Controlling the State

Controlling the State
Author: Scott GORDON
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0674037839

This book examines the development of the theory and practice of constitutionalism, defined as a political system in which the coercive power of the state is controlled through a pluralistic distribution of political power. It explores the main venues of constitutional practice in ancient Athens, Republican Rome, Renaissance Venice, the Dutch Republic, seventeenth-century England, and eighteenth-century America. From its beginning in Polybius' interpretation of the classical concept of mixed government, the author traces the theory of constitutionalism through its late medieval appearance in the Conciliar Movement of church reform and in the Huguenot defense of minority rights. After noting its suppression with the emergence of the nation-state and the Bodinian doctrine of sovereignty, the author describes how constitutionalism was revived in the English conflict between king and Parliament in the early Stuart era, and how it has developed since then into the modern concept of constitutional democracy.

Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government

Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government
Author: United States Government Accountability Office
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2019-03-24
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 0359541828

Policymakers and program managers are continually seeking ways to improve accountability in achieving an entity's mission. A key factor in improving accountability in achieving an entity's mission is to implement an effective internal control system. An effective internal control system helps an entity adapt to shifting environments, evolving demands, changing risks, and new priorities. As programs change and entities strive to improve operational processes and implement new technology, management continually evaluates its internal control system so that it is effective and updated when necessary. Section 3512 (c) and (d) of Title 31 of the United States Code (commonly known as the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA)) requires the Comptroller General to issue standards for internal control in the federal government.

The Many Hands of the State

The Many Hands of the State
Author: Kimberly J. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2017-02-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131684188X

The state is central to social scientific and historical inquiry today, reflecting its importance in domestic and international affairs. States kill, coerce, fight, torture, and incarcerate, yet they also nurture, protect, educate, redistribute, and invest. It is precisely because of the complexity and wide-ranging impacts of states that research on them has proliferated and diversified. Yet, too many scholars inhabit separate academic silos, and theorizing of states has become dispersed and disjointed. This book aims to bridge some of the many gaps between scholarly endeavors, bringing together scholars from a diverse array of disciplines and perspectives who study states and empires. The book offers not only a sample of cutting-edge research that can serve as models and directions for future work, but an original conceptualization and theorization of states, their origins and evolution, and their effects.

Autonomy and Control of State Agencies

Autonomy and Control of State Agencies
Author: K. Verhoest
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2010-01-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230277276

By comparing the autonomy, control and internal management of public organizations, this book show how New Public Management doctrines work out in three small European states with different politico-administrative regimes. Using survey data on 226 state agencies, hypotheses drawing on organization theory and neo-institutional schools are tested.

Surveillance State

Surveillance State
Author: Josh Chin
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2022-09-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1250249309

Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state? Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.

Legal Perspectives on State Power

Legal Perspectives on State Power
Author: Chris Ashford
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2016-12-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1443857173

The issue of consent and criminal law commonly focuses on consent in sports, sexual activity, and medical treatment. The notion of consent and the influence of state control in this context, however, are pervasive throughout the criminal justice process from the pre-trial stage to rehabilitation. This edited collection charts an important and original pathway to understanding these important issues, pre-, during, and post-trial, from a range of perspectives, including doctrinal, socio-legal, intersectional, medico-legal, feminist, critical legal, and queer theoretical viewpoints. The collection addresses the complex inter-relationship between consent and state control in relation to private authorisation and public censure; sexual behaviour; the age of consent; queering consent; Pro-LGBTI Refugee cases; rape by fraud; male rape; undercover policing; prisons and consent; compulsory treatment for sex offenders; sex offenders with high functioning autism and the suitability of sex offender treatment programmes; and, the criminalisation of HIV transmission. This multi-disciplinary approach draws together a variety of experts from legal and medical academia and practice in order to confront the issues raised by these subjects, which are likely to remain controversial and in need of reform for years to come.

The Role of the State in Migration Control

The Role of the State in Migration Control
Author: Aoife McMahon
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2016-11-21
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9004330054

This research questions the seemingly ossified premise that states have an absolute discretion to control international migration. Applying Max Weber’s theories of legitimacy, it determines that while states have certain traditionally legitimate functions, migration control, as distinct from the determination of citizenship, is not one such function. Measures of migration control must thus be justified on a rational-legal basis, that is, on a minimal evidential basis. Acknowledging the many obstacles states face in carrying out this legitimising exercise, it is suggested that a supranational approach at the regional level is the most sustainable long-term model, with an ultimate aim of achieving inter-regional cooperation on migration management on the basis of equality between regions.

Controlling State Crime

Controlling State Crime
Author: Jeffrey Ross
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2017-09-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351525905

Academic research on state crime has focused on the illegal actions of individuals and organizations (i.e., syndicates and corporations). Interchangeably labeled governmental crime, delinquency, illegality, or lawlessness, official deviance and misconduct, crimes of obedience, and human rights violations, state crime has largely been considered in relation to insurgent violence or threats to national security. Generally, it has been seen as a phenomenon endemic to authoritarian countries in transitional and lesser developed contexts. We need look no further than today's headlines to see the evidence of state crime. Rwanda, where government troops massacred countless Hutus and Tutsis, governmental atrocities in Kosovo, at the hands of the Yugoslavian Army, and East Timor where both individuals and property have been decimated, largely perpetrated by the Indonesian military.The study of how to control state crime has been difficult. There are definitional, conceptual, theoretical, and methodological problems, as well as difficulties in designing of practical methods to abolish, combat, control or resist this type of behavior. Jeffrey Ian Ross reviews these shortcomings, then develops a preliminary model of ways to control state crime. His intention is stimulating scholarly research and debate, but also encouraging progressive-minded policymakers and practitioners who work for governmental and nongovernmental organizations. The hope is that they will reflect upon the methods they advocate or use to minimize state transgressions. This new edition will be of compelling interest to students of political science and criminology, as well as general readers interested in human rights, state crime, and world affairs.

Make It Rain

Make It Rain
Author: Kristine C. Harper
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2018-06-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 022659792X

Weather control. Juxtaposing those two words is enough to raise eyebrows in a world where even the best weather models still fail to nail every forecast, and when the effects of climate change on sea level height, seasonal averages of weather phenomena, and biological behavior are being watched with interest by all, regardless of political or scientific persuasion. But between the late nineteenth century—when the United States first funded an attempt to “shock” rain out of clouds—and the late 1940s, rainmaking (as it had been known) became weather control. And then things got out of control. In Make It Rain, Kristine C. Harper tells the long and somewhat ludicrous history of state-funded attempts to manage, manipulate, and deploy the weather in America. Harper shows that governments from the federal to the local became helplessly captivated by the idea that weather control could promote agriculture, health, industrial output, and economic growth at home, or even be used as a military weapon and diplomatic tool abroad. Clear fog for landing aircraft? There’s a project for that. Gentle rain for strawberries? Let’s do it! Enhanced snowpacks for hydroelectric utilities? Check. The heyday of these weather control programs came during the Cold War, as the atmosphere came to be seen as something to be defended, weaponized, and manipulated. Yet Harper demonstrates that today there are clear implications for our attempts to solve the problems of climate change.