Reading this post reminded me that I had thoughts, a year or so ago, about the disconnect between how the academic literature breaks down the state and the way that policymakers consistently seem to fail to understand that other states have domestic politics. In particularly, I was frustrated by the belief, apparently endemic to the […]
Tag: state and society
Yglesias links to an interesting article by Sheri Berman on the relevance of early modern state-building to policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think it would be fantastic if some school of diplomacy an
While working on my Statecraft and the State syllabus, I happened upon this Amazon review of Margaret Levi’s Of Rule and Revenue: “As specialization and division of labor increase, there i
What follows is a long, largely unoriginal rumination on the state, coercion, the Odessa Steps, and Tank Man. Skip to the end for trivial observations about the current situation in Iran. Or just skip entirely… The modern nation state is an extremely efficient killing machine. We know this from our Tilly; the nation-state replaced its […]
This article by Major Niel Smith and Colonel Seth MacFarland on the foundations of the “Anbar Awakening” strategy is a must read. Smith and MacFarland detail how they helped bring a new se