State Formation

[PL]
Zdecydowana większość systemów politycznych na Bliskim Wschodzie jest sklasyfikowana jako autorytaryzmy lub reżimy hybrydowe, tj. łączące elementy demokratyczne i autorytarne. Jak dotychczas klasyczne teorie demokratyzacji nie były w stanie w pełni wyjaśnić zjawiska trwałości autorytaryzmu w tym regionie, co doprowadziło do wykształcenia się tzw. nurtu post-demokratyzacji. Niniejszy artykuł pokrótce wyjaśnia przyczyny deficytu demokracji na Bliskim Wschodzie oraz wskazuje jak model analityczny Hinnebuscha (2010, 2014), traktujący o procesach państwotwórczych z perspektywy socjologii historycznej, może przyczynić się do lepszego zrozumienia problemu. Artykuł konkluduje, że demokratyzacja lub jej brak jest reakcją decydentów politycznych na impulsy (możliwości, ograniczenia i zagrożenia) krajowe oraz międzynarodowe. Demokratyzacja jest tylko jedną z opcji, jaką dany reżim może obrać w procesie państwotwórczym, który z kolei opiera się na trzech filarach: procesie narodotwórczym, rozwoju gospodarczym oraz procesie budowania władzy.

[ENG]
The vast majority of political systems in the Middle East is classified as authoritarian or hybrid, i.e. entailing both democratic and authoritarian features. So far the classical democratisation theories have failed to explain the problem of authoritarian resistance in the region which resulted in the emergence of so-called post-democratisa-tion. This article briefly explains the democracy deficit in the Middle East and indicates how the analytical model of historical sociology of state formation, as advanced by Hinnebusch (2010, 2014), can contribute to our understanding of the problem. The analysis concludes that democratisation, or lack of thereof, is a reaction of decision-makers to impulses reaching them from both national and international environments: possibilities , constraints, and threats. Democratisation is only one of the multiple options available , which the regime can select in the state-formation process, which in and of itself is based on three pillars: nation-building, economic development, and authority-building.

Although scholars tend to draw a line of confrontation between the conquerors Normans and the conquered Muslims and Greeks in the kingdom of Sicily, the actual relationship among these people was not so simple. In the kingdom there was a relatively developed bureaucracy staffed by officials with varied cultural backgrounds.  The kings and these bureaucrats took a stand against the aristocrats, who had solely Latin Christian backgrounds.  In fact, the keynote of the political history of the kingdom was a process in which the kings together with bureaucrats held down the aristocrats and cities of the peninsula.  The kings and bureaucrats, who had different cultural backgrounds but were highly educated and cultured, took a stand against aristocrats who were not well cultured but trained as warriors.  However, this line of confrontation was visible only during the peacetime.  During the wartime, a line of confrontation was drawn within aristocrats and cities that had military power.  Aristocrats and cities were divided into a pro-king group and an anti-king one, and fought amongst each other, while bureaucrats were usually on the side of the kings.  This suggests that even the mighty Norman kings supported by the bureaucrats were by no means absolute.  The strong Norman kingship of Sicily was in fact only made possible by a delicate balance of power among aristocrats, cities, and bureaucrats.

This is a revised version for the second edition of the Oxford Companion to Archaeology, 2012. It was submitted under the title Kofun/Kobun (for Japan and Korea respectively), but the editors overrode this sensitive issue and assigned the title Kofun. Apologies...

Neo- or structural realism is famously said to lack a theory of the state. Resisting the urge to devise one, I would instead argue that structural realist theories—most notably the original theory of Kenneth Waltz—implicitly contain a theory of the state. What has eluded commentators is that this theory is prescriptive rather than descriptive. Insightful readers like Goddard and Nexon and Rathbun have unpacked Waltz’s (nondeterminative) prescriptions for state behavior in the international system. This article will unpack those prescriptions for state order. Two conclusions emerge from this analysis: (i) structural realism implicitly reads essential features of the modern state into what are otherwise proclaimed to be nonspecific like units in anarchy and (ii) the ideal-typical state prescribed by Waltz’s theory most resembles Hobbes’ Leviathan. Making these connections explicitly may indicate why certain historical systems are a better “fit” for Waltz’s analytical construct and also serves to properly situate structural realist theories within the larger framework of political (not international relations) liberalism.

There are many histories of the police as a law-enforcement institution, but no genealogy of the police as a form of power. This book provides a genealogy of the modern police by tracing the evolution of ‘police science’ and of police institutions in Europe, from the ancien régime to the early 19th century. Drawing on the theoretical path outlined by Michel Foucault at the crossroads between historical sociology, critical legal theory and critical criminology, it shows how the development of police power was an integral part of the birth of the modern state’s governmental rationalities and how police institutions were conceived as political technologies for the government and social disciplining of populations. Understanding modern police not as an institution at the service of the judiciary and the law, but as a complex political technology for governing the economic and social processes typical of modern capitalist societies, this book shows how the police have played an active role in actually shaping order, rather than merely preserving it.

In the paper, we express some doubts about one of the assumptions
of Robert Carneiro’s model on state (and chiefdom) formation,
namely the role of circumscription. In our opinion, the main flaw of
Carneiro’s original theory of state formation is that it implicitly
assumes that every community dreamt to conquer its neighboring
communities. We test the presence of various types of warfare (such
as conquest warfare, land acquisition warfare, and plunder warfare)
in societies with different degrees of political centralization.
Quantitative cross-cultural tests reveal a rather strong correlation
between political complexity and the presence of conquest warfare
suggesting that conquest warfare was virtually absent among
independent communities. Newer works by Carneiro propose a
model explaining how simple chiefdoms could appear in the absence
of conquest warfare. This model also includes circumscription, but
our analysis suggests that it is unnecessary.

Since the early days of archaeology, Viking-Age burials and burial customs have attracted much attention. Evocative tales of warriors and their deeds preserved in Old Norse poetry and sagas, and recorded in the historical chronicles of church and court scribes formed the background for the interpretation of some of the most prominent finds, the burials with weapons and horse furnishings. To antiquarians and archaeologists of the nineteenth century, it was almost self-evident that a life so closely tied to warfare and violent expansion abroad would also find expression in the burials of the time, and many of the early discoveries appeared to confirm the view of the Nordic warrior who was expected to arrive with full fighting gear in Valhalla to continue his life amongst the brave warriors of Odin. Since then, the archaeological evidence has increased considerably, providing a far more extensive basis for the study of Viking-Age burial practices today than a century ago. Typological and chronological analyses of individual objects and burials demonstrate the diversity of the weapon burial practice of especially the 10th century. In a period of significant political and religious transition in southern Scandinavia elaborately furnished equestrian burials and weapon burials were one of the means of to demonstrate the position and the political and religious preferences of the Viking elite.
The study is divided into two parts: Vol. 1 Text, including bibliography and site index, and Vol. 2 Catalogue with 24 maps and 70 artefact plates.

The origins and functions of the Polabian god Sventovit venerated at Arkona temple on the island of Rügen eluded most of the past and modern scholars. Most common, current theory postulated by Aleksander Gieysztor claims that Sventovit was an incarnation of Perun. 1 A deity that evolved to prominence with the rise and growth of Ranove's principality and acquired different, local name during the process. However, deriving Sventovit from Perun is based on a false assumption that both were war deities. It is true that Perun attained war-god attributes among the Eastern Slavs and was perceived as such, but this does not imply that he was a common Slavic war deity. On the contrary, evidence shows that Perun was initially an atmospheric deity sharing its origin with Indian weather god, Parjanya, whose domains were atmospheric forces, thunderstorms and seasonal monsoons. He was also a deity that made things grow, and like the Slavic Perun he was associated with cattle. 2 At the same time Sventovit's war functions and attributes are beyond doubt as they are well attested in the sources. A huge sword and Ranove's war standard that belonged to Sventovit 3 is a prime example. Other evidence provided by Saxo Grammaticus explicitly stated that the Ranove believed in Sventovit riding his horse at night, and fighting their enemies. Moreover, divinations involving a horse to predict the outcome of oncoming conflicts or raids 4 are also the evidence for the warlike characteristics of this god. Furthermore, there were 300 mounted horsemen assigned to the temple at Arkona who must have been the core of the Ranove's army as they carried Sventovit's war standard during the war. 5 However, one of the primary domains of Sventovit of Rügen was farming and agriculture. This should not be a surprise taking into consideration that like the all Slavs, the Ranove of Rűgen was predominantly an agricultural society. The Ranove's harvest festival is relatively well documented in the sources. The first reference to it comes from William of Malmesbury, an early twelfth century English chronicler. 6 He lived in western England and it is commonly believed that he used a now lost German source of the middle of the eleventh century from the times of the emperor Henry III. 7 Another 1

The time frame of the thesis is the period approximately from the tenth to the twelfth century and it focuses on the area of north-eastern Germany that was more or less the north-eastern quarter of the former German Democratic Republic. The Warnow river, the Baltic sea, the Oder river and the Havel river basin roughly define this region.  The thesis concentrates on the Slavic inhabitants of this area in that time and their political and ideological response to challenges from the Empire, in political terms, and Christianity in the ideological and religious spheres, looking also into a similar pressures, albeit much weaker, from other neighbours such as Poland and Denmark.
The thesis not explore a single issue, and as it follows Emil Durkheim’s notion of  social basis of religion, it analyses not only political but also religious developments.  One of the major findings of the research is that, despite the strong influence of and extensive contacts with Western Christendom, Polabian religion remained basically Slavic in character, and there were not significant borrowings. Nonetheless, Christianity provided  ready models for organized cults, a formal priesthood and temples.  The research demonstrates that from various early and common Slavic deities new syncretic gods and cults emerged, comprising features and functions from numerous deities.  At the same time certain tribal deities emerged as dominant ones and Polabian beliefs underwent a transformation into a clearly defined henotheistic religion.
A certain uniformisation of these Polabian deities was also observed. Various, originally different tribal gods with different functions evolved into deities that shared many functions, rituals and characteristics.  In reality although their names differed they turned functionally into practically the same deities. The findings challenge common assumption of the origin of Polabian deities. In particular, they show that Polabian gods were not Perun (allegedly a war god) disguised under a different name, and that Perun was not originally a war deity but rather an atmospheric god.  The research shows that gods like Sventovit of Rügen and Yarovit at Wolgast and Havelberg were initially agricultural Slavic deities, who in the course of the time amalgamated other functions and characteristics.  As war dominated the last centuries of the Polabian independence, all these gods evolved into clearly martial deities.
In the political sphere the research demonstrates that under strong external pressure many Polabian Slavs organized themselves into larger, supra-tribal political entities.  In some areas a city emporium such as Wolin, Szczecin or Wolgast emerged. They were characterized by the dominant role of craftwork and commerce in their economy and relatively small size.  Generally all north-eastern Polabian political entities developed a peculiar political system.  They retained in most cases the old institution of a tribal assembly, called in Slavic veche, despite emerging local elites and upper class.  One of the unique characteristics of their political system was the very prominent role of  the pagan priesthood.  Nowhere did this system become a true theocracy but at least on Rügen island the pagan priests were a dominant political force, and in fact they were the real rulers of the principality.  This finding challenges the commonly accepted notion that the north-eastern Polabian priesthood played a much less prominent role and was the same footing  the tribal assembly and local elite or "princes".

This paper aims at highlighting a methodological flaw in current biblical archaeology, which became apparent as a result of recent research in the Aravah's Iron Age copper production centers. In essence, this flaw, which cuts across all schools of biblical archaeology, is the prevailing, overly simplistic approach applied to the identification and interpretation of nomadic elements in biblical-era societies. These elements have typically been described as representing only one form of social organization, which is simple and almost negligible in historical reconstructions. However, the unique case of the Aravah demonstrates that the role of nomads in shaping the history of the southern Levant has been underestimated and downplayed in the research of the region, and that the total reliance on stone-built archaeological features in the identification of social complexity in the vast majority of recent studies has resulted in skewed historical reconstructions. Recognizing this "architectural bias" and understanding its sources have important implications on core issues in biblical archaeology today, as both "minimalists" and "maximalists" have been using stone-built architectural remains as the key to solving debated issues related to the geneses of Ancient Israel and neighboring polities (e.g., "high" vs. "low" Iron Age chronologies), in which-according to both biblical accounts and external sources-nomadic elements played a major role.

The articles in a recent volume of the Göttinger Miszellen by Jiménez-Serrano (2001) and van den Brink (2001) on the palace-façade and the origin of the serekh both consider a possible Lower Egyptian origin. The aim of the present article is to present the arguments that can be made in favour of an independent Upper Egyptian origin of both the palace-façade and the serekh.

El presente trabajo tiene por objetivo analizar la creación del Parque Nacional Iguazú en tanto parte del proceso de consolidación de la presencia del Estado nacional sobre la zona de frontera internacional del noreste argentino, en el marco del proceso general de consolidación del Estado y de la constitución sus fronteras nacionales. En este sentido, el trabajo buscará sostener que la política de creación de Parques Nacionales iniciada por el Estado nacional a comienzos del siglo XX no sólo buscaba la conservación de espacios naturalessobresalientes (como lagos, bosques o cataratas), sino que también tenía como objetivo la consolidación de la presencia del Estado nacional sobre territorios de incorporación tardía al mismo, cuyos límites internacionaleseran de reciente definición, y donde contaba con una débil capacidad de regulación sobre las actividades productivas. De este modo, la política de creación de diversos Parques Nacionales aparece como parte del proceso de creación del ...

This outline of the theoretical and historical parameters of my recently published Famine Irish and the American Racial State synthesizes the work of Nicos Poulantzas, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, and David Theo Goldberg, among others. In so doing, it advances a model of the nineteenth-century US state-in-formation that demonstrates how the legal status of the transatlantic Famine Irish took on greater significance than any cultural differences with White Anglo Saxon Protestant America. Key concepts are explored, such as citizenship, nationality, race, ethnicity, the fractional state, the racial state, and the Black and Green Atlantic. Introduced, moreover, is one of the most important yet most overlooked American patriots of the nineteenth century, Irish-born Archbishop John Hughes of New York, whose efforts helped to mold the corporate Catholic Church into a major ideological apparatus of the US state.

The present paper will investigate pardon letters or “lettres de rémission” granted to soldiers by the Valois dukes of Burgundy from 1386 to 1482. During this period, the chancery records contain 885 remission letters by which the prince granted his pardon to individuals who committed a crime and petitioned for mercy. This large amount of documents includes more than 15 percent of pardons granted to petitioners who served or had served the dukes in their armies. In the narrative parts of their letters, these soldiers insisted on their military pasts as a good reason to be pardoned. The purpose of this paper is to study the contents of these military pardons to underline how they contributed to shape a collective military identity in the Burgundian State. Following the works of Christopher Allmand, according to whom fifteenth-century leaders undertook to transform their soldiers into professional State agents, I will argue that military pardons were used by the dukes of Burgundy as a tool of social disciplining. Because they granted a large amount of pardons to their soldiers who affirmed their military identity in their petitions, the dukes promoted the military service as a motive to be forgiven. And because they only forgave simple homicides and refused to pardon typical war crimes such as pillage, rape, or even desertion, they indicated which kind of behaviour was worthy for the good Burgundian soldier, and which one was not.

"Factors quite different from those assigned causal significance in southern Mesopotamia may have dominated urban developments in the dry farming zone. There, for example, the kinds of social disequilibrium generated by natural differences in the fertility of available plots of land are of less significance than the competitive or adaptive advantages of absorbing climatic uncertainty through a variety of land use strategies."

By using the concepts such as power, discourse, and «reverse» (counter) discourse, this paper contextualises colonial discourse and nationalist counterdiscourse through a critique of the concepts – Goa Dourada and Goa Indica. A comparison of the Goan colonial scenario with Africa demonstrates similarities between the two regions. Further, the Goan scene is juxtaposed with other parts of India. It enables us to rationalize the affinity of the nationalist of Goa with Indian nationalism. The complex processes, individuals, groups involved in the making of the counterdiscourse are delineated. The final part of the article analyses the emergence of discourse that countered the counterdiscourse, thus showing that a discourse is bound to be challenged by a counterdiscourse.

The global crisis that was sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers led many commentators to link the failure of neoliberal policy prescriptions to the dominance of men at the top of economic hierarchies, especially in the finance sector, as Elisabeth Prugl notes in her chapter in this volume of "Scandalous Economics" (2016). We also concur with many in this volume that the post-2008 period of crisis management, attempted recoveries and new forms of crisis has been characterized by the continuation of long-established structures of inequality rather than their transformation towards a more equitable set of affairs. What distinguishes this chapter is our focus on the consequences of the intimate connection between increasingly authoritarian modes of governance and highly masculinized norms of competitiveness in the current period. This is producing growing entanglements between state-directed coercion and the household through (for example) enforced austerity measures, which have been leading to job losses in the public sector and more pressure on households through loss of income or even housing evictions.
For us, this focus is important because neoliberalism has much more to do with the reorganization of social relations and state formations along unequal and coercive lines than with the creation or development of “free” markets. As a result, our focus as critics of the current politico-economic order should shift to under-explored yet key sites which enable and perpetuate this order. Accordingly, this chapter argues that it is impossible to understand the post-2008 period without a central role being accorded to increasingly authoritarian state practices at a range of scales. Moreover, the coupling of greater capacities for state-directed coercion with highly masculinized norms of competitiveness – such as risk affinity, strong work ethics, liquidity, growth and austerity – constitutes a strategy to displace the effects of crisis into another key site in the political economy, the household. An excellent illustration of these claims can be found in the trajectories of European political economies, especially in the Eurozone, after 2008.
After a critical discussion of neoliberalism and the state and how masculine norms are inscribed within (supra)national institutions and (re)produce gendered hierarchies, the chapter then considers the Eurozone crisis across two sections. The first focuses on the rise of more authoritarian forms of governance through the Fiscal Compact, the so-called Sixpack legislation and the Euro-Plus Pact and the gendered nature of this crisis response. The second concentrates on the variegated yet highly significant effects of these developments in two countries, discussing the intensified crisis of social reproduction and possible alternatives to the current politico-economic order. We focus on Spain and Ireland, because they show especially well the processes we seek to highlight. We conclude with reflections on the broader implications of our argument and suggestions for further research.

's populist resurgence in the 1990's has attracted scholarly interest into considering to what extent this political phenomenon was characterized by more continuity than change with its political past and why. However, as Terry Lynn Karl (2003:139) contends, in Latin America 'the past still has its claws in the present' asserting that traditional patterns of oligarchic politics never really disappeared. In using Mazzuca's (2010) observation that these problems are issues of patrimonialism and a failure of bureaucratisation, I will argue that these enabled the oligarchy to build in its interests into the structure of the state explaining its tendency to reproduce despite regime change. My argument will emphasize a deep historical case to show how Latin America was characterized by a distinct trajectory of state formation where the absence of war and its patrimonial colonial legacy led to a weak state which was conducive to this process of patrimonial state formation. To show this, I will first determine what characterizes traditional patterns of oligarchic politics by focusing on three patterns; corruption, clientelism and the weak rule of law. Secondly, I will compare the populist regime of Fujimori in Peru with that of Chávez's in Venezuela because although their access to power was different their exercise of power reflected the continuity of these traditional patterns of oligarchic politics. Finally, I will seek to explain this continuity as being rooted within a larger historical process of state formation where I will look at how Latin America's lack of interstate war was responsible for its weak state capacity. This meant that it had to negotiate with regional and oligarchic powers in the immediate post-independence chaos to establish order and authority. The result was that the Latin American state never developed independently from the oligarchies built in interests which drew its patrimonial logic from its colonial legacy Firstly, it is necessary to establish what constitutes traditional patterns of oligarchic politics to determine to what extent these patterns are reproduced in both Fujimori's and Chavez's populist regimes. In the academic literature, the oligarchy is commonly understood as being a form of government where political power lies in the hands of a small minority (Smelser and Bates, 2001). Consequently, Foweraker (2007) notes that oligarchic politics are characterized by its exclusionary nature and its strategy of seeking immunity of the state. On the other hand, he notes that democracy is about equality, transparency and above all accountability. From this perspective, oligarchic politics stand in stark contrast with democratic ideals. Moreover, its relationship with democracy is further problematized by its strong tendency to rely on informal

In this interview with the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies  (LCPS),  Ziad Abu-Rish discusses the history of electricity service provisioning in Beirut in the context of state institutions, economic development, decolonization, and early independence.

The chapter proposes a historical and conceptual approach to the notions and
relations between “State” and “refounding” from the point of view of Latin Amer-
ican constitutionalism and thought, and from an analysis of the crucial contributions
of indigenous and popular movements to constitutional axiologies, finally
approaching some hermeneutic and methodological challenges in the scholarly
research on these categories and processes.