The Failure of the Regime or the Demise of the State?

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-332
Author(s):  
Rabab El-Mahdi

In English the terms “political system” and “political regime” are used to distinguish different constructs. The first was initially developed by behavioralists such as David Easton and Gabriel Almond to replace the older, institutionalist term, the “state”; the second typically designates the arrangements for producing a government. In Arabic, though, the words “system” and “regime” both translate asniẓām. This piece argues that when millions of citizens across the Arab region came out in 2011 chantingal-shaʿb yurīd isqāṭ al-niẓām, those chants marked a critical juncture in a long process reflecting the end of not just the existing regimes, but also the states as we knew them. Whether defined in terms of governing institutions and capabilities, as Lisa Anderson, Ellen Lust, and Ariel Ahram do, or in terms of discourse, imagination, and symbolic power, as Ellis Goldberg and Charles Tripp do, the state was withering away long before the uprising. Concomitantly, the heightened levels of repression and shifts within official discourse by the changing ruling elite after the uprisings signal a perceived threat to the state itself, and not just to a particular regime. And while this piece focuses on Egypt, unlike some of the other contributions in this collection, I argue that the nation-state, as a conceptual and material construct, is being challenged.

Author(s):  
N. Zagladin

In today’s world the U.S. ruling elite has proved unable to maintain its claim to world leadership by relying on military force. It was also necessary to make corrections in the budget and tax policy and to limit further increase of the state debt. The problems of choosing political alternatives, however, have provoked a serious conflict between the republican and the democratic parties, involving public movements. In fact, the US political system is in the state of crisis that exerts influence on Russian-American relations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 33-61
Author(s):  
Galyna Zelenko ◽  

Crises of political development are inherent in countries transitioning from an authoritarian to a democratic regime. In contrast to political crises, crises of political development are inherent in transit societies. Usually they have much deeper and more fundamental reasons related to the quality of the authoritarian political regime, the nature of the transformational changes and are much longer lasting. Іn this article author analyzes the crises of political development that are manifested in Ukraine during the transformation of the political regime. The crises of political development include the crisis of identity, distribution, participation, penetration and legitimacy. The crisis of identity characterizes the disintegration of ideals and values that dominated in political culture of the previous period; the crisis of distribution lies in the inability of the ruling elite to ensure socially acceptable growth of material well-being and its distribution, which causes social stratification and is a constant source of socio-political conflicts; the crisis of penetration is conditioned in the reduced ability of public authorities to perform the functions inherent in the state, which complicates the implementation of reforms and governance; the crisis of participation is conditioned through the creation of artificial barriers by the ruling class for the inclusion in political life of groups claiming power or passivity of society, as a result of which unconventional forms of political participation begin to prevail; the crisis of legitimacy is conditioned in the low efficiency of the constitutional model of power organization and arises as a result of inconsistency of goals and values of the ruling regime with the ideas of the majority of citizens about the rules of just government. The combination of these crises creates a crisis syndrome of modernization and hinders the development of the state in general. In conclusions the author formulates the institutional tools which can reduce the negative effects of crises of political development. Key words: crisis of political development, crisis of identity, crisis of distribution, crisis of participation, crisis of penetration, crisis of legitimacy, financial-industrial groups, political institutionalization, political regime.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 41-49
Author(s):  
Yuriy Ershov

The article is devoted to assessing the reasons and meaning of amendments to the Russian Federation Constitution made by the current political regime. The manner in which the amendments were adopted together with their content demonstrates inability of the state and the political system as a whole to govern and rule in accordance with the principles and norms of democracy and law. The concept of “unworthy governing” is used to characterize the existing mechanism of power and management of society in Russia.


Author(s):  
Oleksandr Taldykin

The article deals with the concept and signs of state crisis. The classification of state crises according to different criteria is presented. The state, as a political and territorial organization of society, is a complex system of various elements that function in interrelationship and interdependence and must serve the interests of civil society. Of course, if such a state is ideally related to it, society, it functions to meet its needs. The failure of one part of a complex multilevel State mechanism will inevitably have negative and sometimes irreversible consequences for other elements, which in itself will already be an indicator of certain crisis phenomena. What is a crisis of the State and what is its classification, in our view, these very issues are extremely relevant to the theory of the State and are the subject of our consideration. The crisis of the state is a destructive state of the state mechanism, due to the improper functioning of which antagonistic contradictions in the society aggravate, conflicts are formed, which the state can overcome or solve without a positive transformation, which in turn can threaten the state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and eventually can lead to its destruction. The main signs of the state crisis are: – destructive effects on the State itself and society as a whole; – the exacerbation of numerous conflict situations in various areas of society; – the failure of quality public administration; – contradiction between the state and society, between the ruling elite and the people, between different segments of the population; – a real threat to State sovereignty and territorial integrity; – the rebirth, transformation or destruction of statehood. By temporal criterion, a state crisis can be divided into: short-term (acute), prolonged (long-term), permanent (chronic). By the scale of coverage of certain state institutions and spheres of state regulation it is necessary to determine: microcrisis, mesocrisis, macrocrisis, mega-crisis. By subjects of coverage, these are a crisis of the state mechanism, a crisis of the state apparatus, a crisis of individual state organisations, a crisis of state resources, a crisis of individual branches of power. According to the political aspects of coverage, the crisis of the state is divided into: crisis of ruling elites, crisis of opposition forces, which in its turn can be divided into: crisis of radical opposition; crisis of moderate opposition; crisis of legal opposition and crisis of illegal opposition. Such a feature as legitimacy of the state power gives grounds to speak about: crisis of a legitimate state and crisis of an illegitimate state. The question of legal justification of the state power, its compliance with legal norms, which is a sign of its legitimacy, gives the necessity to determine: crisis of the legal state and crisis of the illegal state. A significant indicator of the definition of crisis phenomena in a State is the degree to which they are predictable. According to such criterion it is possible to define: not an assumed crisis of the State, an assumed crisis of the State, a controlled crisis of the State. According to the expected consequences of a crisis phenomenon in the State, emphasis should be placed on a destructive crisis, a potential crisis and a transformational crisis. Special attention should be paid to the study of classification of the crisis of the state according to the social and economic formation: crisis of the slave state, crisis of the feudal state, crisis of the capitalist state, crisis of the socialist state. Conflicts in society and the formation of conflicts in the state may be connected with the pressing need to change the form of state governance: crisis of monarchies and crisis of republics. Depending on the form of the state (territorial) system, the crisis of simple (unitary) states and the crisis of complex states, primarily empires, can be distinguished. Classification of state crises where the criterion is this or that form of state political regime seems quite justified: the crisis of anti-democratic states, the crisis of democratic states. In the areas of dominant coverage (manifestation) of crisis phenomena: economic crisis, social crisis, political crisis, religious crisis of the state, information crisis of the state.


2018 ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Marta Michalczuk-Wlizło ◽  
Radosław Żmigrodzki

The considerations presented in this paper are focused on the issue of governmental systems. The authors try to outline the main problems and dilemmas as concerns its definitions. They point to the normative elements of governmental systems and discuss the issue of efficiency, because every governmental system is defined by formal (established in legal regulations) as well as the actual, or real, relationship between the legislative and executive power. While the interdependence of legislative and executive power is the main focus here, judicial power is also referred to. In order to comprehensively present and characterize a given governmental system it is advisable to account for the legal and constitutional aspects, as well as practical ones. The concept of a political regime or a political system in relation to governmental systems is also discussed, and criteria for the analysis of the interdependence of individual powers in the state are indicated.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Ruth Roded

Beginning in the early 1970s, Jewish and Muslim feminists, tackled “oral law”—Mishna and Talmud, in Judaism, and the parallel Hadith and Fiqh in Islam, and several analogous methodologies were devised. A parallel case study of maintenance and rebellion of wives —mezonoteha, moredet al ba?ala; nafaqa al-mar?a and nush?z—in classical Jewish and Islamic oral law demonstrates similarities in content and discourse. Differences between the two, however, were found in the application of oral law to daily life, as reflected in “responsa”—piskei halacha and fatwas. In modern times, as the state became more involved in regulating maintenance and disobedience, and Jewish law was backed for the first time in history by a state, state policy and implementation were influenced by the political system and socioeconomic circumstances of the country. Despite their similar origin in oral law, maintenance and rebellion have divergent relevance to modern Jews and Muslims.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Muhannad Al Janabi Al Janabi

Since late 2010 and early 2011, the Arab region has witnessed mass protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain and other countries that have been referred to in the political, media and other literature as the Arab Spring. These movements have had a profound effect on the stability of the regimes Which took place against it, as leaders took off and contributed to radical reforms in party structures and public freedoms and the transfer of power, but it also contributed to the occurrence of many countries in an internal spiral, which led to the erosion of the state from the inside until it became a prominent feature of the Arab) as is the case in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq.


Author(s):  
Anatolii Petrovich Mykolaiets

It is noted that from the standpoint of sociology, “management — a function of organized systems of various nature — (technical, biological, social), which ensures the preservation of their structure, maintaining a certain state or transfer to another state, in accordance with the objective laws of the existence of this system, which implemented by a program or deliberately set aside”. Management is carried out through the influence of one subsystem-controlling, on the other-controlled, on the processes taking place in it with the help of information signals or administrative actions. It is proved that self-government allows all members of society or a separate association to fully express their will and interests, overcome alienation, effectively combat bureaucracy, and promote public self-realization of the individual. At the same time, wide direct participation in the management of insufficiently competent participants who are not responsible for their decisions, contradicts the social division of labor, reduces the effectiveness of management, complicates the rationalization of production. This can lead to the dominance of short-term interests over promising interests. Therefore, it is always important for society to find the optimal measure of a combination of self-management and professional management. It is determined that social representation acts, on the one hand, as the most important intermediary between the state and the population, the protection of social interests in a politically heterogeneous environment. On the other hand, it ensures the operation of a mechanism for correcting the political system, which makes it possible to correct previously adopted decisions in a legitimate way, without resorting to violence. It is proved that the system of social representation influences the most important political relations, promotes social integration, that is, the inclusion of various social groups and public associations in the political system. It is proposed to use the term “self-government” in relation to several levels of people’s association: the whole community — public self-government or self-government of the people, to individual regions or communities — local, to production management — production self-government. Traditionally, self-government is seen as an alternative to public administration. Ideology and practice of selfgovernment originate from the primitive, communal-tribal democracy. It is established that, in practice, centralization has become a “natural form of government”. In its pure form, centralization does not recognize the autonomy of places and even local life. It is characteristic of authoritarian regimes, but it is also widely used by democratic regimes, where they believe that political freedoms should be fixed only at the national level. It is determined that since the state has achieved certain sizes, it is impossible to abandon the admission of the existence of local authorities. Thus, deconcentration appears as one of the forms of centralization and as a cure for the excesses of the latter. Deconcentration assumes the presence of local bodies, which depend on the government functionally and in the order of subordination of their officials. The dependency of officials means that the leadership of local authorities is appointed by the central government and may be displaced.


Author(s):  
Iryna Butyrska

The author proves that the successful stability of independent Slovenia contributed to a number of factors, existing since its being incorporated in the SFRY. The factor, uniting the state has become the common goal – the aspiration to join the EU. The process of the European integration contributed to the modernization of a number of spheres, in particular social, cultural and economic ones. The global financial and economic crisis has revealed the turmoil in the economy of the state and its leadership was forced to gradually reduce a significant part of social privileges for the population. This caused the tension in the society and reduced the level of the national unity, having a negative impact on people’s wellbeing. However, since 2014, the Prime Minister M. Cherar has been trying to restore people’s trust in the state. The situation is getting better; indicators of trust in government are increasing, which also points to state capacity and political regime stability in Slovenia. Keywords: Slovenia, state stability, social sphere, government


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