States and state systems: democratic, Westphalian or both?

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORNELIA NAVARI
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Transition ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Transition Theory ◽  
Modern State ◽  
English School ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State

AbstractTwo rival accounts have come to dominate discussion of the origins and character of the contemporary international system. One, closely associated with the English School and the traditional account, places its origins with the appearance, and acceptance, of the centralised authority of the modern state. We might call this ‘the Westphalia version’. In this account, the modern state system is often represented in terms of what it is not. It is not a feudal regnum with a multiplicity of functionally distinct authorities. It is not a theocratic imperium where one power aimed at ‘the control and protection of Christendom’. It is a society of sovereigns, of de jure equals, each of whom accorded the others’ right to exist, and whose common ideological quantum is low. The rival is located within democratic transition theory. It postulates the modern state system as an extension of the liberal democratic state. The liberal state is not sovereign in the Westphalian sense: liberal authority is diffuse. Moreover, the liberal state produces its own, distinctive, international impulses that distance it in significant ways from the Westphalian pattern. Both see the state system as ‘produced’ by the state, as an immanent effect of stateness, but the account of the state’s trajectory differs radically.

Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Criminal Law Bill

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus D. Dubber
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Penal State ◽  
State 1

Part III of Dual Penal State uses dual penal state analysis to generate a comparative-historical account of American penality. With comparative glimpses at Germany and, to a lesser extent, England, it distinguishes between two responses to the shared challenge of legitimating state penal power in a modern liberal democratic state: (1) the failure to appreciate the legitimatory challenge of modern state penal power in particular (United States) and of modern state power in general (England); and (2) the failure to address the legitimatory challenge of modern state penal power as an ongoing existential threat to the legitimacy of the state (Germany). Chapter 6 undertakes a critical analysis of Jefferson’s 1779 draft of a criminal law bill for the State of Virginia, concluding that it fell well short of a criminal code that reflected the ideals of the American legal-political project as spelled out, for instance, in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence of 1776.

The Crisis of Minorities in Ethnic States: The Case of Palestinian Citizens in Israel

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naditn Rouhana ◽  
Asʿad Ghanem
Keyword(s):  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Structure ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Ethnic Affiliation ◽  
Democratic State

The vast majority of states in the international system, democratic and non-democratic, are multi-ethnic (Gurr 1993). A liberal-democratic multi-ethnic state serves the collective needs of all its citizens regardless of their ethnic affiliation, and citizenship—legally recognized membership in the political structure called a state—is the single criterion for belonging to the state and for granting equal opportunity to all members of the system. Whether a multi-ethnic democratic state should provide group rights above and beyond individual legal equality is an ongoing debate (Gurr & Harff 1994).

The Rise of the State as a Process of Secularization [1967]

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-167
Author(s):  
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ◽  
Mirjam Künkler ◽  
Tine Stein
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
The Core ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
Investiture Controversy ◽  
The Church

Böckenförde shows how and why the modern state is a product of the historical process of secularization. Three key conflicts between papacy and European kings led to the establishment of administrative, political, and later legal structures independent from the Catholic Church: the Investiture Controversy (1087–1122), the confessional wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the declarations of rights as universal rather than based on religion in the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776 and the French constitution of 1789. The modern state emerged from this process independent from the Church, without claims on the religious lives of its citizens or questions of sin and salvation. Böckenförde regards the constitutional recognition of freedom of religion as the bedrock of modernity. In the article, Böckenförde identifies what he regards as the core challenge facing the liberal democratic state, formulated in his most prominently cited sentence: ‘The liberal secularized state is sustained by conditions it cannot itself secure.’ Böckenförde argues that the modern state relies on a moral substance, thriving only under conditions of solidarity and cohesion that need to emanate from within society. Religiosity is one potential source of this moral substance. At the same time, one of the goals of the liberal state is the promotion and safeguarding of pluralism: If the modern state were to promote a given worldview or a sense of morality, it would violate the very liberalism on which it is founded. This dilemma has become known in the literature as the ‘Böckenförde dictum’.

Environmentalists, Nuclear Waste, and the Politics of Passive Exclusion in Germany

2001 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Hunold
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Nuclear Waste ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
The State ◽  
Radioactive Wastes ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Ecological Democracy ◽  
Over Time

In this essay I examine the dispute between the German GreenParty and some of the country’s environmental nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) over the March 2001 renewal of rail shipmentsof highly radioactive wastes to Gorleben. My purpose indoing so is to test John Dryzek’s 1996 claim that environmentalistsought to beware of what they wish for concerning inclusion in theliberal democratic state. Inclusion on the wrong terms, arguesDryzek, may prove detrimental to the goals of greening and democratizingpublic policy because such inclusion may compromise thesurvival of a green public sphere that is vital to both. Prospects forecological democracy, understood in terms of strong ecologicalmodernization here, depend on historically conditioned relationshipsbetween the state and the environmental movement that fosterthe emergence and persistence over time of such a public sphere.

The Model Penal Code and the War on Crime

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus D. Dubber
Keyword(s):  
Penal Code ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Model Penal Code ◽  
State Punishment ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Penal State ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
Integrate State ◽  
State 1

Part III of Dual Penal State uses dual penal state analysis to generate a comparative-historical account of American penality. With comparative glimpses at Germany and, to a lesser extent, England, it distinguishes between two responses to the shared challenge of legitimating state penal power in a modern liberal democratic state: (1) the failure to appreciate the legitimatory challenge of modern state penal power in particular (United States) and of modern state power in general (England); and (2) the failure to address the legitimatory challenge of modern state penal power as an ongoing existential threat to the legitimacy of the state (Germany). Chapter 7 brings the narrative of modern American penality up-to-date, following on the heels of the discussion of Jefferson’s Virginia criminal law bill of 1779 in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 focuses on the Model Penal Code of 1962, which was far superior to Jefferson’s draft in every respect but one: it, too, failed to integrate state punishment into the American legal-political project, leaving the penal paradox unaddressed and unresolved to this day.

Engaging the liberal state: Cardinal Manning and Irish home rule

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
Jeffrey von Arx
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The Church

In the course of his long career (1865–1892) as Archbishop of Westminster and head of England’s Catholic Church, Henry Edward Manning articulated a position on the engagement of voluntary religious organizations like the Church with the liberal state, now understood, at least in the British context, as religiously neutral and responsive to public opinion through increasingly democratic forms of government and mediated through political parties. The greatest test and illustration of this position was his involvement in Irish Home Rule, where he deferred to the Irish hierarchy in their support of Charles Stuart Parnell’s Irish Parliamentary Party against his own inclinations and the immediate interests of the Catholic population in England. Manning’s position was in sharp contrast to that of Pope Leo XIII, who negotiated directly with Otto von Bismarck, and over the heads of the hierarchy and Germany’s Catholic Centre Party, to end the Kulturkampf. Thus Manning worked out a modus vivendi for the Church in relation to the liberal, democratic state that anticipates in many ways the practice of the Church in politics today.

2. States, Nations, and Empires

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Stephanie Lawson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Global Order ◽  
European State

This chapter discusses what is often regarded as the central institution, not only of domestic or national political order but also of current international or global order—the state. Alongside the state, we must also consider the idea of the nation and the ideology of nationalism—perhaps the most powerful political ideology to emerge in the modern world. There is, however, another form of international political order that has actually been far more common throughout history, and that is empire. With the rise of modernity from around the beginning of the seventeenth century, we also encounter the rise of the modern state and state system in Europe along with ideas about sovereignty, citizenship, the nation-state, and democracy. The chapter then looks at the effective globalization of the European state system through modern imperialism and colonialism and the extent to which these have been productive of contemporary global order.

Fragmentation of Citizenship Governance

2017 ◽  
pp. 598-620
Author(s):  
Joel P. Trachtman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Modern State ◽  
International Regime ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Positive Rights ◽  
Experience Effects

A future of greater migration will put pressure on the exclusive territorial model of citizenship. In the deepest analytical sense, bundled citizenship is incoherent, and made more so by extraterritorial effects of national decision-making—by the effects on persons in other territories—and, as salient for this chapter, by the mobility of persons that makes them experience effects of governmental decisions in other territories. For most historic periods since the emergence of the modern state system and in most regional contexts this mobility of persons was not significant enough, and the role of the state in providing positive rights was not great enough, to necessitate an international regime for assigning states responsibility for positive rights, and assigning individuals duties to states. However, with greater demand for mobility, greater cooperation to divide up the components of citizenship may be desirable.

When the State Hates

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
The State ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Private Actor ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
American States ◽  
Democratic Character ◽  
Institutional Action ◽  
Repressive Regime

This chapter considers the liberal state not as an opponent, but as a perpetrator, of hate. It explores the possibility that the liberal state might express or enact, through policies or institutional action or design, something we would recognize as hate if it were perpetrated by a private actor or a repressive regime. The chapter takes as a case study the regime of “enforcement by attrition” deployed against undocumented immigrants by American states such as Arizona, analyzing both the features and the distinctive disavowals that characterize liberal state hate. It then argues that the liberal, democratic character of the state supplies more than a subterfuge for state hate: it can provide a resource that enables targeted groups and their allies to resist state hate.

scholarly journals Godsdienspluraliteit en die liberale staat – die illusie van sekulêre neutraliteit

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francois Venter
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
Universal Values

Religious pluralism and the liberal state – the illusion of secular neutrality. Whereas church and state have long been separated since the emergence of the modern state, law and religion have not been separated and can never be separated. The notion of the liberal-democratic state, which is still dominant in legal thinking, induces state authorities to seek refuge in secular neutrality when confronted with religious issues to be resolved by law and judicial resolution. This article sketches the constitutional background, the undeniable relationship between law and religion, the standard liberal response to resulting difficulties and the dawn of a post-secular era. Examples are discussed from German, Canadian and South African jurisprudence that dealt with religious issues, leading to an assessment of the viability of secular neutrality. It is found that neutrality is unachievable. A suggestion is made that objective reciprocity founded on the teachings of Jesus and accepted as a universal human norm, independently of Christian teachings, may present an appropriate approach to avoid the dilemmas brought about by secularism. The implication of this analysis is that some firm arguments based on biblical justification have universal persuasive power, because they appeal to universal values also acceptable to non-believers and other religions. These arguments may be used in courts and by other organs of state for the resolution of religious matters that have legal implications in the pluralistic society of the 21st century.

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