On Categories and Configurations: Further Remarks on Rebuilding the American state

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Katznelson ◽  
Bruce Pietrykowski

“Rebuilding the American State” was written in the manner of a bozzetto: it is a sketch drawn to reshape interlocking analytical and historiographical conversations and to suggest pathways joining the era of Roosevelt to the qualities and conundrums of postwar Democratic party liberalism. We underscored the key role of what might be called the long 1940s, stretching from the economic and political crisis faced by the New Deal in 1937–38 to the election in 1952 of the first Republican president since Hoover. We claimed that institutional and policy decisions taken across a number of domains in this period coherently recast the state and, in so doing, the contours and possibilities of American politics. We argued as well that old and new institutionalist approaches to state capacity have shared an unfortunate propensity to inventory organizational resources without regard to the normative and practical policy visions that define the content of what it is the state actually is meant to accomplish. In this light, simple dichotomous distinctions between weak and strong states appear as too blunt to sharply etch our understanding of the past half-century of American political development.

Author(s):  
Kimberley S. Johnson

This article examines the ways in which scholars of American political development (APD) have encountered the color line through their research, and the strides they have made in bringing race back into the field of political science in general and the study of the state in particular. Three core questions about race and APD are considered: How is race defined? When does race matter? In what direction does race matter? Two approaches relating to race and American politics are discussed: the race relations approach and the racial politics (or minority politics) approach. It then explores five challenges that must be addressed in order to overcome the persistent connections between APD and the discipline’s racial anomalism. It also analyzes the role of race in the establishment of the early American welfare state and concludes by reflecting on the persistence of racial inequality and prospects for APD in the twenty-first century.


2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond King ◽  
Robert C. Lieberman

This review of new directions in the American and comparative literatures on the state reveals important intellectual trends that parallel each other quite closely. Both comparativists and Americanists address similar questions about the sources of state authority, and both propose similar answers. Collectively, these scholars and others are retheorizing the state—developing a suppler, multidimensional picture of the state's origins, structure, and consequences—to shed light on the reasons for the state's stubborn refusal to cede the stage. The emerging understanding of the state that the authors describe provides a framework not only for revisiting the state in the international realm but also, in dialogue with recent Americanist studies, for revising and deepening the understanding of the state's paradoxical role in American political development and finally setting aside the assumption of the United States as stateless. In this emerging view, American state building, strength, and institutional capacity form through links with society, not necessarily through autonomy from society. But such distinctive patterns provide insights for comparative studies, too, for instance, in respect to the relationship between the state and welfare policy across nations.


Author(s):  
Andrei N. Komarov ◽  

The article reveals an evolution of political ideologies in Canada in 1993–2019. Following the Russian and foreign historiography, as well as the election programs of Conservatives and Liberals, the author analyzes the influence of political ideologies on the voting of Canadian voters in parliamentary elections in the late 20th – early 21st centuries. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that Canada is still a country committed to political ideologies. He also considers as unacceptable the thesis about an absence of ideologies in Canada within the existing post-industrial society. The author believes that the model for political development of Canada, laid down in the second half of the 19th century by the founders of the state, is still effective at the present time. In a post-industrial society, Canada clearly follows national traditions based on previously developed political ideologies. That is what constitutes the foundation for the rule-of-law state and civil society in Canada. The author emphasizes that, despite the activities of other political movements, conservative and liberal ideologies represent the leading directions of the state development in Canada. Other political ideologies, like social democracy, are largely secondary and do not determine the present and future of the Canadian state.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney Tarrow

Movements and parties have given rise to two largely separates specialties in the social sciences. This Element is an effort to link the two literatures, using evidence from American political development. It identifies five relational mechanisms governing movement/party relations: two of them short term, two intermediate term, and one long-term. It closes with a reflection on the role of movement/party relations in democratization and for democratic resilience.


2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith L. Buttriss

The past half-century has been characterised by major technological developments and massive societal change, which have profoundly changed how food is produced, processed, sold and consumed. These days we are faced with a huge choice of pre-packaged foods when we shop in modern supermarkets and we can buy seasonal food all year round, in and out of season. For decades now, the need to guide choice has been recognised, and retailers and many manufacturers have provided increasing amounts of on-pack information and signposting, and more recently UK retailers have led the way in championing front-of-pack information provision, to supplement the standard back-of-pack nutrient composition table. From a European perspective, the present paper summarises developments in nutrition labelling information and signposting, the legislation that controls on-pack declarations, and research conducted to assess whether or not the information is used, understood and supports healthier choices. It also considers whether more could be done to influence behaviour change positively, giving examples of approaches identified in the research.


2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Antoun

In the Middle East over the past half-century, three religious processes have grown together. One, the growth of fundamentalism, has received worldwide attention both by academics and journalists. The others, the bureaucratization of religion and the state co-optation of religion, of equal duration but no less importance, have received much less attention. The bureaucratization of religion focuses on the hierarchicalization of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralization as political opponents. Few commentators link the three processes. In Jordan, fundamentalism, the bureaucratization of religion (BOR), and state co-optation of religion (SCR) have become entwined sometimes in mutually supportive and sometimes in antagonistic relations. The following case study will describe and analyze the implications of this mutual entanglement for the relations of state and civil society and for the human beings simultaneously bureaucratized and “fundamentalized.”


Author(s):  
Robert Mickey

This chapter examines the legacies and lessons of the southern enclaves' different paths to democratization. It first summarizes the book's findings, showing how, from the abolition of the white primary in 1944 until the McGovern–Fraser National Democratic Party reforms of the early 1970s, democratizers assaulted the authoritarian enclaves of the Deep South. It then offers a way to supplement existing approaches to the study of contemporary electoral and economic change, focusing in particular on how the framework of authoritarian enclaves might enhance our understanding of the rise of southern Republicans and the South's uneven economic development. It concludes by considering some implications of the book's findings for the study of the South, American political development, and regime change.


Author(s):  
Sylvie Laurent

This chapter will address King’s reasoning on the role and purpose of the modern American state in guaranteeing economic security and wellbeing for all. King argued, like welfare rights activists, that these were fundamental social obligations to the state. This chapter will show how his Scandinavian- inspired proposals demonstrate that King was willing to build on the New Deal


2019 ◽  
pp. 205-225
Author(s):  
Matt Guardino

This chapter summarizes the book’s conclusions and suggests directions for future research. It also explores the book’s broader implications for democracy and the dynamics of political-economic power. The chapter stresses the need for interdisciplinary analyses that employ multiple methods and sources of evidence to better understand the role of media and public opinion in American political development. It also discusses how news coverage may contribute to the durability of key aspects of the broader neoliberal policy regime. It ends by situating the book’s analyses within scholarship on inequalities in political and economic power, arguing that political scientists should recognize the news media’s central institutional role at the intersection of American politics and American capitalism.


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