Pocketbook Politics or Nation State in Question

Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America Series)

Author: Meg Jacobs

"How much does it cost?" We think of this question as one that preoccupies the nation's shoppers, not its statesmen. But, as Pocketbook Politics dramatically shows, the twentieth-century American polity in fact developed in response to that very consumer concern.

In this groundbreaking study, Meg Jacobs demonstrates how pocketbook politics provided the engine for American political conflict throughout the twentieth century. From Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, national politics turned on public anger over the high cost of living.

Beginning with the explosion of prices at the turn of the century, every strike, demonstration, and boycott was, in effect, a protest against rising prices and inadequate income. On one side, a reform coalition of ordinary Americans, mass retailers, and national politicians fought for laws and policies that promoted militant unionism, government price controls, and a Keynesian program of full employment. On the other, small businessmen fiercely resisted this low-price, high-wage agenda that threatened to bankrupt them.

This book recaptures this dramatic struggle, beginning with the immigrant Jewish, Irish, and Italian women who flocked to Edward Filene's famous Boston bargain basement that opened in 1909 and ending with the Great Inflation of the 1970s.

Pocketbook Politics offers a new interpretation of state power by integrating popular politics and elite policymaking. Unlike most social historians who focus exclusively on consumers at the grass-roots, Jacobs breaks new methodological ground by insisting on the centrality of national politics and the state in the nearly century-long fight to fulfill the AmericanDream of abundance.

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Nation-State in Question

Author: T V Paul

Has globalization forever undermined the state as the mighty guarantor of public welfare and security? In the 1990s, the prevailing and even hopeful view was that it had. The euphoria did not last long. Today the "return of the state" is increasingly being discussed as a desirable reality. This book is the first to bring together a group of prominent scholars from comparative politics, international relations, and sociology to systematically reassess--through a historical lens that moves beyond the standard focus on the West--state-society relations and state power at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

The contributors examine the sources and forms of state power in light of a range of welfare and security needs in order to tell us what states can do today. They assess the extent to which international social forces affect states, and the capacity of states to adapt in specific issue areas. Their striking conclusion is that states have continued to be pivotal in diverse areas such as nationalism, national security, multiculturalism, taxation, and industrial relations. Offering rich insights on the changing contours of state power, The Nation-State in Question will be of interest to social scientists, students, and policymakers alike. John Hall's introduction is followed by chapters by Peter Baldwin, John Campbell, Francesco Duina, Grzegorz Ekiert, Jeffrey Herbst, Christopher Hood, Anatoly Khazanov, Brendan O'Leary, T. V. Paul, Bernard Yack, Rudra Sil, and Minxin Pei. The conclusion is by John Ikenberry.

Foreign Affairs

This impressive volume brings together political scientists and sociologists to assess what effects globalization has had on the state. Simplistic early views of globalization held that increasing openness and interdependence, together with the benign post-Cold War security environment, would rob states of their historical role and capacities while fueling the rise of supranational actors such as the European Union and subnational actors such as nongovernmental organizations. The essays here are part of a later wave of more balanced scholarship that moderates such breathless, often hysterical conclusions. The contributors show that states are not likely to disappear or lose much significance anytime soon. In summing up the findings, the editors note that "as in the past, state capacities continue to evolve, declining in some areas and rising in others. There are no rival political formations — local, regional, transnational, or global — that have the full multidimensional capacities of the state." Although not entirely novel or startling, this conclusion is backed up by an unusually comprehensive collection of historical and comparative research on economic and security issues in the advanced industrial and developing worlds. Unfortunately, as in so much contemporary academic work, many of the chapters are presented in such a way as to minimize their accessibility to intelligent and potentially interested general readers.

Table of Contents:

	Illustrations
	Preface
	Introduction: Nation-States in History	1
Pt. 1	National Identities
Ch. 1	Nationalism, Popular Sovereignty, and the Liberal Democratic State	29
Ch. 2	What States Can Do with Nations: An Iron Law of Nationalism and Federation?	51
Ch. 3	A State without a Nation? Russia after Empire	79
Ch. 4	The Return of the Coercive State: Behavioral Control in Multicultural Society	106
Pt. 2	State Security
Ch. 5	States, Security Function, and the New Global Forces	139
Ch. 6	States and War in Africa	166
Pt. 3	State Autonomy
Ch. 7	National Legislatures in Common Markets: Autonomy in the European Union and Mercosur	183
Ch. 8	The Tax State in the Information Age	213
Ch. 9	States, Politics, and Globalization: Why Institutions Still Matter	234
Ch. 10	Globalization, the State, and Industrial Relations: Common Challenges, Divergent Transitions	260
Pt. 4	State Capacity
Ch. 11	The State after State Socialism: Poland in Comparative Perspective	291
Ch. 12	Rotten from Within: Decentralized Predation and Incapacitated State	321
	Conclusion: What States Can Do Now	350
	Contributors	373
	Index	377