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Ironies of State Building: A Comparative Perspective on the American State

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Grzymała-BusseAnna. 2007. Rebuilding Leviathan: Party Competition and State Exploitation in Post-Communist Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 296 pp.

HackerJacob S.. 2002. The Divided Welfare State: The Battle over Public and Private Social Benefits in the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 464 pp.

JohnsonKimberley S.. 2007. Governing the American State: Congress and the New Federalism, 1877–1929. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 242 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2009

Desmond King
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, Email: desmond.king@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.
Robert C. Lieberman
Affiliation:
Columbia University, Email: rcl15@columbia.edu.
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Abstract

This review of new directions in the American and comparative literatures on the state reveals important intellectual trends that parallel each other quite closely. Both comparativists and Americanists address similar questions about the sources of state authority, and both propose similar answers. Collectively, these scholars and others are retheorizing the state—developing a suppler, multidimensional picture of the state's origins, structure, and consequences—to shed light on the reasons for the state's stubborn refusal to cede the stage. The emerging understanding of the state that the authors describe provides a framework not only for revisiting the state in the international realm but also, in dialogue with recent Americanist studies, for revising and deepening the understanding of the state's paradoxical role in American political development and finally setting aside the assumption of the United States as stateless. In this emerging view, American state building, strength, and institutional capacity form through links with society, not necessarily through autonomy from society. But such distinctive patterns provide insights for comparative studies, too, for instance, in respect to the relationship between the state and welfare policy across nations.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2009

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