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The State: Critical Concepts, Volume THE STATE: Critical Concepts This page intentionally left blank. THE STATE: Critical Concepts Edited by John A.Hall VOLUME III London and New York First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Selection and Editorial Matter © 1994 John A.Hall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data has been applied for. ISBN 0-203-41992-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-72816-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-08683-3 (Boxed Set) ISBN 0-415-08682-5 (Vol. III) Contents VOLUME THREE PART 3: THE POLITICS OF ECONOMICS (Continued) SECTION 4: THE QUESTION OF HEGEMONY (Continued) 42. Will the United States Decline as did Britain? John A.Hall 5 PART 4: STATES AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR Commentary 35 SECTION 1: STATES AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Commentary 39 43. Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship Michael Mann 40 44. Revolutionary Movements in Central America: A Comparative Analysis Jeff Goodwin 57 45. Party and Patronage: Germany, England, and Italy Martin Shefter 99 SECTION 2: STATES AND ETHNICITY Commentary 41 1 46. Working-Class Formation and the State: Nineteenth-Century England in American Perspective Ira Katznelson 142 47. Ethnic Competition and Modernization in Contemporary Africa Robert H.Bates 167 48. Patterns of Ethnic Separatism Donald L.Horowitz 191 SECTION 3: LIBERALISATION AND DEMOCRATISATION Commentary 222 49. Democratic Transition and Breakdown in Western Europe, 1870–1939: A Test of the Moore Thesis John D.Stephens 224 50. The Politics of Backwardness in Continental Europe, 1780–1945 Andrew C.Janos 274 51. Social Democracy as a Historical Phenomenon Adam Przeworski 303 52. Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model Dankwart A.Rustow 332 53. Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America Terry Lynn Karl 352 SECTION 4: WELFARE STATES Commentary 377 54. Social Policy and Distributional Conflict in the Capitalist Democracies. A Preliminary Comparative Framework Walter Korpi 379 55. The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State Gosta Esping-Andersen 400 56. The Political Origins of America’s Belated Welfare State Ann Shola Orloff 424 SECTION 5: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM Commentary 465 57. Why No Corporatism in America? Robert H.Salisbury 467 58. Constitutionalism, Class, and the Limits of Choice in U.S.Foreign Policy Ira Katznelson and Kenneth Prewitt 482 CONCLUSION: THE END OF THE STATE? Commentary 496 59. Three Models of the Future Robert Gilpin 498 60. Supranational and the State Susan Strange 521 61. Who Is “Us”? Robert B.Reich 535 62. Beyond the Nation-State: The Multinational State as the Model for the European Community M.Rainer Lepsius 546 PART THREE: The Politics of Economics (Continued) This page intentionally left blank. SECTION FOUR: The Question of Hegemony (Continued) This page intentionally left blank. The state: critical concepts 5 42 Will the United States Decline as did Britain?* John A.Hall * Source: M.Mann, ed., The Rise and Decline of the Nation State, 1990, ch. 6, pp. 114–145. Determining whether the United States is going to decline as did Britain has clearly become one of the questions of the age, with the presumption in the United States distinctively being that the answer is going to be positive. Thus Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers lends itself to this interpretation, despite many cautionary words of the author.1 Similarly, the first 1988 issue of the trade journal of American international political economists, International Organisation, has several articles whose analyses take for granted that American hegemonic decline has already occurred. If this is believed, it is likely to affect policy in a dramatic manner. One broad thrust of this paper is sceptical of the claim that the United States will decline as did Britain. Two points are made against the Cassandras of decline. First, the extent of American decline tends to be exaggerated. A few others have seen this,2 but it is noticeable that their arguments have failed to dent the selfconfidence (no lesser word will do) of what the New York Times refers to as ‘the school of decline’.3 If evidence of American power is adduced, the characteristic reply tends to be that this does not really weigh much against what is considered to be a long-term secular trend: the United States may merely be at the stage of Britain in, say, 1880 rather than 1931—what is held to matter is that worse is sure to come. My second point may help to resolve this stand-off in debate. Extremely forceful, if banal, considerations suggest that the world polity facing the United States now is nothing like that which faced Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. The differences, moreover, are systematically to the advantage of the United States; in consequence, it is extremely unlikely that it will lose preeminence so completely as did Britain. These points can be encapsulated by saying that the analogy, whether implicit or explicit, between the undoubted decline of Britain and the contemporary situation of the United States is of limited usefulness. But there is another side to my general argument. To stress fundamental differences is not to dispute that there has been some decline in the position of the United States, nor would it be sensible to deny that it might go further. Different processes of decline are identified, with especial focus being given to the situation of ‘hegemonic leaders’. More particular and detailed attention still is devoted to the ways in which adherence to certain aspects of liberalism accounts for decline. An implication of this last point deserves highlighting. It may well be that hegemonic leadership in capitalist society needs to adhere to the liberalism’s insistence on the virtues of free trade, but there is no reason to believe that the Anglo-Saxon preference for well developed equity markets and for limiting state power should be seen as dictated by, or Will the United States Decline as did Britain? 6 necessary to, hegemonic rule. In general, it will be maintained that the causes of the decline of the contemporary United States do resemble those recognizable from the British case. The processes identified are not those considered important by the most significant theory asserting hegemonic decline’; some credence is lent instead to the view that the particular nature of Anglo-Saxon liberalism is of importance in explaining decline. Drawing up a balance sheet about the extent of American decline is a difficult task, but it is undertaken in the conclusion; this is a necessary preliminary to the final answer to the question posed. But first we must immediately consider different theories of decline, and certain implications which they raise; we can then analyse the British and American cases in turn. Theories of Decline, Modern and Classical We can start to gain some grasp of the nature of decline as an analytic category by noting and then commenting on three general causes of decline usefully identified by Mann.4 First, economically powerful nation states which swim inside the sea of capitalist society are prone to suffer decline as the practices which account for their ascendancy diffuse throughout the larger society. Secondly, leading states tend to decline as the result of geopolitics, either because of over-extension or because of actual participation in war. Finally, societies tend to institutionalize the moments of their success, and thereby make it difficult to be as endlessly flexible as the demands of capitalist society necessitate; differently put, distributional coalitions are created which make social adaptation difficult.5 The most obvious comment needing to be made about these categories is that decline is seen as having two sources, either internal or external. The diffusion of practices throughout capitalist society is thus a more or less inevitable external cause of decline given that comparative advantage in general and the advantages of backwardness in particular have always allowed developing states faster growth paths than those of mature economies; in the same spirit, it must be said very clearly that some decline in the position of the United States in the last half century was made inevitable through the recovery of key economic competitors from a situation of considerable internal destruction—a recovery that the United States actively sought, largely for geopolitical reasons. Geopolitics can be as much a force affecting states from the outside, as when heavy expenditure for defence is made necessary by the presence of a ruthless, aggressive and powerful competitor; equally, however, it can be ascribed to internal factors, as when a rash elite foolishly and unnecessarily over-extends commitments. Social blockages, of course, are by definition to be considered entirely an internal matter. A more subtle point follows from this. Decline has two connotations which need to be clearly distinguished. On the one hand, decline is normal and inevitable, the result, as noted, of factors beyond the power of any single nation state. On the other hand, decline is seen as being linked to degeneracy and corruption; here the implication is of failure to do as well as one could.
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