1918: An Insurgent Constitution

2019 ◽  
pp. 120-185
Author(s):  
Massimiliano Tomba
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Foreign Workers ◽  
Collective State ◽  
National State ◽  
Property Relations ◽  
Russian Constitution ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Alternative Routes ◽  
Modern Sense

The fourth chapter analyzes the alternative routes of modernization that were encapsulated in the Russian revolutionary streams of 1917–18. From the perspective of modern Western constitutionalism, the first Russian Constitution contained numerous anomalies that, strictly speaking, make it difficult to define the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic as a state in the modern sense of the term. Among these anomalies was the dismantling of the national state through a universal distribution of power by the local soviets; the anticolonial and antinational pronouncement for a new conception of citizenship, which in the first Russian constitution could be conferred upon foreign workers by any local soviets; and an alternative practice of property relations, which was rooted in the traditional communal possession of land—different from both private and collective state property. This chapter analyzes these anomalies as innovative political institutions, which are part of the legacy of insurgent universality.

The Democratic Advantage by the Numbers

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
International System ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Major Powers ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Democratic Advantage ◽  
Significant Support ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines quantitative evidence for a link between a state’s domestic political institutions and its power in the international system. Using standard international relations datasets, it finds significant support for the democratic advantage idea. It is notable how often democracies appear at or near the top of global power rankings. And this is even more remarkable when one considers how historically rare this form of government has been. This chapter finds that, on average, democracies possess more power than autocracies. It reveals that they are more likely to find themselves among the major powers and at the very top of the global distribution of power. Finally, it also demonstrates that, when comparing democratic and autocratic competitors from a common baseline and watching their power trajectories unfold over time, the trend-lines favor democracies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the research design for the case studies to follow.

The Rise, Character, and Evolution of International Order

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
International Order ◽  
Historical Institutionalism ◽  
The State ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Distribution Of Power

Historical institutionalism offers original ways of thinking about the origins, evolution, and consequences of political institutions—including, international order. This chapter argues that a “rise and decline” theory of international order based solely on the distribution of power is inadequate. The idea that leading states periodically have found themselves in a position to build or at least shape international order is not in dispute. But the explanation for the variations in the character of orders depends on more than simply the presence of a powerful lead state. Moments of opportunity for order building open up and close. The character of the state that finds itself with the opportunity to build order also matters. Employing insights from historical institutionalism, this chapter directs attention to the temporal dynamics that shape international orders, including the timing and sequence of past events that set the stage for subsequent struggles over political institutions.

Coordination versus Prisoners' Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes

1985 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-942 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Snidal
Keyword(s):  
International Cooperation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
International System ◽  
Singular Problem ◽  
Coordination Model ◽  
Prisoners Dilemma ◽  
Alternate Model ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Distribution Of Power

The study of political institutions in general and international cooperation in particular has been beneficially influenced by the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) game model, but there is a mistaken tendency to treat PD as representing the singular problem of collective action and cooperation. By relaxing the assumptions of 2 × 2 games and developing an alternate model of the coordination game, I show how some cooperation problems have very different properties from those found in PD. The analytical results of the two games are compared across several important dimensions: number of strategies available, number of iterations of the game, numbers of players, and the distribution of power among them. The discussion is illustrated with specific problems of international cooperation, and the implications of alternative cooperation problems for the formation and performance of international regimes are explored. The basic solutions for PD and coordination have divergent ramifications for the institutionalization, stability, and adaptability of regimes and for the role of hegemony in the international system. However, the coordination model does not replace the PD model but complements and supplements it as a way to understand the diversity of political institutions. These results are widely applicable to areas of politics beyond international relations.

Lutheran and Catholic Reunionists in the Age of Bismarck

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (S1) ◽  
pp. 89-107
Author(s):  
Manfred Fleischer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Final Analysis ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
National State ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
German People ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Religious division has determined Germany's destiny. In the Middle Ages, it was the struggle between Emperor and Pope which doomed the Holy Roman Empire. During the Reformation, and the Thirty Years' War, it was Protestantism as well as the anti-Imperial diplomacy of the Pope and the French cardinals, which prevented the emergence of a national state and a centralized government. “From the split of the church dates all our misfortune,” complained in 1846 the Lutheran historian Johann Friedrich Böhmer, editor of a major medieval source collection. “It is a pity that the nation in the heart of Europe was drawn away from its political profession by quarrels with the church, that the development of strong political institutions was interrupted, that they eroded under the acids of religious passion and negation, so that the German people finally got into a stage of the disease where they are either seized by violent fever, or rot in apathy and despair. All our inner ferment which soon will erupt in a revolutionary outburst, all our political impotence and lethargy were, in the final analysis, caused by the split of the church, which tore us apart, and which no one can bridge. Only a new St. Boniface who would restore ecclesiastical unity could help us.”

scholarly journals Power in office: presidents, governments, and parliaments in the institutional design of contemporary democracies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Ieraci
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Actual Distribution ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Political Perspective ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Presidential Systems

Abstract The institutional design of democratic regimes has attracted much attention from a legal and political perspective, because it affects the actual distribution of power among political actors and the effectiveness of their decisions. The article advances a classification of the democratic institutional design, with particular reference to the triangular interactions among Presidents, Governments, and Parliaments. Moving from the assumption that the arrangements among these three top political institutions identify the main patterns of the democratic government, the distinction among Parliamentary, Presidential, and Semi-Presidential systems set by the constitutional law is rejected and a new classification schema is advanced. In this new perspective, the institutional design of democracy consists of the institutional roles of authority, procedural resources attached to them and arenas of confrontation among the roles.

scholarly journals Fan’s book “Political ontology of a Russian citizen: content versus form”. Ekaterinburg: Ural Institute of Management — RANEPA branch, 2018

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 107-111
Author(s):  
Vasily Rusakov ◽  
◽  
Olga Rusakova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Russian Culture ◽  
Private Rights ◽  
Russian Constitution ◽  
Political Problem ◽  
Methodological Bias ◽  
Informal Practices ◽  
Russian Citizen

The authors consider the philosophical and political problem of citizenship, for a number of reasons constantly relevant to the Russian culture. A peculiar methodological bias of consideration gives originality to the work: the ontology of the phenomenon of citizen and citizenship. The emphasis is made on studying the factors and mechanisms for implementing the political and private rights of a nominal citizen, which shows that the current political order in Russia is characterized by the contradiction between the formal norms of externally modern political institutions and the informal practices of their functioning, the Russian Constitution does not exist in the form of existing law as a system of obligations observed by the parties, and it is reasonable to talk about the existing rental estate order and resource allocation.

scholarly journals Unresolved problems in the theory of state identity policy in Russian political science

2020 ◽  
pp. 86-110
Author(s):  
Olga Popova
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
State Policy ◽  
The State ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
State Identity ◽  
National State ◽  
Systemic Problems ◽  
Political Communities

The article analyzes the state of research of the state policy of identity in Russian political science as one of the most significant in the theoretical and political-practical terms of the topics of interdisciplinary body of knowledge about identity. The author shows two stages in the development of this issue in Russian political science, brings evidence of the institutionalization of this area of research. The article provides an overview of the scientific landscape of Russian research on the problem of state policy of identity, uncovers the strengths and weaknesses, as well as the stages of the formation of this topic, and determines the most significant discrepancies in the views of Russian researchers. Special attention has been given to the problem of the relationship between civil and national-state identity as a result of the implementation of the state policy of identity, the change in the role of traditional social and political institutions in this process. The problems of reducing the role of traditional and political institutions in the process of forming the political attitudes of citizens are stressed. The paper cites selected excerpts from expert interviews to confirm the differences in the views of scientists. The author focuses on the systemic problems of the development of modern Russian political science, which limit the possibilities of development of its individual directions. Among them there are unjustified subjective feelings of the seconddary nature of research and theoretical attitudes of Russian scientists, unfounded popularization of certain topics, “fashion” for specific scientific approaches, the development of citation practices on the “regional” principle. In addition, the results of the developments of scientists are in demand in real politics, which can also have its side negative effects, for example, in the form of the development of ideas about the fundamental possibility of forming a unified national-state identity with given parameters in large social groups and political communities.

scholarly journals NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE CONDITIONS OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION: CASE OF SPAIN

2016 ◽  
pp. 49-55
Author(s):  
I. . Prokhorenko
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Collective State ◽  
Interethnic Relations ◽  
State Identity ◽  
National State ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Regional Authorities

The processes of regional integration transform the model of traditional territorial nation-state, create favourable conditions for building- up of new macropolitical (macroregional) identity, and change the existing multiple identity of individual and collective state and non-state political actors. National (or national-state) identity as self-identification of the citizens as collective members of national-state community turns out especially vulnerable in the issue of regionalization. European integration with its unique decentralized multilevel system of governance has given new areas of transnational political interaction for subnational actors, in the first place for regional authorities. Seeking to increase their own actorness at national and supernational levels, regional authorities of the EU member- states use including various instruments of mobilizing of the territorial consciousness and of politicization of the ethnicity, aggregating the interests of the territory. The Spanish case is interesting due que the political system of the country is localized, and the model of governance is multi-level. Spain as one of the oldest European state is an example of unaccomplished nation-building by virtue of territorial diversity and significant influence of regional nationalisms. The factor of European integration proves itself visually in relation to Spain, affecting in a variety of ways, directly and/ or mediately upon directions and dynamics of political processes of different levels in the country, mechanisms and instruments of interethnic relations and of immigration of different culture background, construction of new national-state identity during the post-Francoist period, rise of regional nationalism and particularism, specific character of postimperial identity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document