The State in World History: Perspectives and Problems

This paper investigates the role of the state in world history and analyses some of the major issues confronting such an investigation with a particular focus on the relationship between the modern European state and the other historical forms of the state. Firstly it considers the problems raised by the fact that the terminology of state analysis is derived from a discourse that arose to explain the particularity of European state development. Secondly it considers the problem of the origins of the state. It examines two major issues: van Creveld's argument that only modern European states are real states and the chiefdom/state distinction. It argues that new political forms occurred both with the emergence of civilisation and the "state" in the ancient world and with the development of the modern European state after 1300. Thirdly it considers the issue of a typology of states through an examination of the model developed by Finer in his The History of Government . It argues that this model is only really effective in dealing with pre–modern political forms and that the modern European state needs to be understood as a deviant from the Eurasian norm of the agrarian empire.     

Oakeshott, Freedom and Republicanism

It is contended that Michael Oakeshott resists classification in terms of conventional labels of conservative, liberal, right or left, and that it is difficult to incorporate him in discussions of modern liberal theory because his concerns are not with human rights, distributive justice or multiculturalism. It is with reference to the classical republicanism of Rome that Oakeshott's distinctive contribution to political philosophy is illuminated because of his emphasis upon authority, the rule of law and freedom as non-domination. These are the very features that Oakeshott highlights in his lectures on the 'Political Experience' and 'Political Thought' of the Romans. Oakeshott values the distinction that the Romans, but not the Greeks, made between public and private, but unlike later republicans he does not associate the public sphere exclusively with political participation and civic virtues. One may contribute just as significantly to the public concern by being a music-hall entertainer. Oakeshott is clearly differentiated from modern instrumental republicans who in his view would be rationalists obsessed with institutional design and with viewing the civil condition as an enterprise association.     

From the Rainy Place to the Burnt Palace: How Social Movements Form their Political Strategies. The Case of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba

How do social movements form their political strategies? The relevant theory pays considerable attention to structure, and argues that when political opportunities are open, movements are more likely to opt for a systemic political strategy; when they are closed, movements are expected to take a more revolutionary turn. However, political opportunities can make some options appear more ‘realistic’ and others less so, but movements don't always behave ‘realistically’. They might explain when movements are more likely to mobilise and what repertoires they adopt once they do so, but they do not account for what happens earlier on: by what mechanisms the movements form their political strategies. Exploring the case of the cocaleros of the Chapare, this article argues that more emphasis should be placed on mechanisms that are internal to the movements, such as: (a) the resonance of other political experiences at home and abroad, (b) internal struggles for ideological hegemony, and (c) the political formation of their grassroots.     

State Continuismo and Pinochetismo: The Keys to the Chilean Transition

There have been two parallel processes in Chilean political economy during the 1990s. A high profile has been accorded to the transition from authoritarianism to democracy and its related debates. A relatively low profile has been accorded to the continuity in the state model of capitalism that was implemented under authoritarianism. This paper argues that transition can be best understood in terms of the role of Augusto Pinochet and his strategies for maintaining power – Pinochetismo. As such, his forced retirement from political life marks the end of transition. The second point is perhaps of more importance however. The democratic political regime has intensified the model of capitalist accumulation of the 1970s and 1980s and socio-economic polarisation has been perpetuated. While the focus on the nature of transition during the 1990s was necessary, there has been a failure to question the social relations established by capitalism. With the end of transition in July 2001, the greatest challenge for Chilean democracy now lies in creating a state based on social relations that serves the needs of the majority rather than the desires of the few.     

The Women Preachers of the Secular State: The Politics of Preaching at the Intersection of Gender,Ethnicity and Sovereignty in Turkey

This article analyzes the politics of preaching in Turkey in the last decade by focusing on the appointment of women as preachers and vice-muftis by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a state institution established for the protection of secular foundations through religious service. It asks what happens when women wearing headscarves become civil servants and give religious guidance in a secular state, which prohibits headscarves in public offices and schools. It shows that the context, the use and the interlocutors of preaching make ordinary religious activity a complicated political practice that interacts with gender, ethnicity and state sovereignty. It argues that exceptional integration of headscarved women into public offices would seem to be an achievement given the long lasting political activism of women over the headscarf, but in the final analysis it serves the sovereign power of the state, which aims to absorb both Islamist and Kurdish challenges by mobilizing women preachers.     

Economic liberalism and the Philippine telecom industry

It may be important and even necessary to build a free and fair market competition environment, which could encourage industrial innovation and increase the long-term social benefits of development. However, there is a need for a stronger and more autonomous state authority to settle and safeguard the liberalized market. Since state protection of the market fattens the monopoly company, the liberalization policy should be linked with state efforts to undo the previous monopoly structure. This article argues that specific industrial development, or national economic development in general, may rely more on the intrinsic characteristic of the state rather than on the economic paradigm per se, i.e., statist or neo-liberalist. Furthermore, the improvement of social welfare may depend more on the power structure among political players rather than on the political system itself whether authoritarian or democratic     

Reflections on Schurmann's theory of the state

Abstract

Were Marx alive today he might be moved to comment on how quickly the next “revolution” materialized, that is to say, how quickly certain disciples of his, like Lenin and Stalin, substituted political organization and the power of the state for the proletariat as the agency of revolution. Perhaps Marx would recognize that the state merited more attention than he gave it, for in this century it seems clear that state power has functioned more autonomously than Marx implied in order to preserve capitalism, by ameliorating its fundamental contradictions; and to put off, even pervert, that socialist revolution which originally envisioned the proletariat assuming the central, world-historical role. In recent years Marxist critics have been filling this lacuna in Marxism with a profusion of writings on the role of the state in its absolutist, capitalist, and socialist variants. It was into this milieu that Franz Schurmann stepped with his Logic of World Power, containing within it a “theory of the state” that I find both interesting and flawed, a theory that offers much to the current debate on the role of the state, and yet one that has been largely ignored by Marxists and non-Marxists alike.     

Limited freedom and intolerance in Botswana

Botswana has held ten successive formal elections without fail since independence in 1966. The country has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries at independence to an upper middle income one. On the basis of these, Botswana has been regarded as a political and economic model that has been largely praised for the resilience of her democratic institutions, respect for civil liberties, a high degree of political tolerance and an economic success story by African standards. To this extent, Botswana has been perceived as exceptional compared to most African countries. This paper argues that despite having won international acclaim as an African ‘success miracle’, freedom and tolerance in the country exist within the limits set by the state. It is argued that there is limited freedom and growing intolerance of dissenting views by the political leadership. The Botswana state therefore perfectly fits the model of ‘authoritarian liberalism (Good 1996).     

“I am concerned with the future of my children”: the project economy and shifting views of education in a Tibetan pastoral community

Tibetan pastoralists have been subject to large-scale state-led development policies over the past three decades. The provisioning of institutionalized state schooling, in particular, has all along been part and parcel of these development projects, including urbanization and resettlement initiatives. However, for a variety of reasons, the promotion of schooling in Tibetan pastoral areas has been a challenge since the first Maoist efforts in 1950s. By focusing on a case study of a Buddhist monk’s persistent effort to build a primary school in his home village in the eastern region of Tibet in 1990, and on how Tibetan villagers’ views of him and his school project have changed over time, this paper examines the nexus of relationships between schooling, and social and cultural changes in pastoral Tibet. I also aim to relate Tibetan pastoralists’ shifting values of schooling to the larger social and political context, particularly the ubiquitous Chinese xiangmu (project) economy and Tibetan pastoralists’ ever-increasing dependence on the state. This paper argues that although state schooling is highly contested, it has been one of the driving forces of social change in Tibetan pastoral areas today.     

The Quest to Understand Global Jihad: The Terrorism Industry and its Discontents

In the 1840s Sarantis Archigenes, an Ottoman Greek citizen, wrote a book on political economy called Tasarrufat-? Mülkiye. The book contained both political-economic knowledge and developmentalist policy recommendations for the Ottoman Empire. The emphasis given to human capital, trade and transportation, industrialization and property relations is noteworthy. Since it did not reach large numbers of people, the importance of Tasarrufat-? Mülkiye has not been appreciated. The goal of this article is to provide an account of Archigenes' views on political economy as presented in his long-neglected book. Had the policy makers in the Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century taken Archigenes' views seriously, a sound development strategy could have been formed.     

Which democracy for the European Economic Community? Fernand Dehousse versus Charles de Gaulle*

This article analyses the political debate that developed within the European Economic Community (EEC) about the so-called Dehousse Convention (1960), the first concrete proposal to elect the European Parliament by universal suffrage. It argues that both supporters and opponents of the Dehousse Convention justified their stance through a blend of domestic experiences and European aspirations. More precisely, the article argues that the Dehousse Convention was deeply rooted in the model of parliamentary democracy which triumphed in Western Europe after the Second World War and that it aimed at favouring the federal evolution of the community; through the introduction of direct elections it would have been possible to strengthen the European Parliament which, eventually, would have turned the EEC into a federation. To fully understand Charles de Gaulle’s rejection of the Dehousse Convention, this article argues that his hostility to the supranational evolution of the community was strengthened by his long-standing criticism of the limits of parliamentary democracy. These two visions clashed and intertwined, shaping the political evolution of the EEC in the following decades.     

What Explains President Joseph Kabila’s Quest for a Third Term until Pressured to Reluctantly Relinquish Power,late in 2018?

Abstract

The era of Congolese political, socio-economic instability that has affected the central African region has returned, yet again. Nearly two decades after Joseph Kabila was installed as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo by the Southern African Development community (SADC), at the height of the regional central African war, following the assassination of his father, Laurent Desire Kabila, he has not shown any willingness to relinquish power. This is even so after the lapse of his constitutional mandates in December 2016, secured in 2006 and 2011. This continued reign, which is dependent on the repressive use of force by the state, has elicited spirited attempts by the political opposition, including the influential Catholic Church, calling for his immediate resignation. In response, the state has unleashed repression, which has resulted in fatalities and uprooted communities, resulting also in forced migration that destabilised the Great lakes sub-region. This article argues that the state reconstruction of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, following the hurried departure of Mobutu Sese Seko, engineered by Laurent Kabila, and his son Joseph, has failed to take root, resulting in sub-regional instability that has engulfed, not only the Great lakes region, but also southern Africa as a whole.     

The Missing Link: Explaining the Political Mobilisation of Islam in Indonesia

Abstract

Why has an increase in personal piety among Indonesia's Muslims not translated into electoral gains for Islamic political parties? To help explain this conundrum, this article focuses on the role of Indonesia's mass Islamic social organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. Using a political economy lens, it argues that control over state resources and the provision of social welfare facilities have helped political parties maintain power over the years and that NU and Muhammadiyah have at times played important mediating roles in this process. Extending this analysis into Indonesia's contemporary politics, it then proposes that since 2004 in particular, the health and education facilities provided by NU and Muhammadiyah are becoming less important to ordinary people in relation to the services provided by the state. It concludes that this trend has weakened the ability of these organisations to channel public support to political parties/candidates and is one reason why Islamic parties have not been able to capitalise on increased religiosity in the social sphere.     

Ubuntu and sumak kawsay: The Inter-Parliamentary Union and the search for a global South humanist paradigm of development

The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) continuously seeks to assert itself as a voice of the peoples of the world in global debates, where geopolitical interests of states, often representing political and economic elites, dominate. This article critically analyses one of the latest contributions to norm setting and idea-generation by the IPU: the concepts of ubuntu and sumak kawsay (also known as buen vivir in Spanish and living well in English) as the basis for the international response to the challenge of failed development strategies globally. This proposal from the IPU arises from the exhaustion of the dominant discourses and concepts underpinning international development. These discourses are based on the colonial model of power and are increasingly being challenged by calls from subaltern voices for ‘unthinking, rethinking and delinking’ from hegemonic illusions. Further, the article argues, the proposed ideals of ‘living well’ and ‘human solidarity’ cannot be implemented within the current colonially inspired humanist paradigm, but require a ‘decolonial’ orientation of global humanism.     

The ‘formal’ Marjaʿ: Shiʿi clerical authority and the state in post-2003 Iraq

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the name of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Grand Shi?i cleric, has come to prominence. Sistani emerged as a key player in the processes that constituted and sustained the post-2003 Iraqi political order, as manifested in key events such as the writing of constitution or the mobilization against the Islamic State (I.S.). Nevertheless, Sistani did not have an official position in Iraq. Unlike the Iranian experience after the 1979 revolution which institutionalized the leading position of faqih (jurist), the Iraqi constitution set Iraq as a democratic, parliamentary state whose religious leaders held no formal offices. Indeed, Sistani rejected the Iranian model as unfit for Iraq’s conditions and societal fabric. Thus, given the absence of a constitutional status for Sistani, how do we understand his authority in Iraq? This article argues that although Sistani’s authority has not been constitutionalized, it was indirectly and roughly ‘formalized’ through practices and laws adopted after 2003. This formalization established a unique and unprecedented relationship between the state and the Shi?i religious authority in the form of arrangements that, to a degree, blurred the lines between formality and informality and created a shared space of governance.     

Intersectionality and women's political citizenship: the case of Mauritius

This paper analyses the impact of intersectionality and multiple identities on women's political citizenship in Mauritius. Mauritius is commonly known as a ‘rainbow nation’ with its multiethnic population marked by ethnic or communal divisions. Communalism dominates the Mauritian political system and institutions, intensifying during elections when the different communal groups compete for representation in parliament. The paper argues that the strong emphasis attributed to ethnic and communal representation by the Mauritian political system and structures marginalises women's political citizenship. Political candidates are often sponsored by religious and sociocultural organisations that are male dominated whereas the women's lobby is weak in comparison to the communal lobby. The paper thus contends that the communal dimension in Mauritian politics carries a significant gendered dimension. Communalism has made the political system very resistant to change, despite the fact that it marginalises women.     

The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chávez

Through the application of an analytical model categorized as “missionary,” this article examines the cultural and political‐religious frames that sustain the leadership of Hugo Chávez. It demonstrates that missionary politics is a forceful presence in today's Venezuela, and should be understood as a form of political religion characterized by a dynamic relationship between a charismatic leader and a moral community that is invested with a mission of salvation against conspiratorial enemies. The leader's verbal and nonverbal discourses play an essential role in the development of such a missionary mode of politics, which seeks to provide the alienated mass of underprivileged citizens with an identity and a sense of active participation in national affairs. This study argues that purely utilitarian and materialistic explanations of Chávez's leadership fail to capture these soteriological dynamics in his movement.     

Cuba's “Equity Without Growth” Dilemma and the 2011 Lineamientos

Cuba faces a development dilemma: it promotes equity and human capital while failing to deliver economic growth. For the government, the country's equity and human capital achievements are a source of pride, a sign that its priorities are right. This essay argues instead that this “equity without growth” dilemma is a sign of malaise. Theory and evidence suggest that high levels of equity and human capital should produce high levels of economic growth. Because growth is often weak or negative, some onerous barriers to development must be present. These barriers, it is argued, are restrictions on property and political rights. By comparing Cuba and China across two sectors, the bicycle industry and Internet access, this article shows how these restrictions have hindered growth. It also assesses how Cuba's latest economic reforms, the so‐called Lineamientos, will address Cuba's development dilemma. The impact may be minimal, but perhaps more lasting than previous reforms.     

Political Competition,Constitutional Arrangements,and the Quality of Public Policies in Costa Rica

This article explains why Costa Rica, by the mid‐twentieth century, began to depart from the all‐too‐common mixture of political instability and economic stagnation characteristic of much of the developing world. The article argues that this country has benefited from better‐than‐average public policies, a conclusion based on a major comparative ranking of state policies. It further argues that interminable political stalemates gradually democratized the struggle for power and laid the groundwork for an innovative constitutional framework, one that allocates the technical functions of government to a set of autonomous institutions. A central implication of this argument is that institutional design is the backdrop for development‐enhancing public policies.     

The struggle for Korea's national rights

This article assesses the role played by Indonesian capitalists in the country's new democratic political system. It takes as its starting point the analysis presented by Richard Robison in his influential 1986 book, Indonesia: The Rise of Capital . Robison saw the authoritarian state as central to capitalist class formation, viewing it as midwife and protector of an emergent business class. Though democratisation was not his primary concern, this analysis made him pessimistic about the prospects of democratic change. Over the intervening years, Indonesia has not only undergone democratisation; its capitalist class has also changed significantly. The article notes elements of continuity in the nature of Indonesian capital (including the continuing weight of politically vulnerable ethnic Chinese business interests) as well as change (including the taking of political office by businesspeople and the strengthening of provincial business). Overall, there is now much greater independence of private capital vis-à-vis the state, even if business-state relations are still characterised by patterns that developed during authoritarian rule, including the clientelist and predatory behaviours that have been the subject of much analysis in post-Suharto Indonesia. A focus on the capitalist class and its enmeshment in state power, in the style pioneered by Robison, thus helps explain continuity between Indonesia's authoritarian past and its new democratic order, especially the continuing ubiquity of corruption and patronage. However, such a focus is less useful in accounting for political change, especially democratisation itself. To explain democratisation we need to broaden our class analytical optic to bring into focus the actions and interests of lower and middle class forces.