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Lehrende: Paula Zuluaga Borrero; Lina Weiser
Veranstaltungsart:
Seminar
Orga-Einheit: FB02 / Politikwissenschaft (Institut)
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
02-03-0162-se
Fach:
Anrechenbar für:
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
- | 35
Offizielle Kursbeschreibung:
The State: Origins and Development Around the World
2021 Syllabus
Paula Zuluaga
paula.zuluaga@eui.eu
February 2021
1. Overview
The failure of states to provide basic goods and services, protect rights, keep peace and exercise effective authority is a major problem in many developing countries. Social, political, and civil rights protection depend on effective state power. Some countries are consistently good at providing services, extracting resources from society, and exercising high levels of state capacity over their territory. Another group of countries performs consistently bad and the majority of the population experiences scarcity or low-quality service provision regardless of their location inside the country. What explains these differences between states?
The course on The State: Origins and Development builds on the core theories on the state, state capacity, state building, state weakness and state failure. Focusing on the state offers the possibility of discussing core concepts in Political Science while drawing from seminal texts and a variety of examples from countries around the world. The discussion of specific cases draws from recent research published in leading journals in the field. This familiarizes students with the comparative perspective in social research and with the methods that constitute the basis for empirical research in the discipline.
2. Time and venue
• Saturday, January 23, 2021, 4pm to 5:30pm
• Friday, February 5, 2021, 1 pm to 5 pm
• Friday, February 12, 2021, 1 pm to 5 pm
• Saturday, February 13, 2021, 9 am to 1 pm
• Friday, February 19, 2021, 1 pm to 5 pm
• Friday, February 26, 2021, 1 pm to 5 pm
• Saturday, February 27, 2021, 9 am to 1 pm
3. Requirements and credits
• For a certificate of attendance ("Studienleistung")
Active participation in synchronous and asynchronous activities, reading all the seminar literature in English, write four out of six reaction papers (600 – 850 words) using the reading questions provided by the instructor as departure point. Reaction papers should be uploaded to the online platform at least 3 days before the session.
• For a final examination certificate ("Prüfungsleistung")
Submission of a term paper (5000 words) on a topic related to the course or oral examination depending on the requirements of your program.
4. Resources and materials
All the readings, the session slides and the summative assignments will be available in moodle.
The course will include activities and formats designed for online learning including offline and online work.
5. Schedule and readings
Day 1 –January 23, 2021, 4pm to 5:30pm
Introduction to the seminar arrangements.
Day 2 – February 5, 1pm to 5pm
Classical theories about the state
This session introduces the state as a topic of study. We begin revising normative discussions in Political Theory to move to empirical approximations in Political Science in the rest of the sessions.
• What is a state and why are states important? What are the main problems solved by the state? Are there alternatives to the state for organizing social life?
• Upload reaction paper 3 days before the session.
Readings:
• Sudoscript. “When Pixels Collide”. http://sudoscript.com/reddit-place/
• Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. “Leviathan”. Ch. 13-14, 17-18.
• Weber, Max. 1978. Volume 1 Economy and Society. eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ch 1, parts 5- 17 (https://archive.org/details/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety)
Additional - voluntary:
• David Held (1984): “Political theory and the modern state”, Stanford University Press, Chapter 1
• Olson, Mancur. 1993. “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.” American Political Science Review 87(3): 567-576
Day 3 – February 12, 1pm to 5pm
The Modern State
Tin this session we focus on the modern state moving from normative discussions in Political Theory to empirical approximations in Political Science. We discuss the relationship between the state, democracy and social norms.
• What are the main characteristics of modern states? Why are taxation and the control of violence at the core of the power of the state?
• Upload reaction paper 3 days before the session.
Readings:
• Tilly, Charles (1985). “War making and state making as organized crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, eds P.B. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer, & T. Skocpol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
• Chapter 1 of James Scott. 2009. “The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia.” Yale University Press.
Additional - voluntary:
• Chapter 1 of Gambetta, Diego. 1996. “The Sicilian Mafia: the business of private protection.” Harvard University Press.
• Olson, Mancur. 1993. “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.” American Political Science Review 87(3): 567-576
• Levi, Margaret. 1989. Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Introduction and Chapter 2.
Day 4 – February 13, 9am to 1pm
State Capacity in Comparative Perspective
This session introduces the literature about state capacity and the differences between states to implement public policy in their territory. Such differences are consequential for citizens and the international community. Developing agencies and International organizations compare states to allocate aid targets. They use metrics that distinguish between strong, weak and failed states. What is state capacity and how can we measure it? How does state capacity vary between states? What are the origins of differences between strong, weak and failed states? The session opens a broader discussion about how to answer questions in Political Science and compare cases using empirical data. Groups of students discuss and present data provided by the instructor.
• Why some states manage to provide order and public goods and other states fail in that attempt? How is the relation between the state and social groups in society? How can we classify states?
• Upload reaction paper 3 days before the session.
Readings:
• Migdal Joe (2001). State in society. Cambridge University Press, chapter 8
• Rauch, James E., and Peter B. Evans. “Bureaucratic Structure and Bureaucratic Performance in Less Developed Countries.” Journal of Public Economics 75, no. 1 (2000): 49–71.
Additional - voluntary:
• Introduction to James C. Scott. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
• Johnson, Noel D.; Koyama, Mark (April 2017). "States and economic growth: Capacity and constraints". Explorations in Economic History. 64: 1–20.
• Bates, Robert H., John H. Coatsworth, and Jeffrey G. Williamson. 2007. “Lost Decades: Post-independence Performance in Latin America and Africa.” The Journal of Economic History.
Day 5 – February 19, 1pm to 5pm
State Formation and Change - State Building in Europe
There is wide scholarly consensus on the importance of international wars for the formation and consolidation of European states. According with these theories, external wars are powerful shocks that reshuffle institutional arrangements providing incentives and opportunities for the expansion of the fiscal, administrative and coercive power of the state.
• How can we understand the expression that ‘states make war and war makes states’? What factors are important to explain how states form and change? How can we empirically observe state building?
• Upload reaction paper 3 days before the session.
Readings:
• Mann, M. (2009). “The autonomous power of the state: its origins, mechanisms and results”. European Journal of Sociology, 25, 185.
• Tilly, Charles. “Coercion, Capital, and European States [1990].” 2012. In Contemporary Sociological Theory, edited by Craig Calhoun et al., 251–67. John Wiley & Sons. Excerpts.
Additional - voluntary:
• Sahlins, Peter. 1989. “Boundaries: the making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees.” University of California Press.
• Otto Hintze, "Calvinism and Raison d'Etat in Early Seventeenth Century Brandenburg," in Felix Gilbert (ed.), The Historical Essays of Otto Hintze (New York: Oxford UP, 1975): 88-107.
Day 6 – February 26, 1pm to 5pm
State Formation and Change - State Building in the World
During this session, we take a comparative perspective and examine if the role of war in state building applies to countries in different regions of the world.
• Can war explain processes of state building in non-European contexts? Can wars affect negatively state building processes? What factors are important to explain how states are born and change? How can we empirically observe state building?
• Upload reaction paper 3 days before the session.
Readings:
• Chapters 1-2 of Herbst, Jeffrey. 2000. “States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control.” Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Pick at least one:
• Soifer, Hillel David. 2015. State Building in Latin America. Cambridge University Press,. Introduction.
• Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building A New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3-35, 39- 46, 165-176.
• Chapter 1 of Dipali Mukhopadhyay. 2014. “Warlords, strongman governors, and the state in
Online-Angebote:
moodle
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