Search results for "Institution building"
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State effects and the effects of state building: institution building and the formation of state-centred societies
2016
AbstractThis article discusses the assumptions underlying state-building efforts and the effects of these efforts. It addresses two main questions: why has state building not led to the establishment of effective states? And what are the effects of statebuilding? It is argued that these efforts have been based on an institutionalist model of the state derived from a Weberian framework, and that the basic reason why state building has failed is that the creation of effective states requires the creation of state-centred societies, where both material and symbolic resources are concentrated in the state. This is very difficult to achieve for external actors. But, although state building has n…
The Impact of Regionalism on Democracy Building: An Examination of the Southern African Development Community (SADC)
2017
Since the early 1990s, the world has witnessed a new wave of regionalism and a mushrooming of regional integration organizations, particularly in the global South. Focusing on Africa, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ranks among the most promising examples of regionalism on the continent. The SADC explicitly aims at building and advancing democracy in the region and its member states as part of its broader agenda on regional development. From a political science perspective, there is general agreement that regional integration and parallel institution building can be useful measures to promote and strengthen democratic rule, since an appropriate institutional “lock-in” impl…
“Not in Possession of Any Weltanschauung”: Otto Neugebauer’s Flight from Nazi Germany and His Search for Objectivity in Mathematics, in Reviewing, an…
2016
Two major factors have to be considered to account for Neugebauer’s “Weltanschauung”, in particular his apparent or real rejection of philosophical or political judgments. On the one hand, Neugebauer, as a mathematician and a historian, had to cope, with the double character of mathematics as a science in its continuity and universality, independent of time, and of mathematics as a characteristic and fundamental product of each individual culture. On the other hand emphasis has to be put on Neugebauer being torn between organizational work (institution building, reviewing, editing) and historical research. One has to consider the vicissitudes of Neugebauer’s long and eventful life, which wa…