State Capacity,Bureaucratic Politicization,and Corruption in the Brazilian State

Responding to recent articles in Governance highlighting the need for improved measurement of bureaucratic characteristics, this article describes efforts to map Brazil's federal agencies on three dimensions—capacity, autonomy, and partisan dominance—derived from data on more than 326,000 civil servants. The article provides a “proof of concept” about the utility of agency‐level measures of these variables, demonstrating how they relate to an output common to all agencies: corruption. The article provides a first step in the direction of building a comparative research program that offers objective evaluation of bureaucracies within nation‐states, with the intent of better disentangling their impact on governance outcomes.     

The Return of the State: Globalization,State Theory,and the New Imperialism *

The interest in state theory that swept academic circles following the Miliband–Poulantzas debate waned considerably in the late 1980s and 1990s so that much of the last decade was notable for the impoverishment of state theory. Indeed, during this time, there was a never ending litany of books and articles on the crisis of the nation-state, the eclipse of the state, the retreat of the state, and even the end of the nation-state. The central theme in these eulogies was that nation-states had lost control of their national economies, currencies, territorial boundaries, and even their cultures and languages and that macroscopic forms of power were shifting from the nation-state to the global market, transnational corporations, and globalized channels of communication. However, this article reexamines the relationship between globalization theory and state theory to argue that nation-states are the principal agents of globalization as well as the guarantors of the political and material conditions necessary for global capital accumulation. In contrast to those who see a nebulous logic of empire, a network state, or even a global state as the repositories of a new sovereignty, this paper suggests that globalization, in its current form, is actually a new form of American imperialism.     

State,citizenship, and the urban poor

This paper examines the dynamic, moving relationship between three concepts – those of life, law, and exception. Following a brief exposition of these concepts, this paper provides an ethnography of struggles over housing waged by the urban poor in a squatter colony in Noida that adjoins the city of Delhi, India. I argue that each concept in this triad exerts force on the other and is the dynamic relation that creates the conditions of possibility for the emergence of claims over citizenship for the urban poor. In suggesting that citizenship is a claim rather than a status, which one either has or does not have, the article shows the precariousness as well as the promise for the poor of ‘belonging’ to a polity. Joining the discussion on the politics of life, the paper argues that the notion of life allows the mutual absorption of the natural and the social, and thus illuminates aspects of citizenship forged through the struggles waged by the poor for their needs. These are aspects of citizenship which remain obscure if we reduce democratic citizenship to the domain of rational deliberative processes alone.     

State Health Policies, Federalism, and the Elderly

This article examines recent state health policy efforts forthe elderly and their implications for future federal and stateroles. States have been particularly active in creating programsto address the needs of the chronically ill and in seeking tomodify regulatory policies and promote private sector efforts.Those efforts have involved relatively autonomous state programsas well as programs developed within the intergovernmental system.To meet the health policy needs of an increasing elderly population,future federal policies must recognize potentials for significantstate contributions and seek to minimize actions that reducepolicy innovation, while continuing to address the problem oflimited responses in low-performance states.     

Decentralization,Local Government,and the Welfare State

Despite growing interest in decentralized governance, the local government systems that comprise the most common element of decentralization around the world have received little systematic attention. This article, drawing on the first systematic index of decentralization to local government in 21 countries, demonstrates a close relation between Social Democratic welfare states and an intergovernmental infrastructure that in important respects ranks as the most decentralized among advanced industrial countries. This empowerment of local government in these countries was less an outgrowth of Social Democratic welfare state development than a preexisting condition that helped make this type of welfare state possible.     

Intergovernmental Management: Federal Changes, State Responses, and New State Initiatives

This article surveys state responses and new state initiativesin 1983 to three sets of successive federal changes in domesticpolicy. Collectively referred to as the New Federalism, thesechanges include the block grants and accompanying regulatoryreforms of 1981, the changes in Medicaid reimbursement policyof 1982, and the job training and development programs of late1982 and early 1983. Following a brief overview of these changesin intergovernmental management perspective, state responsesin 1983 are examined in three areas—policy development,policy and program management, and service delivery management.     

Scottish Independence,State Religion and the Monarchy

The plans of the Scottish Executive/Government for the independence of Scotland, which are very sketchy, are explored in relation to desire to retain the monarchy. The Scottish Parliament has expressed support for the removal of religious discrimination from succession to the throne and instituted an alternative state religion—measures which suggest an alternative relationship between religion and the monarchy will be required in an independent Scotland. Repealing the Act of Union will require decisions as to whether the monarchy remains as Christian, Protestant and Presbyterian in Scotland or whether some alternative religious or secular arrangements will be developed. Accepting the existing religious settlement of the monarchy, or varying it, will generate challenging issues for a Scottish administration that is seeking to be more religiously inclusive.     

The Sacred,Social Creativity and the State

Abstract

This paper explores the specific contribution of a strand of contemporary French social theory founded by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort to the under standing of human power. It formulates a conception of power that transcends its definitions in terms of physical coercion or institutionalised violence to reveal the way power is creative and institutes the social. Its reflection on the cultural nature of political power and it role in society is shown to extend the pioneering reflection of Durkheim's sociology, especially as regards the homology that exists between religion and politics. The social role performed by the state explored by Durkheim prefigures Gauchet's theory of the state, which builds on Lefort's work. Gauchet's theory can be said to elaborate a critical synthesis of the two stands of Durkheim's work: the sociology of religion and the sociology of the modern state. This synthesis raises questions on the role played by the European state in the development of individualism, in both its political and economic manifestations.     

Regulation,the Regulatory State and European Politics

For the past 15 years or so, the claim of a rise of the regulatory state in Europe has been a dominant theme in public policy research. This paper critically reflects on this claim and the associated scholarship by considering four key questions. First, what is the significance of the supposed rise of the regulatory state for the state in Europe and how can this trend be explained? Second, what insights have been gained from the study of phenomena associated with the regulatory state, both in terms of EU and national levels of government as well as in terms of process and organisational understandings of policy analysis? Third, does the regulatory state represent a stable arrangement or does it suffer from its own peculiar dilemmas that fundamentally affect the nature of European states? Fourth, and finally, this article develops three scenarios – those of withering away, plodding along, and rejuvenation – for the future of the (study of the) regulatory state in Europe.     

Political Integration, the Limited State, and the Philosophy of Postmodernism

From the standpoint of its critics, postmodernism represents the disintegration of the modern philosophical and ethical tradition into relativism and corrosive scepticism. But it may also be seen in a more positive light. I do not mean the light shed by the uncritical optimism of defenders who identify it with openness and true toleration. I mean, rather, that it may be seen as a step towards a more modest conception of man and of politics than has characterized the past two centuries. This modesty as yet assumes only a precarious form in postmodern thought, but ways are suggested here by which it may be reinforced. In particular, so far as politics are concerned, the postmodern stress upon difference appears to point towards a rediscovery of the contemporary relevance of the classical ideal of civil association. It is this ideal which represents the most effective means of coming to terms with the 'new politics' which postmodernism represents the politics, that is, of 'inclusion', devoted to hitherto excluded sexual, racial, and ecological issues. In so far as this interpretation of postmodernism is a plausible one, it lends some support to the view of Agnes Heller and Ferenc Feher that we may be entering an era of 'settling in', following upon the era of ideology. To give their precise words: 'If modernity is the drama of permanent revolution, postmodernity may be characterized as the epic of settling-in.' (The Postmodern Political Condition, p.158.) Out of the disintegration of philosophy and the critique of liberal foundational doctrine, then, it may be that the way is being paved for a more viable framework for limited politics.     

Sexual Violence,Competitive State Building,and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

ABSTRACT

This article examines the practices of rape, sexual enslavement, and forced marriage used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Most research see wartime sexual violence as solutions to battlefields challenges. Studies of civil war and competitive state building during civil wars have largely overlooked the implications of such violence for rebel governance. This article explores how efforts to regulate sexuality figure within processes of violent state formation. ISIS’s practices of sexual violence mirror previous efforts by the Iraqi and Syrian state to substantiate ethno-sectarian domination through violence. But ISIS creates new gendered and ethno-sectarian hierarchies. Repertoires of sexual and gender-based violence can help to sustain and create structures of state control and are thus integral to competitive state building.     

State,democracy, socialism: introduction

This paper argues that comtemporary developments in democratic politics mark the emergence of a new type of representative government. Current trends such as the weakening of party identification, the decline of political platforms or the increasing role of an élite of media experts may be regarded as undermining the principle of popular government. The paper demonstrates, however, that representative government was not invented as an indirect form of government by the people, but as a wholly original political system resting on principles different from those which organize democracy. Moreover, a number of institutional arrangements were established at the origins of representative government which have been virtually unquestioned since. Political representation has changed much less than is generally assumed. It is true, on the other hand, that the constant principles of representative government have had different consequences depending on the circumstance in which they were implemented. Such differences have generated various forms of political representation. The paper constructs three ideal-types of representative government. It shows that the current situation is best conceived as the rise of a new type of representation.