clyde barrow, critical theories of the State

(6): Welfare State doesn't redistribute from rich to poor, but from lucky to unlucky [hmm]

(6): distribution of income from rich to poor is the work, instead, of Trade Union's, not the institutions of the Welfare State [i.e., unemployment insurance, etc.]. the premise, again, is that one has to work or be attempting to work to be eligible

(11): Lukacs wants to claim that Marxist theory refers to a method. But Marxism is rooted in certain concepts (relations of production, surplus value, exploitation, etc.) and should rise and fall with those concepts. [AMEN]

(17): Capitalist class is economic network based both on institutional position (managers, etc.) and property relations (i.e., ownership). Comprising about .5 to 1% of the population. A highly diversified working class comprises about 85% of the population.


instrumentalism, or plain Marxism

(18): for instrumentalists, this capitalist class escapes anarchy/achieves coherence through mechanisms illuminated by

1. positional analysis (interlocking directorates, etc.)
2. socialization analysis (ideology, schooling, etc.)

 (25): identifying ideological subsystem as part of the State [this is silly--and he raises the problem in a later chapter: this risks making the State an 'ideological' construct. we should agree on a minimal working condition, and then think about the ways it intervenes in society, sure. But not define it by its interventions]

(26): colonization studies

(26): a historical shift from the legislative to the executive branch, in order to facilitate cohesive, regular intervention

(28): challenge of explaining why State managers (mid-level bureaucrats) intervene in capitalist ways. Miliband's explanation is ideological [can't we have a 'rules of the game' explanation?]

(30): Special interests dominate on the most important issues

(33): challenge of explaining why instrumentalism doesn't culminate in the domination of the State by competing SI networks. Answer is because the capitalist class is also organized--it has 'policy planning networks'

(40): instrumentalists see reform as the product of (a) popular protest; (b) looking out for long-term interest

(44): for instrumentalists, social democracy is an example of how capturing the State executive can yield tangible gains

(46): Poulantzas' critique that instrumentalism focuses on 'agency' to the exclusion of structure

(47): Offe's is that it can't explain well enough why things don't collapse into anarchy

(48): [challenge, in general, is to specify the mechanisms by which class struggle matters, in the instrumentalist theory of the State. proximately, need to keep business going without interruption; ultimately, danger of threat to established order, etc.]

(49):  the challenge of falsifiability--but you can't rely on selective case studies, as Skocpol does, to 'alsify' the theory. especially when there's disagreement regarding the interpretation of those very same case studies.

structuralism, or neo-Marxism

(52): three sources of contradiction/crisis: (1) economic crisis; (2) class struggle; (3) uneven development

(58-59): Offe, Bridges, et. al. rescue structuralism from Poulantzian functionalism by noting two mechanisms

1. state's own fiscal functioning is bound up with the health of the economy
2. State's legitimacy is bound up with economy

(60): interesting--Best and Connolly note that this is particularly evident during downturns, as Democratic/progressive mayors have cowered in face of threat of capital flight

(61): as Przeworski has noted, these mechanisms imperil probability of a gradual road to socialism, because Capital responds

(62): soft vs. hard structuralism (i.e., do capitalists need associations?)

(68): table of pre-tax and post-tax income distribution, in US

(72): voluntarism doesn't equal methodological individualism

(73-75): imp, (alleged) problem w/ mechanism of capital flight [hmm, this is unconvincing--unclear data, untimely responses, and reliance on neo-classical wisdom. confuses the cashing out of the claims with its coherence as an argument.]

derivationist

(79): orienting claim is that State's role is to produce 'general conditions' conducive to capital accumulation. derived either from contradictory logic of capital accumulation, or from requirements of overseeing class struggle [well, obvious question is why? which it doesn't seem to answer, clearly]

(91): centralization of State authority typically seen as sign of greater autonomy

systems-analytic 

(100): see graphic

(100-101): Offe's version: exclusion, maintenance, dependency and legitimacy principles

(104): 'antipodal trouble', for WS--i.e., in moment of crisis, it risks either a legitimacy crisis (via austerity and rollbacks), or a economic/politcial crisis (continuing social program while keeping dominant power relations intact) [got to break through!]

(111-112): again, importance of labour market particiaption to WS model--and thus, the problem posed by rising surplus populations and unemployment

(122): not legitimacy that people give the state, but rather their acquiescence

organizational realist

(125): state managers are self-interested maximizers whose main interest is to enhance their own institutional power. thus, state-capital relation is understood as marriage of convenience, in a sense [but this is not different from good structuralist version--State managers can have a whole host of projects in mind. the relevant question concerns the constraints imposed upon them]

(128): at moments of crisis, State managers will make their independence known [but (a) why, what's the mechanism, if not struggle? (b) cf. 2008-2012]

(131): four ways to assess the strength of States [interesting for Pak]

(135): Skocpol giving serious weight to the importance of inherited expertise (i.e., this explains why US has agricultural policy but no industrial policy, post GDepression)

(139) Skocpol proving only what she assumed, in case of AALL