Theories of the State

Kritik, Tilly’nin “Zor, Sermaye ve Avrupa Devletlerinin Oluşumu” ile Bourdieu’nun “Devlet Üzerine” kitapları üzerine inşa edilmiştir. Tilly’nin devlet olgusunu açıklamak amacına matuf olarak yazdığı kitabındaki görüşler ile Bourdieu’nun sözlü aktarım esaslarına göre düzenlenmiş derslerinin metinleştirilmesiyle oluşmuş kitabındaki görüşlerin ortaya konması ve kıyas edilerek kritiğe tabii tutulması zor bir eylemdir. Zira Tilly, yazmış olmasının verdiği bütünlüğe ve Bourdieu, konuşmuş olmasının verdiği dağınıklığa sahiptir. Mevzubahis durum en baştan yazarlar arasında okuyucunun bilerek veya bilmeyerek Tilly’e yönelmesine neden olmaktadır. Ancak iki ismin ortak çabası devleti zamansal ilişkilerin nedensel ilişki olduğu zannıyla açıklayan kuramlara, kavrayışlara ve izahlara karşı çıkarak kendi özgül ve çok katmanlı kuramlarını ortaya koymaktır. Modern Devlet olgusu kanaatimizce ancak Tilly ve Bourdieu birlikte anlaşıldığında kavranılmaya müsait hale gelmektedir. Zira ikisinin ortaya koydukları kuramlar, modern devletin fiziksel/maddi/şeyler dünyasındaki ve soyut/manevi/zihin dünyasındaki varlıklarını ortaya koyma kudretini haizdirler.

As the world economy and structures of society continue to rapidly evolve, ethicists, theorists, political philosophers, and economists continue to offer various proposals as to how best to organize the economy. Just Capitalism is a recent book by Christian ethicist Brent Waters that aims to erect signposts for the twenty-first century Christian entangled in the intersection of ethics and economics. The book's proposal is ultimately a form of market-socialism very similar to European interventionism. This extended review suggests that the overarching proposal of the "market-state" is unfortunately not as helpful or as original as the book implies, especially for a world that needs to address more basic questions of power and economic functioning. The review contends that the Christian and ethics community at large must look to more radical and unorthodox solutions to achieve their goals of peace, freedom, and justice.

The Greater London Council (GLC) and the Metropolitan County Councils (MCCs), the directly elected tiers of metropolitan government in England, were abolished on 1 April 1986. This paper examines why the GLC was abolished. London local government was distinct. London is the largest UK metropolis, had the longest experience of dual-tier elected councils, and has had a metropolitan government with different functions from those exercised by the MCCs. But although the destinies of the GLC and MCCs were capable of being separated, understanding why the GLC was abolished does serve to explain why the MCCs were fated to die with it. Explaining the abolition of the GLC requires two levels of analysis t o be satisfactorily investigated. Exploration is required first of the intentions and interests of those who favoured abolition, and second of the structure (adminstrative, political, ideological and class) in which the Conservative government found abolition 'thinkable'. Four explanatory strategies are academically current and will be evaluated. The understanding provided by each strategy is made as defensible as possible before being criticized. The evidence for evaluating explanations is derived from interview and documentary data collected by the Greater London Group (Clegg er al., 1985). All the explanatory strategies, whilst illuminating, are shown to assume rational decision-making which does not match the evidence. The abolition of the GLC was a folly, best understood as an outcome of the Nietzchean style of the Thatcher government.

This book tackles the phenomenon of movements’ change, from a generational perspective based on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s experience. January 25 Revolution, and prior debates and exchange of ideas via media and newspapers for the last decade, throughout a liberal façade assured by Mubarak’s regime, put many problematic issues, including Shari’a application, democracy, Copts and women’s rights in front of the movement. These heated issues, in addition to other internal dynamics, brought Muslim Brotherhood’s generational gaps to the surface pushing for an academic interest to analyze the phenomenon's roots, reasons, patterns, and influences.
The book is an attempt to address the politics of generational gaps within Muslim Brotherhood Movement in Egypt since 1970s till 2011. It sheds light on issues of generational interactions among different age groups, and diversified schools of thought within the movement. The book reflects the influence of January 25 revolution on the relationship between Muslim Brotherhood youth and its elder calibers, and highlights different perceptions and schools of thought shared by Brothers towards social reality, and tools of reforming the movement and the Egyptian political system. It adopts anatomical perspective to explore intellectual variations within each age group and how such inter-group variation contributes to the overall generational gap along the historicity of the movement. Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella for diverse intellectual trends; the book focuses on five trends including Hassan al Banna’s traditions, the Qutbist trend, Salafism, Al Azharite School of thinking, and finally the post Islamist trend. Those trends conflates, overlaps and conflicts to be filtered into two wings: the Reformist and the Qutbist wing which explain much of concurrent generational interactions and diversity. Generational waves within the movement are not separate; there are shared beliefs, inspirations,
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and concerns, reflecting a history of continuity among the movement’s members and age groups. The book highlights this sort of continuity and discontinuity through reference to Al Wasat Party (Center Party), and The Egyptian Current Party (Al Tayar al Masry Party).
The book consolidates a rich debate on internal dynamics of the movement, internal discourses, and future prospect. Given the dearth of scholarly work on Muslim Brotherhood’s internal dynamics, and generational interactions, the book is a tour to understand Muslim Brotherhood’s complexity with clarity. It is a critical chain of analysis that reader needs to go through it till the last part to relate ideas, and combine insights. It is designed around the movement’s affiliated and ex-members, selective autobiographies, content of facebook groups, and other secondary and primary references; in this manner, it is built to reflect an insightful reading from within Muslim Brotherhood’s context.
The text of the book is systematically designed to address the development of generational interactions within the movement, and the context surrounding them. The first chapter is dedicated for an overall introduction and analysis for the movement’s major intellectual trends, and conceptual framework. The second and third chapter analyzes Muslim Brotherhood’s generational politics since the 1970s till 2011. In the process, they address issues over which generational interactions took place, and the surrounding formative context of the consciousness of each generation. The final part of the book is devoted for critical analysis for major challenges facing the movement, and reasons of generational gaps that can be associated with the impact of the salafist discourse, penetration of rural culture, centralized undemocratic hierarchy, and state coercion.

The state can not prevent the existence of universal ethical claims that are included in  its regime but not represented in it. Alain Badiou's philosophy is devoted to these claims and defends them as forms of political truth striving for validity and representation.

With contributions from:
Alain Badiou, Lorenzo Chiesa, Oliver Feltham, Dominik Finkelde, Gernot Kamecke, Paul M. Livingston, Rado Riha, Frank Ruda, Arno Schubbach, Yannis Stavrakakis, Alberto Toscano and Jan Völker.
Editor:
Dominik Finkelde is professor of philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy.

The state was long seen as the only institution able to govern legitimately. The empirical limitations of statehood in many parts of the world, as well as the normative ambivalences inherent to statehood, however, have led to a renewed interest in the legitimacy of non-state governance. A prominent approach holds that non-state governance is legitimate if and to the extent that it contributes to normatively desirable outcomes, such as an increase in security. This chapter argues that this approach faces four problems that severely limited the scope of legitimate governance by non-state actors in areas of limited statehood. They concern the definition of goods, the inclusiveness of governance services, the accountability of non-state actors, and the reliable assignment of responsibilities. We contend that these problems highlight the need for public institutions and explore whether and how non-state actors can assume public roles under conditions of limited statehood.

The paper discusses the understanding of the state as a space where a set of social and mental relations take place and its concept is also determined by imaginations on how communities live together. (see the triadic concept of relational space by Henri Lefèbvre) Focusing on Eric Baudelaire's film "Letters to Max" (2014), it reflects on the geopolitical conflicts between Abchasia and Georgia and Abchasia in its role of a non recognized state. It questions how thinking from the margins as a figure of thought and types of fictional and political action in the film could be productive for the topic of the state.

The evolution of states — chiefdoms and kingdoms — in Ig-boland, like in other societies in Africa, has been subjected to varying interpretations. For much of Igboland, the British warrant chief system has been ascribed as the source of kingship (ezeship) tradition though centralized states and monarchical heritages of Onitsha, Nri, Arochukwu, Osomari, Oguta, and other Igbo societies predated co-lonialism. 2 The stories of the origins of these centralized states among predominantly segmentary peoples, whose political institution was rooted in village republicanism and the principle of Igbo-Enwe-Eze (the Igbo have no kings), continue to fascinate historians. Aro history has been quite intriguing, and even more so is the origin of the Aro state. Predictably, the complex nature of the process of state formation in 1 Among the Igbo, the Aro were one of the most famous groups owing their notoriety not only to their great oracle — Ibini-Ukpabi — but also to their enviable skill in the formation and operation of a network of trading oligarchy, especially in slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this essay, where appropriate, the name " Arochukwu " has been used interchangeably with the Aro state (chief-dom). Although a related version of this study was published elsewhere a few years back, the scope of this special issue on Igbo political history warrants that the pre-colonial evolution of kingship tradition and state formation in Igboland be revisited through the prism of the Aro.