Richard Bensel

• Cornell University

The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democr...

Six modern foundings are examined in this book. Three of them involved the creation of non-democratic states: the dictatorship of the proletariat that arose out of the Russian Revolution; the fascist regime brought to life in 1933 Germany; and the Islamic republic that emerged during the Iranian Revolution. While fascinating in their own right, the...

The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democr...

The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democr...

On January 7, 1978, Daryush Homayun, the Shah’s Information Minister, published an article in a semiofficial newspaper in which he described Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as “an adventurer, without faith, and tied to the centers of colonialism … a man with a dubious past, tied to the more superficial and reactionary colonialists.” Writing under a pse...

English political customs, traditions, and institutions profoundly shaped the American founding, so much so that the major difference between them was that, following the break with Britain, the Americans “wrote down” those customs, traditions, and institutions into their constitutions and statutory laws.1 In 1760, both the British people and the A...

The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democr...

Before 1789, the king was the “sacred center” of French society and his charismatic aura legitimated the political elite who actually governed the nation. The mystique of the monarchy was continuously regenerated by an ensemble of mythological narratives, ritual forms, symbolic regalia, historical tradition, and an attendant nobility; as a result,...

After Nicholas II, the Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated following mass demonstrations in Petrograd in March 1917, a committee of political leaders appointed by the Duma formed a Provisional Government.1 At the same time, workers and soldiers created a Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies (Petrograd Soviet) that both shared power with the Provisi...

Adolf Hitler was sworn in as chancellor of the Weimar Republic just before noon on January 30, 1933. Before taking office, the Nazi leader had consented to an alliance with a conservative party in which the latter would hold most of the cabinet seats in the new government. While their coalition would not enjoy a majority in the Reichstag, there had...

Although commonly considered to be the birthplace of constitutional liberty and democratic rights, England did not have a distinct founding moment in which the people consented to the creation of a state. Such moments, I have argued, presume a people (as those who can and must consent to the creation of a state), a transcendent social purpose (that...

Democratic states often claim that their authority rests upon the “will of the people” as expressed through representative institutions. However, there is an irresolvable conundrum that undermines that claim: the “opening dilemma” that invariably attends the founding of democratic states during which those representative institutions are created. W...

Cambridge Core - Regional and World History: General Interest - State Formations - edited by John L. Brooke

Der Ku Klux Klan wurde 1866 als Geselligkeitsverein in Pulaski, Tennessee, gegründet. Nachdem der von den Republikanern kontrollierte Kongress den vormaligen Staaten der Konföderation die Radical Reconstruction auferlegte (wie sie später genannt wurde), verbreitete sich die Organisation rapide im Süden der USA. Kurz vor den Kongresswahlen 1868 hatt...

The NOMINATE algorithm has become the most important analytical tool used in the study of the United States Congress. As such, congressional scholars have developed a great many social conventions, practices, and assumptions that enable interpretation of the statistical artifacts the algorithm produces. However, as many of these scholars recognize,...

Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government. By Jenkins Jeffery A. and Stewart Charles III . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. $88.00 cloth, $38.95 paper. - Volume 13 Issue 4 - Richard Bensel

Let me begin with the bottom line: Samuel DeCanio has addressed a very important topic, skillfully crafted an argument, and marshaled an impressive body of evidence behind his thesis. The result is a significant addition to the literature on American political development on several different levels. And that is so despite the fact that I believe h...

Heroic Project Revisited - KoistinenPaul A. C., Beating Plowshares into Swords: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1606–1865. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Pp. v, 356. $45.00. - Volume 11 Issue 1 - Richard Bensel

This article discusses sectionalism in Congress and its impact on congressional development. Unlike the presidency which unites the nation into a single constituency, members of Congress represent geographically distinct districts and states. Due to the large and diverse political economy of the U.S., the way members of Congress and the Senate have...

Hamilton’s study of confiscation policy begins with a brief history of property seizures during the Revolutionary War. Confiscation was then grounded in republican principles under which property was only conditionally possessed, with one of those conditions being loyalty to the political community. Disloyalty could thus immediately extinguish a ci...

Polity (2008) 40, 386–393. doi:10.1057/pol.2008.2; published online 5 May 2008

The 1896 Democratic National Convention simultaneously proposed a radically new trajectory for American industrial expansion, harshly repudiated its own incumbent president, and rudely overturned the party's traditional regional and social hierarchy. The passion that attended these decisions was deeply embedded in the traditional alliances and unde...

The Confederate States of America is a counterfactual history of the Civil War in which the South first wins independence from the North, writes that victory into a peace treaty with the Union, returns to the production of cotton for the world economy, abolishes slavery through a program of compensated emancipation, ends up fighting World War I on...

Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. By Paul Pierson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 108p. $49.50 cloth, $19.95 paper. Paul Pierson opens his book with a fictional metaphor in which he imagines “the trendiest new restaurant in town, charmingly named ‘The Modern Social Scientist.’” He invites you to tour the re...

HarrisonRobert, Congress, Progressive Reform, and the New American State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. 293. $75.00 (ISBN 0-521-82789-2). - Volume 23 Issue 2 - Richard Bensel

Unlike modern elections, the American polling place of the mid-nineteenth century was thoroughly endowed with symbolic meaning for individuals who otherwise would not have had the least interest in politics. This made the polls exciting and encouraged men to vote at far higher rates than they do today. Men who approached a polling place were met by...

Patriots, Settlers, and the Origins of American Social Policy. By Laura Jensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 244. $60.00, cloth; $20.00, paper - - Volume 63 Issue 4 - RICHARD BENSEL

John Gerring's methodological critique of American political development can be viewed from at least three perspectives. First and most generally, Gerring proposes procedural and analytical standards that should apply to all the social and natural sciences. As a methodological virtue, for instance, conceptual clarity strengthens the underpinnings o...

The modern American state was born in the blood of the Civil War. In that respect, at least, the United States stands alongside many other nation-states (Bensel 1990: preface and chapter 1). But, unlike most civil wars in world history, the American conflict did not pit a professional military establishment against insurgent armies. Instead, the Co...

In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rap...

state, whose objectives were quite different. In this paper I will argue that the main purpose (and effect) of the "Reconstruction" policies of 1865-1877 was to centralize and consolidate state power and to establish Republican party political hegemony. It was not to "heal the nation's wounds," or to economically revitalize the South (which it did...

Social Science History 24.2 (2000) 349-366 The study of the institutional development of the U.S. House of Representatives, long a mainstay of traditional scholarship, has recently undergone a revival with the rise of rational choice approaches of interpretation. In earlier years, most research was highly formal and descriptive; the emphasis was on...

The study of the institutional development of the U.S. House of Representatives, long a mainstay of traditional scholarship, has recently undergone a revival with the rise of rational choice approaches of interpretation. In earlier years, most research was highly formal and descriptive; the emphasis was on legislative offices and parliamentary rule...

Let me begin by saying there is a great deal of merit to Professor Jenkins's idea. We have long known that many policies have been placed in constitutions because they would be relatively hard to change. In some cases, divisive policies have been placed in constitutions because framers wished to enact a durable compromise that they hoped would disc...

Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30.2 (1999) 341-343 Wahl's fine book makes three important contributions to the study of the legal system within which southern slavery was organized. First, she provides a comprehensive survey of common-law cases, including the relationship between slave cases and those involving free workers, family members, a...

EarleCarville, Geographical Inquiry and American Historical Problems. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. xii + 555 pp. - Volume 46 - Richard Bensel

This book describes the impact of the American Civil War on the development of central state authority in the late nineteenth century. The author contends that intense competition for control of the national political economy between the free North and slave South produced secession, which in turn spawned the formation of two new states, a market-o...

War has probably been the single most important influence on the development of central state authority in the United States. Although the state-centered mobilization of economic resources and manpower that accompanies military conflict is commonly conceded to have had this effect throughout American history, the centralizing influence of the Civil...

War has probably been the single most important influence on the development of central state authority in the United States. Although the state-centered mobilization of economic resources and manpower that accompanies military conflict is commonly conceded to have had this effect throughout American history, the centralizing influence of the Civil...

Duverger’s classic work on political parties [1963] established a theoretical link between electoral rules and the number of viable parties. Systematic empirical evidence for this linkage has been provided by Rae [1967]. The proposition that plurality rules produce two-party competition and majority rules, a multi-party system, has assumed the stat...

The rise of the modern state has been accompanied by a decline in the importance of statutory law to the operation of Western democratic governments. Two of the strongest critiques of the modern state and of this decline in statutory law have come from Friedrich Hayek and Theodore Lowi. Each has argues that only the restoration of a rule of law can...

The Electoral College has a measurable effect on the propensity of the rational voter to vote for the candidate he most prefers. The ‘slippage’ between the individual's articulated preference ordering and his actual vote is analyzed (using 1968 data) with respect to the strategic position of the voter in his state. The direction of the findings sup...

As was true throughout the antebellum South, racial identity was a fundamental organizing feature of New Orleans society. Most importantly, racial categories underpinned the institution of slavery and thus became imbricated in both labor and property relations. But racial identity also determined whether and how the law would apply to free persons....

A broad social science literature has focused on the role played by political institutions in economic development. Social scientists remain uncertain, however, about a number of crucial questions. Do democratic political institutions cause growth, or does growth cause democratic institutions? Which institutions, in particular, are crucial for grow...

It is commonly said that the rural poor have been excluded by dominant paths of development. More accurately, the terms of inclusion have been adverse; when states and elites who run them have needed labor, taxes, or soldiers, the poor were included. That agrarian reforms have periodically altered terms of inclusion for the rural poor in substantia...