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This study challenges traditional rentier state theory and contributes to a new generation of scholarship focused on state-business relations by evaluating the relationship between different degrees of state policymaking autonomy and business elite influences in political and economic institutions. The findings of this study address central policy questions about economic reform in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Using primary data from my case studies of Qatar and Kuwait, I posit two arguments. First, states with lesser business elite influence over political institutions have more autonomy to realise their economic reform goals; a less dominant and influential business elite circle will more likely submit to state-led economic reform initiatives. Greater business elite dominance, meanwhile, tends to create a powerful bloc undercutting economic change, such as labour reform or new regulatory frameworks, that would benefit the long-term stability of the state. Second, rentier states with higher degrees of state-led capitalism have more autonomy to conduct economic reforms; state-led capitalism produces more coherent and cohesive state apparatuses that can incentivize business elite cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's per capita income was nearly three times South Korea's in 1962. Dramatic change has been observed since then. South Korea has transformed into an innovative economy approaching the global technology frontier in only a few decades. Turkey, on the other hand, has attained limited success with missed opportunities and has fallen behind. This article asks why this spectacular success was observed in South Korea, but not in Turkey. It seeks an answer by concentrating on certain variables that may explain this outcome. Assuming that primarily different types and capacities of societies and states explain the variations in economic performance, the article examines in particular, the institutional foundations of Turkish and Korean societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies of state-led industrial development argue that state autonomy is essential for formulating consistent and coherent industrial policies. This article shows that autonomous bureaucracy, while useful for fending off the politics of interest groups, is not free of politics in itself. Using Chinese industrial policy-making as a strategic case study, this article uncovers the competitive dimension of bureaucratic decision-making and the extent to which it serves as a driving force for industrial policy paradigm change in China. Equipped with a theory of policy articulation, this article details the strategies used by multiple superagencies and groups of career bureaucrats to vie for industrial policy authority within the Chinese state. In sum, this article seeks to expose the role of intrabureaucracy competition in mediating international political economic environment and national policy outcomes. Looking forward, this article proposes that the renewed focus on industrial policy by many national governments compels an analytical re-engagement with the role of large bureaucracies in economic decision-making and the kind of organizational and cognitive frameworks by which bureaucrats mobilize to chart our industrial landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rule of law is a moral ideal that protects distinctive legal values such as generality, equality before the law, the independence of courts, and due process rights. I argue that one of the main goals of an international rule of the law is the protection of individual and state autonomy from the arbitrary interference of international institutions, and that the best way to codify this protection is through constitutional rules restraining the reach of international law into the internal affairs of a state. State autonomy does not have any intrinsic value or moral status of its own. Its value is derivative, resulting from the role it plays as the most efficient means of protecting autonomy for individuals and groups. Therefore, the goal of protecting state autonomy form the encroachment of international law will have to be constrained by, and balanced against the more fundamental goal of an international rule of law, the protection of the autonomy of individual persons, best realized through the entrenchment of basic human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do states forge technological change in mature industries? This article challenges the emphasis on bureaucratic autonomy in explaining the ability of governments to promote technological change. We show that structural features of the bureaucracy alone are insufficient to account for variation in policy intervention, and argue that sectoral patterns of interest intermediation shape state capacity. Political coordination leads industry and government to broker technological transformations in consensus-driven negotiations. This prioritizes the interests of incumbent firms, likely resulting in regulatory capture and weak policy intervention. Political competition among interest groups and state agencies, by contrast, allows policy-makers to organize coalitions of technology challengers, likely leading to strong policy intervention. We examine this argument in the case of electric vehicle policy in Germany and the United States. Germany failed to disrupt its auto sector to transition to electric vehicles, while the United States adopted comprehensive policies for the manufacturing and commercialization of electric cars against incumbent opposition. Counter to conventional wisdom, our findings suggest that states can effectively engage in sectoral intervention to drive technological change in the absence of autonomous bureaucracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although globalization has stimulated the rise in cross-border crime, it does not really undermine the autonomy of the mainland Chinese state, the Taiwan state, and the city-states of Hong Kong and Macao. Instead, through cooperation with law-enforcement agencies in other countries, the law-enforcement agencies of these four places, notably the police and customs, have ensured the persistence of state autonomy vis-a-vis cross-border criminal groups and individuals. In the case of Greater China (mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao), interstate cooperation involving the police and customs can maintain state autonomy vis-a-vis criminal groups and individuals. The mechanisms of such interstate and intergovernmental cooperation embrace the sharing of criminal intelligence, the occurrence of anti-crime joint operations, the holding of seminars and conferences, and the administrative arrangements of extraditions. In a nutshell, intergovernmental cooperation in the combat against cross-border crime can maintain state autonomy in the midst of globalization, as the case of Greater China shows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

France's resistance to CAP reform has widely been attributed to the weakness of the state vis-à-vis organized farm interests. This paper argues that weak state theories overstate the role of administrative centralization and the organizational capabilities of farm groups and underestimate the role of ideas and of European politics in determining the transformative capacity of the French state. This argument is based on the observation that farm conservatism has persisted in the last two decades in spite of the growing autonomy of the French state vis-à-vis farm client groups. This article argues that we must pay more attention to the way European policy-making impinges upon the resources of the state and the organizational cohesion of farm groups and how the ideas held by domestic reform entrepreneurs determine their ability to win EU support for their blueprint and harness much-needed resources for carrying them out in the face of vested interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large body of historical evidence shows that welfare states originate in fear—class fear, and this is no less true of the United States than Western Europe. Drawing on the history of the American labor movement, populism, and progressivism, this paper questions the theory of American “exceptionalism” as well as Theda Skocpol's argument that the autonomy of capitalist states relegates Marxist theories of the state to secondary importance. The expansion and contraction of welfare states are best understood in terms of class conflict, which moves Marxism from the sidelines to the center of efforts to explain capitalist states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis of global Fordism, the internationalization of capital, and the demise of national and international political regulation necessitates a thorough revision of conventional political concepts. These developments call in question the historical link between nation-state, democracy and human rights. While the nation-state is not disappearing, its significance is changing. It is becoming more and more difficult to secure democracy in a nation-state framework despite the lack of an alternative institutional terrain. This political dilemma can be overcome only if democratic political processes can be contextually and procedurally de-linked from the state system on both the national and international level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]