◽  
pp. 105-123
Author(s):  
Jennifer Alvey
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
The State ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Representational Practices ◽  
Shared Language ◽  
Border Dispute ◽  
Land Privatization ◽  
State Actors

This article examines a 20-year border dispute between two adjacent southern interior municipalities in Nicaragua. The dispute acts as window into the politics of state formation and the consolidation of the dictatorship of Anastacio Somoza García (1936–1956). This conflict was waged by locally based “state actors” who contested each other's attempts to stake and extend spatially based claims to authority. Contending parties developed a shared language of contention that I call “administrative disorder”, which tracked closely with accusations of invasion and abuse of authority. Administrative disorder discourses were representational practices that contributed to the discursive construction of the state. They were also the means by which representatives of the state sought to justify or normalize their own activities. As such, these discourses concealed political tensions rooted in patronage networks, municipal formation, land privatization, and ethnic assimilation, which shaped the contours and longevity of the dispute, but remained lurking silences in administrative disorder discourses.

The Self-Undermining State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arjun Chowdhury
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Central Authority ◽  
Interstate War ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Willingness To Sacrifice ◽  
The Cost

This chapter provides an informal rationalist model of state formation as an exchange between a central authority and a population. In the model, the central authority protects the population against external threats and the population disarms and pays taxes. The model specifies the conditions under which the exchange is self-enforcing, meaning that the parties prefer the exchange to alternative courses of action. These conditions—costly but winnable interstate war—are historically rare, and the cost of such wars can rise beyond the population’s willingness to sacrifice. At this point, the population prefers to avoid war rather than fight it and may prefer an alternative institution to the state if that institution can prevent war and reduce the level of extraction. Thus the modern centralized state is self-undermining rather than self-enforcing. A final section addresses alternative explanations for state formation.

scholarly journals The origins of the state: technology, cooperation and institutions

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Giacomo Benati ◽  
Carmine Guerriero
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Risk Sharing ◽  
Group Formation ◽  
Public Spending ◽  
Stable State ◽  
The State ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Production Conditions ◽  
Alternative Theories

Abstract We develop a theory of state formation shedding light on the rise of the first stable state institutions in Bronze Age Mesopotamia. Our analysis suggests that the mix of adverse production conditions and unforeseen innovations pushed groups favored by old technologies to establish the state by granting political and property rights to powerless individuals endowed with new and complementary skills. Through these reforms, the elite convinced the nonelite that a sufficient part of the returns on joint investments would be shared via public spending and, thus, to cooperate and accumulate a culture of cooperation. Different from the main alternative theories, we stress that: (1) group formation is heavily shaped by unforeseen shocks to the returns on both risk-sharing and innovation; (2) complementarity in group-specific skills, and not violence, is key determinant of state formation; (3) military, merchant and, especially, religious ranks favored state formation and culture accumulation.

scholarly journals Seigneurial governance and the state in late medieval Guelders (14th–16th century)

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Jim van der Meulen
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
Cross Sections ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
The State ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Central Argument

AbstractThis article charts the long-term development of seigneurial governance within the principality of Guelders in the Low Countries. Proceeding from four quantitative cross-sections (c. 1325, 1475, 1540, 1570) of seigneurial lordships, the conclusion is that seigneurial governance remained stable in late medieval Guelders. The central argument is that this persistence of seigneurial governance was an effect of active collaboration between princely administrations, lords, and local communities. Together, the princely government and seigneuries of Guelders formed an integrated, yet polycentric, state. The article thereby challenges the narrative of progressive state centralisation that predominates in the historiography of pre-modern state formation.

Bridging the Accountability Gap in the Protection of Internally Displaced Persons: Non-State Actors Under the Kampala Convention

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Romola Adeola
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Internal Displacement ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
African Union ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Regional Landscape ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Accountability Gap ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Contemporary forms of internal displacement in Africa significantly reflect the emerging footprints of non-state actors on the regional landscape of internal displacement. In recognition of the impact of these actors in the internal displacement context, the African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention) specifically obligate states to regulate them in the prevention of arbitrary displacement. This is the central thrust of this article. This article examines the Kampala Convention from the perspective of non-state actors, considering the obligation of the state and the extent to which these actors may be held accountable, in the furtherance of protection and assistance of internally displaced persons (IDP s).

Playing through the Apocalypse: Preparing Children for Mass Disasters in Japan and Chile

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-259
Author(s):  
Chika Watanabe
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Preparedness ◽  
Nonprofit Organization ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Mass Disasters ◽  
As If

Abstract There is a growing trend to prepare children for future disasters. A Japanese nonprofit organization has developed an event called Iza! Kaeru Caravan, which includes games that teach children and their families how to survive disasters, from earthquakes to floods. Many disaster experts and government officials from other countries have now implemented the Caravan in their own contexts. Based on ethnographic research in Japan and Chile, this article shows how playful methods in disaster preparedness orient children, and by proxy their families, to accept an apocalyptic future, helping the neoliberal state buy time. Advocates of disaster preparedness in Japan and Chile accept that state actors will not come immediately to the rescue. Playful methods mobilize children and their families to take responsibility for their own survival through the subjunctive work of the “as if.” Ambiguously positioned between fun and education, playful methods of preparedness command attention from children and adults—what I call “attentive play”—as they frame and reframe the games to figure out, “Is this play?” Ultimately, the article shows that attentive play buys time for the state to temporarily defer its responsibilities to citizens, but the ambiguity of play can also exceed its ideological effects.

Slavery and the Slave Trade in Dār Fūr

1973 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. O'Fahey
Keyword(s):  
State Formation ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Central African Republic ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The State ◽  
The South ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
State Organization ◽  
Slave Raid

The institutions of slavery, slave raiding and the slave trade were fundamental in the rise and expansion of the Keira Sultanate of Dār Fūr. The development of a long-distance trade in slaves may be due to immigrants from the Nile, who probably provided the impetus to state formation. This process may be remembered in the ‘Wise Stranger’ traditions current in the area. The slave raid or ghazwa, penetrating into the Baḥr al-Ghazāl and what is now the Central African Republic, marked the triumph of Sudanic state organization over the acephalous societies to the south.The slaves, who were carefully classified, were not only exported to Egypt and North Africa, but also served the sultans and the title-holding elite as soldiers, labourers and bureaucrats. In the latter role, the slaves began to encroach on the power of traditional ruling groups within the state; the conflict between the slave bureaucrats and the traditional ruling elite lasted until the end of the first Keira Sultanate in 1874.

The Legitimating Power of Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-275
Author(s):  
Mustafa Menshawy
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
The State ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Culturally Embedded

Abstract In this article, I examine a corpus of texts that address the 1973 war; these texts cover the period from 1981 to 2011, marking the beginning and end of Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I explore how Mubarak’s regime employed the war to legitimize its power and defend its policies by deploying longstanding culturally-embedded ‘macro themes’. These macro themes refer to the war as an overwhelming and undisputed ‘Egyptian victory’ and, more significantly, they portray Mubarak himself as ‘war personified/war personalized’. The analysis of linguistic and extra-linguistic features in al-Ahram newspaper (the mouthpiece of the state), among other media texts on the war, show how the discursive construction was made consistent, coherent and resonant in a managed context that characterized the political and media landscapes. Depending on unique access to those who produced, edited and even censored the texts under analysis, this method unravels a complex set of cultural messages and conventions about the war, and fills a lacuna in the literature by offering insight into the deliberate and well-coordinated process of shaping and reshaping a specific discourse for a specific purpose.

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