The Making Of The Modern State

Nelson provides a historical overview of the theoretical and ideological evolution of the modern state, from pre-state and pre-modern state formations to the present. A major theme of the book is the need to understand the modern state holistically, as a totality of social, political, and ideological factors.

Investigates the role of federal judges in prison reform, and policy making in general.

This book extends what we know about the development of civil rights and the role of the NAACP in American politics. Through a sweeping archival analysis of the NAACP's battle against lynching and mob violence from 1909 to 1923, this book examines how the NAACP raised public awareness, won over American presidents, secured the support of Congress, and won a landmark criminal procedure case in front of the Supreme Court.

This book focuses on transformations of political culture from times past to future-present. It defines the meaning of political culture and explores the cultural values and institutions of kinship communities and dynastic intermediaries, including chiefdoms and early states. It systematically examines the rise and gradual universalization of modern sovereign nation-states. Contemporary debates concerning nationality, nationalism, citizenship, and hyphenated identities are engaged. The authors recount the making of political culture in the American nation-state and look at the processes of internal colonialism in the American experience, examining how major ethnic, sectarian, racial, and other distinctions arose and congealed into social and cultural categories. The book concludes with a study of the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the political cultures of violation in post-colonial Rwanda and in racialized ethno-political conflicts in various parts of the world. Struggles over legitimacy in nation-building and state-building are at the heart of this new take on the important role of political culture.

This book continues to serve as an excellent introduction for new-comers to the modern history and politics of a region that is usually portrayed as mysterious, unpredictable and violent.

The institutional features and the past and future role of the state should be a central concern of contemporary sociological and political theory, but until now they have been sadly neglected. Lately, in particular, the state's increasing involvement in the management of industrial and industrializing societies has made it even more important to understand its past development, its current activities, and the related trends in its structure and in its relation to the larger society. As a contribution to this task, Gianfranco Poggi reviews the main phases in the institutional history of the modern state. Restating a typology elaborated, among others by Max Weber, he outlines first the feudal system of rule, then the late-medieval Ständestaat and the absolutist state. Next the book discusses the nineteenth-century constitutional state, seen as the most accomplished embodiment of the modern, Western state. Finally, it points out the major developments which have occurred since the end of the last century in the relationship between the state and society, and identifies the threat these pose to the persistence of Western political values. Throughout, the discussion draws upon an impressive body of literature on the modern state (much of it not available in English) from the fields of history, law, and the social sciences.

Following a hit and run that injures his son, John Spector is shocked when the driver comes forward to confess the accident was planned and that John made the arrangements. Upset by the suggestion, he embarks on a quest that will take him through the bizarre underbelly of the city in search of the truth. Even when faced with demons bent on stopping him, haunted by dreams of a man he's never met or sidelined by concerns for his mental health, John remains unshakable. Only after his path leads to the philanthropist Charles Dapper does his determination waver, for this is when he must make an extraordinary self sacrifice to realize his goal or risk losing everything.