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This dissertation examines the evolution of federal government in the German Empire from the unification in 1871 to the collapse of the monarchy in 1918. The story of how the imperial federal state changed over the years has hitherto been hidden from view by disciplinary biases and methodological limitations. While concentrating on how Germany’s peculiar form of government oscillated between a Western-style constitutional monarchy and a semi-absolutist autocracy, historians have failed to make sense of deeper systemic issues. In order to move these to the centre of analysis, the thesis combines different perspectives from history, law, and political theory. This approach exposes an extraordinary development. The 1871 constitution left Germany’s organisational nature largely undefined. The new national state possessed only very few institutions and competences. There was not even a national government. The Reich completely depended on the constituent states. This weakness was no coincidence. Bismarck’s plan was to secure the dominance of the Prussian monarchy by giving the union enough flexibility to develop either into an integrated composite state or a loose cooperative assembly of states. But the decades after unification turned out differently. By seizing control over the Prussian administration, the federal bureaucracy gradually acquired so many competences that by the outbreak of the First World War Germany had changed into a centralised state. Rather than by the collaboration of the monarchical state governments, national decision-making was now shaped by the competition and cooperation of the federal parliament – the Reichstag – and the newly emerged federal government around the Chancellor. This transformation came about, the thesis argues, because both monarchical and democratic actors – above all the Prussian government, the federal bureaucracy, and the national parliament – saw federal structures primarily as an instrument of power to be manipulated for their own purposes, namely for the preservation of princely prerogatives or for the expansion of parliamentary rights. There was little respect for federalism as an organisational principle that was beneficial per se. Rather, most executives, administrators, and parliamentarians understood Germany’s federal organisation – albeit for different reasons – as a necessary evil and a means to an end. This attitude had a lasting impact on German political culture, with federal structures remaining at the mercy of power interests throughout the twentieth century. The dissertation is woven from three different strands. By combining them, it can draw connections that would not come into view if it concentrated on just one of these themes. First, it is a history of German federalism that focuses on the key question of the political history of the Empire: who or what actually governed Germany? As it thus exposes the anatomy of power in the imperial state, it is also a contribution to one of the biggest controversies in modern European history, namely the debate on Germany’s alleged ‘special path’: where did Germany go wrong? Thirdly and lastly, the thesis offers a systemic analysis of federal structures whose observations are relevant for federal orders – such as the European Union – more generally.

It has become almost universal practice for countries to adopt written constitutions that include a bill of rights. Yet we know little about the origins and evolution of the practice of constitution-writing on a global scale. Are bills of rights defining statements of the nation’s character and identity? Or are they more standardized documents that are similar across countries, and vary only at the margins? Are substantive constitutional features rooted in the society for which they are written, or are they borrowed from elsewhere? What are the origins of the world’s “words of liberty”? This thesis presents the first-ever systematic substantive exploration of the world’s written constitutions. It introduces a new database, based on the coding of the constitutions of 188 countries, for the period 1946-2006. With this data, it explores the historical trajectory of the world’s written constitutions and offers explanations for their substantive content. This thesis's most important finding is that constitutions are inherently “transnational” documents. As it turns out, substantive constitutional choices are remarkably unrelated to local needs and values. Constitutions do not express identity or national character. Instead, the most important predictor of whether any particular country adopts any particular constitutional provision is whether other countries previously did the same thing. Constitutions do not tell stories of the nation’s history, but rather tell stories of transnational interactions and international politics. As a result, constitutions have become at least partly standardized documents that vary along a small number of underlying dimensions. But this thesis also shows that not all constitutions are the same, and that there exists no evidence of a global constitutional convergence. Instead, the world’s constitutions divide in a limited number of constitutional families. This thesis is not currently available in ORA.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Westfällische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster i. W., 1934. / Includes bibliographical references (p. i-vii).

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio State University, 1959. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 607-620) and index.

Digitized by Kansas State University Libraries

This thesis is a study of the changing way in which part of the British Empire was being governed during a period of far reaching developments both in Britain and in the plantation colonies. The colonies referred to are the old British West Indian islands -- Jamaica, the Leewards group, Barbados, Dominica, St. Vincent, Grenada and Tobago -- and those colonies conquered by Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in which sugar planting was carried on by means of slave labour. The dates chosen do not denote precise limits to the period. The Colonial Office had its unintended beginnings in 1801, in 1834 slaves were emancipated in the plantation colonies, and the central years for this study lie between these dates, certain themes are followed beyond them. In this area and period an account is given of the changing of government. This concerns the institutions within the colonies and those in Britain which had a direct part in the conduct of colonial affairs; it involves the purpose of the institutions, their form and their interrelationships. At the end or the 18th century the traditional way of governing the old plantation colonies was to leave internal government to those resident In the colony and to maintain virtually only sufficient authority in Britain to ensure the preservation of the system of trade and navigation. Under the old representative system the governor, in theory, possessed wide powers, in practice his authority was narrowly confined and the regular conduct of administration was beyond his control. Colonists had developed and adapted their institutions and powers so that they largely governed themselves. In Britain there was no desire to intervene in the internal affairs of the plantation colonies, nor was there the machinery to enable the executive to do so. The institutions which existed matched the contemporary concern to maintain the system of trade and navigation. Such colonial business that there was was executed by the department with the responsibility for the relevant service: there was no department with a general responsibility for the area of the colonies, nor was there any adequate method of coordinating the activities of the different ministers and boards involved with administration in the colonies.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Management Sciences (Public Management), Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2016. / This study investigates the effectiveness of the strategies and methods that were employed by non-state actors as they engaged the state in nonviolent campaigns in order to address the socio-economic and political challenges experienced in Zimbabwe between 1999 and 2013. Using a combination of exploratory, descriptive and evaluative methods, the study argues that the nonviolent campaigns used in Zimbabwe were in the short term successful despite the state’s violent responses, which were at their peak during the run up to elections. The findings reveal that Women of Zimbabwe Arise, the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union and the National Constitutional Assembly among other non-state actors were effective in the short term. As a result Zimbabwe stands out as a plausible example where nonviolence as a strategy failed to end a brutal regime but enabled the non-state actor (the Movement for Democratic Change) to gain popular civilian support through its effective engagement of nonviolent strategies and methods. It was just its failure to estrange some of the pillars of violence (some members of the military, the police and the intelligence system) which curtailed the democratically elected opposition to get in into power. However, the brutal state responses directly and indirectly triggered a severe socio-economic and political down turn. This became apparent in the health, education, and water and sanitation services that were on the verge of collapse; increased corruption, growing displacement and emigration of Zimbabweans, and withdrawal of external support. The study concludes that the failure of nonviolent campaigns was partly a result of limited knowledge among Zimbabweans about what nonviolence involves, state brutality, poor planning and lack of patience by non-state actors and their resort to violence instead of sticking to nonviolence. It is nonetheless imperative to encourage civic society to cultivate a culture of nonviolence through the use of various agents of socialization which include the: home, school and the media. / M