Transforming Unitary States into Federations: Path-Dependent Construction of Political Identities in Belgium and Lebanon

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-619
Author(s):  
Nadim Farhat ◽  
Ward Vloeberghs ◽  
Philippe Bourbeau ◽  
Philippe Poirier
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
State Building ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Governance ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Divided Societies ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Comparative Federalism ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Path Dependent

Abstract The theory of congruence in comparative federalism holds that institutional design will, eventually, reflect societal divisions by transferring central powers to new, autonomous entities. While this model helps to understand why many divided societies adopt federalism, it cannot explain why only certain unitary states transform into federal ones while others do not. We use a historical institutionalism approach to identify the critical junctures in the trajectory of two prominent plural polities, Belgium and Lebanon. We suggest that the politicization of identities during initial stages of state-building plays a major role in the transformation of a unitary state into a federation—which occurs in the former but not in the latter of our cases. The current contrast in both consociational democracies is explained here as a legacy of the late nineteenth century, which set in motion decisive logics of public governance that direct institutional dynamics until today.

scholarly journals Reappraising Zhang Zhidong: Forgotten Continuities During China’s Self-Strengthening, 1884-1901

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-192
Author(s):  
Adam Chang
Keyword(s):  
State Building ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Military Reform ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Military Academies ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Zhang Zhidong ◽  
Chinese Reforms

Abstract The recent historiography of China’s late nineteenth-century Self-Strengthening movement emphasizes the successes in Chinese state building. My research expands upon this trend through the perspective of the prominent governor-general Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837-1909) and his military reforms. From 1884 to 1901, Zhang consistently pursued the creation of new military academies and western-style armies with the aim of providing an army capable of defending China. At the turn of the century, Zhang’s military apparatus was arguably one of the best in China. However, his role as a military pioneer of this era was often obscured by the wider narratives of Chinese reforms or subsumed under the reforms of more notorious officials such as Li Hongzhang or Yuan Shikai. Ultimately, the study of Zhang Zhidong’s reforms reveals an often-missed continuity in successful military reform starting in the 1880s and contributes to the developing historical narratives of successful late Qing state building.

Legal Exceptionalism in Egypt’s Borderlands

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Historical Geography ◽  
State Building ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Territorial Sovereignty ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter opens with a brief overview of the historical geography of the Egyptian West, highlighting the diversity within the region’s human and physical landscapes. It then moves on to illustrate the uneven political geography of the Egyptian nation-state in the late nineteenth century by highlighting two salient themes: the persistence of legal exceptionalism in the western oases and other desert territories, even after Egypt’s state-wide judicial reforms starting in the 1870s; and the state’s fraught efforts to standardize its policy vis-à-vis Egypt’s bedouin population around the country. Both these themes illustrate the emergence of Egypt’s borderlands as enclaves of exceptionalism within the emergent Egyptian nation-state. Accordingly, the chapter questions prevailing notions of territorial sovereignty in the nineteenth century and argues against normative Euro-centric top-down frameworks for understanding the process of state-building in the period.

Brigands and State Building: The Invention of Banditry in Modern Egypt

1990 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Brown
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Building ◽  
Public Security ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Local Protection ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Protection Rackets ◽  
Modern Egypt

A late nineteenth-century epidemic of banditry seems to have swept through the Egyptian countryside, at least according to the writings and actions of influential Egyptians at that time. Contemporary newspapers recounted daily episodes in which gangs composed of between six and sixty or seventy members raided large estates, robbed travelling merchants, and organized local protection rackets. The threat to public security drew the greatest attention in the decade following the British occupation of Egypt in 1882.

The Indigenous Inheritance: Critical Antecedents and State Building in Latin America and Southeast Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-274
Author(s):  
Dan Slater ◽  
Hillel David Soifer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
State Building ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
State Infrastructural Power ◽  
Infrastructural Power

AbstractIn comparative-historical analysis, countries are always different places before critical junctures set them on divergent pathways. By comparing the legacies of politicized ethnic diversity for the construction of state infrastructural power in Latin America and Southeast Asia, we elaborate the methodological and substantive importance of these “critical antecedents.” The critical antecedent in each region was the inheritance at independence of a sharp indigenous cleavage. This indigenous inheritance shaped threat perceptions and state-society coalitions in both regions in similarly powerful path-dependent ways—yet in intriguingly divergent directions. A salient indigenous cleavage hindered but did not preclude state building in nineteenth-century Peru, while fostering but not predestining state building in post–World War II Malaysia. Divergent levels of postcolonial state infrastructural power thus exhibit deep if indirect foundations in the identity cleavages inherited from preindependence eras. This cross-region comparative exploration highlights the analytical leverage gained from systematically incorporating preexisting cross-case differences into critical juncture accounts.

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