No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This contribution shares Ulrich Brand's reliance on critical theories of the state and hegemony. Based on three points of criti-cism, the author argues for a better elaboration of the context of policy making. First, he proposes to consider a broader range of theoretical currents than the interpretive accounts introduced by Brand: (1) A strategic-relational interpretation of historical institutionalism will be introduced, (2) featuring the concept of "periodisation" for a systematic understanding of historically evolving structures. In addition to the introduction of a broader range of theoretical currents, (3) Brand's proposed concept of "selectivities" will be further refined and specified to be better able to grasp the workings of the "institutional condensation of the correlation of forces" in the policy cycle. The proposed conceptualisation of historical-materialist policy analysis will be exemplified by a short stylised example of research on equalityoriented policies in South Africa. (author's abstract)

No description available.

No description available.

Since September 11, 2001 the U.S. Border Patrol has grown from 9,821 to 20,273 agents, more than doubling in size and in the process becoming the largest federal law enforcement agency in the United States. This dissertation queries the everyday geographies of the agency's practices; the ways that these geographies intersect with and affect circuits and practices of human migration; how the Border Patrol conceptualizes "threat" and maps this onto people and territory they may then police; the environmental conditions that limit or constrain the everyday reach and efficacy of Border Patrol operations in the remote Arizona desert; the discourses, anxieties and everyday conditions of encounter in rural border regions that drive some residents to call for an even greater increase in border policing; and finally, social movements in the City of Tucson, AZ that have sought to combat, resist and undermine immigration policing through the fabric of everyday life. The dissertation draws from two years of fieldwork in southern Arizona and southeast Michigan examining the complex interactions between residents, civil society actors and law enforcement personnel. Research methods included archival research; semi-structured interviews; and ethnographic observation alongside non-governmental organizations, non-status immigrants and at Homeland Security trade events. The research contributes to geographic literatures on security, migration and border policing in the United States, applying posthumanist theory and feminist methodologies to unpack how material conditions of encounter shape state security practice, how this security practice in turn affects people's everyday conditions of social reproduction, and how these everyday conditions of social reproduction may in turn shape or compel social movement practices that contest these outcomes.

This dissertation examines the bread subsidy in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It scrutinizes the socio-political conflicts that surround this policy, the spatial practices that subsume it and the ways in which it is understood and given meaning. Despite repeated attempts by international financial institutions to eliminate them, authoritarian regimes throughout the region have gone to great lengths to maintain this and similar welfare programs, even extending them during the tumult of the so-called ‘Arab Spring.’ This dissertation seeks to answer why. Through the lens of bread, I suggest a new approach to understanding state power, not as the straightforward product of a monolithic entity but as the unstable product of social practices that make the state appear to exist. Building on the work of Judith Butler and Alex Jeffrey, I call these routine actions “performing the state.” The empirical chapters, based on extensive fieldwork in Jordan, attend to how welfare provision not only reflects the state—its capacities, historical development or cultural proclivities—but performs it into being. The analysis centers on how certain institutions and actors, through their imbrication in the social, spatial and political patterns of welfare provision, work to entrench the state—as an idea, a material force and a locus of affective investment—in the lives of citizens. In attending to how the Jordanian state is constituted and reproduced through discourses, spatial practices of reach, moral economies and political rationalities, this study seeks to illuminate the iterative processes of reference that create the appearance of an autonomous structure that both citizens and scholars call the state. By understanding the state as the contingent product of routine performances, we can better examine the disproportionate importance of particular welfare programs to assembling state power and fostering authoritarian outcomes, as well as their links to key political processes and policy outcomes.

Harmonious Society's concept is the social life¡¦ picture that numerous bosom political ideal¡¦ philosopher have been expected together. passed over 2000 years, Human society¡¦ civilization had been many different social development stage and social types, whether the ideal harmonious social life can be clear? or still was not well-known state which likes a stone dropped into the sea? This paper attempted to base on stein¡¦ State Theory that can outline Harmonious Society' cognitive picture and possible way to realize. Stein¡¦ thought background establish in the theory framework of the historical observation, dialectical philosophy, spirit-material dualism and organism ontology philosophy mutually. This paper integrate namely human being, society and state three concepts into Social-Theory and State-Theory which has eternal essence, under the fore-mentioned to research how to construct Harmonious Society. Human being and society has separately conditions or agencies that make state become an organism which has mechanisms to overtake interests of personals and social groups. However, any sort of social-theory practice sides must get concrete practice ways and procedures by value theory(methodology) and real society¡¦ condition, harmonious society's construction way concerns with all real society has variation Because of time and space, hence it¡¦s an analysis of ¡utheory/ practice¡vrelation. But due to limited contexts and the length limits, this text only discuss how to construct Harmonious Society by approach to between¡umaterial/social structure¡vand¡uspirit/agency¡v, and it drew multi-dimensional conclusions of harmonious society's construction way. Finally, this article except continues Stein¡¦ thought to extend, hoped that can inherit and broaden theory's explanatory ability and analysis scope, by have more widespread being suitable. On the other hand, also carries on the empirical analysis by Taiwan 1949-2008 period's cases, analyzes its important national policy for several items of developing process, Does which have positive or negative of Taiwan¡¦ harmonious society's construction?