The fact that La Follette had to use machine tactics to beat the machine suggests that machines themselves are in some way intrinsic to politics—that is, all political leaders must assemble coalitions...
The explosion of opportunities for litigation gave access and therefore power to many formerly excluded groups, beginning with African Americans. For this reason, litigation and the right to sue has b...
The connection between economic interest and recognition was well understood by the founder of modern political economy, Adam Smith, in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Even in late-eighteenth...
Should it happen that the community where they are born be drugged with long years of peace and quiet, many of the high-born youths voluntarily seek those tribes which are at the time engaged in some...
Modern organizations have other characteristics as well. Samuel Huntington lists four criteria for measuring the degree of development of the institutions that make up the state: adaptability-rigidity...
Latin America has been characterized by a birth defect of inequality from which it has not yet recovered.
Joseph Stalin was said to have contemptuously asked, How many divisions has the pope?
I want that Tesla not because I care so much about global warming, but because it is trendy and expensive, and my neighbor is still driving a BMW.
Greece thus became one of Europe’s first electoral democracies, preceding Britain by a full generation. As in the United States, democracy was established before an indigenous modern state could be cr...
Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast have an alternative label for neopatrimonialism, what they call a limited access order, in which a coalition of rent-seeking elites use their political...
Because culture is a matter of ethical habit, it changes very slowly—much more slowly than ideas. When the Berlin Wall was dismantled and communism crumbled in 1989-1990, the governing ideology in Eas...
من الخصائص اللافتة للنظر للمواقف الثورية أن الأحداث التي تدفع الناس إلى القيام بأعظم المخاطرات و التي تؤدي إلى إنهيار الحكومات، نادراً ما تكون هي الأحداث الكبيرة التي يصفها المؤرخون اللاحقون بالأسباب...
فمن المفارقات إذن أن يكون استمرار الحروب و التنافس العسكري بين الأمم من العوامل الكبرى لتوحيد الأمم، فمع أن الحروب تؤدي إلى الدمار، فهي تجبر الدول على قبول الحضارة التكنولوجية الحديثة و الهياكل الإجتم...
This professional class had an elevated view of its own status and importance, and tended to resent the fact that the bosses controlling municipal politics were cruder and less educated than they were...
The father of communism, Karl Marx, famously predicted the withering away of the state once the proletarian revolution had achieved power and abolished private property. Left-wing revolutionaries from...
Philip Rieff, who argued that the decline of a shared moral horizon defined by religion had left a huge void that was being filled by psychologists preaching a new religion of psychotherapy.
In my view, Greek distrust is rooted in politics, particularly in the absence of a strong, impartial state, but over the years it has perpetuated itself as a cultural habit. Distrust has been pervasiv...
In all postconflict reconstruction, the ultimate goal is to create a minimally capable state in four key areas: (1) security; (2) governance and participation; (3) social and economic well-being; and...
He created, in the words of historian Hans Rosenberg, a first-rate army which had to be supported by a country which was third-rate in terms of manpower, natural wealth, capital supply, and economic s...
Germany, in other words, developed both a strong state and rule of law early on, well before it developed accountable government.