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Although the rest of the American politics subfield has taken up many of the research challenges that LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) politics poses, there has been very little attention to LGBT politics within APD (American political development). Yet LGBT politics has deeply developmental and "state-centered" dynamics. Until the middle of the twentieth century, sexual orientation was simply not widely and deeply politicized in the United States. But abruptly, in a period of a decade and a half (roughly 1940–1955), national political and bureaucratic actors created a national sexuality regime that has taken 60 years of LGBT struggle to partly reverse. In seeking to substitute a different, overtly inclusive sexuality regime, LGBT citizens and their straight allies have initiated far-reaching changes in public policy, regulation of the workplace, and the institution of marriage. American politics has thus been developed by LGBT politics—and in the process, a fruitful research agenda has emerged.

AbstractAlexis de Tocqueville's account of the formation of the American regime identifies two constitutive moments: the Puritan colonization and the Revolution and the Constitution (1775–1789). Contrary to historians of the day, Tocqueville gave as much credit to the Puritans as to the Founders. Yet far from being a pure history, Tocqueville's narrative also had the purpose of promoting a new political foundation that replaced the philosophical doctrine of natural rights with an account based on "Customary History." Tocqueville's approach was intended to further a great theoretical project inaugurated by Montesquieu that offered an alternative model to the mainstream Enlightenment position for how political philosophy should enter into and influence political life. This article analyzes the two-founding thesis, explores the underlying theoretical project on foundations of Tocqueville and Montesquieu, and presents and assesses the debate on the merits of attempting to change the political foundation of the American regime.

This paper assesses the accuracy of the common analogy by which contemporary Islamists are casually conflated with classical fascists. It argues that there are some parallels, in particular the manner in which Islamists and fascists, when pursuing their political agendas, are and were both deeply intolerant of "deviants" and prepared to readily deploy violence against opponents. But it also argues that the analogy remains substantially flawed: in the context of domestic politics, Islamists face authoritarian regimes prepared to use violence against them and which are therefore very different to the liberalist regimes the fascists faced. And from an international perspective the Islamists face great powers united in their determination to ensure they do not rise to power by "capturing" a state, unlike the fascists. While current changes in the Arab world may create conditions more amenable for Islamists to carry out "stealthy" take-overs, until such occur the analogy remains at best only partially valid.

This article analyzes the importance of system-level features, such as political and economic development, and individual-level factors for the support of liberal democracy. Using multilevel modeling, the study explicitly distinguishes between the role of subjective evaluations at the individual level and objective facts at the system level. The findings obtained using a sample of 36 countries indicate that objective economic performance is the most important system-level factor for system support. Improvements in the degree of democracy do not affect public support. Individual subjective perception is predominant for determining specific support. Contrary to previous studies, there is no evidence that the liberal-democratic society reaches a degree of acceptance that immunizes it from economic developments. Nor is there evidence that citizens of non-democratic regime types will urge for democratic change when the regime performs well in economic terms. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright, the International Political Science Association.]

Within the last eleven years, Syria has gone into very important -- economical and social -- changes that have modified the very nature of the regime. This investigation seeks to explore the Syrian charities in order to seize, through them, the transformations of authoritarianism in Syria under the presidency of Bashar al-Asad. The main hypothesis here is that shrinking state resources together with the regional and international political conjuncture have led the baathist regime to promote certain segments of the Syrian civil society among which charitable projects are the most important. These new politics regarding the associative sector have taken place in the context of a readjusting state where the redefinition of public policy is both based in the partial privatization of social welfare and in the so-called logic of partial "off-loading" by the State. Both factors reflect a clear rethinking of the previous social pact. Adapted from the source document.

This article compares three African countries whose attempts to transform local governance in the 1980s were among the most dramatic, particularly in rural areas: Burkina Faso under Thomas Sankara (1983–1987), Ghana in the early years of the Jerry Rawlings presidency (1981–1992), and Uganda under Yoweri Museveni (1985–present). Despite surface similarities, especially in the establishment of local 'people's defence councils' or 'resistance councils', the three experiments had quite different outcomes, as a function both of antecedent conditions in state–society relations and of regimes' choices. A structured comparative-historical argument highlights differing state strategies vis-à-vis important social forces, especially traditional chiefs. Regimes' choices betweenconfrontation,coexistence, and theconstructionof new relations with social forces resulted in different degrees of local political change. The 'revolutionary' local experiments provide insight into a general theory of African politics, in which states' transformational powers in rural areas remain circumscribed by entrenched local forces.

Multilevel governance entails transformations of statehood, leading to significant changes both in the public sphere of politics and the private sphere of economic activity and in their modes of interaction, the law included. The fragmentation of the public sphere and the decentering of the state have led to new types of regulation and the emergence of global regulatory networks, thereby intermingling the public and the private. The transition from government to governance blurs a clear hierarchy of norms and the distinctions between hard/soft and public/private law; it encourages a fragmentation of public functions. Renewed international legalization has been seen by some in formalist terms, as a way of providing some certainty and predictability; this view has been used to buttress the legitimacy of global governance Although there have been attempts to improve coordination between international regimes, they seem generally to spawn further regulatory networks; any formal constitutionalization of international regimes seems unlikely.

El autor plantea cómo desde hace décadas los gobiernos de los países más industrializados han utilizado los informes científicos para legitimar sus posiciones en las negociaciones de los regímenes internacionales, para establecer las prioridades de la cooperación al desarrollo o para influir en los ámbitos de acción de las organizaciones multilaterales. El artículo aborda el informe La Economía del Cambio Climático, presentado por Nicholas Stern ante el gobierno británico, para esbozar algunos elementos de esta dimensión de la gobernanza ambiental. ; The author proposes, as in past decades, the government of the most industrialized countries have used scientific reports to legitimize their positions in negotiations within international regimes, to establish as priorities cooperation in development or to influence the actions of multilateral organizations. The article discusses the report entitled The Economy of Climate Change, presented to the British Government by Nicholas Stern, to outline some elements of this dimension of environmental governance.

Albeit the end of military dictatorship, a significant part of Chile's international affairs is still conditioned by some of the great principles established at the time. In spite of this, President Patricio Aylwin's administration was able to set up a relationship with other world countries different from that imposed under General Pinochet's regime. The nomination, in May 1994, of Eduardo Frei and a new Cabinet at the head of the country has led to another series of attempts to change the way international affairs are managed. The rate of success of such attempts depends upon the ability of the government coalition to go beyond the blind acceptance of international market forces, to set up appropriate negociations for Chile's membership in various world organisations, such as APEC, Mercosur and NAFTA, and above all, to break the barriers built by the upholding of important sectors of the former military regime.

- ; This paper analyses the effect of the Congo war on state power in Rwanda and Uganda. Drawing on theories of European state formation, it asks whether the Congo war has led to a strengthening of the state in the two countries. It is argued that this has not been the case. Neither the Rwandan nor the Ugandan state has been strengthened as a result of the war. I argue that this must be explained by changes in the state system, which have altered the links between war and state formation. The «war makes states» connection presupposes a positive relationship between regime maintenance and state formation. In contemporary Africa, there is no link. On the one hand, state survival is guaranteed anyway, no matter how weak the state is. On the other hand, regime survival does not depend on mobilisation of resources through taxation, since resources are available from elsewhere (aid, crime, plunder, globalisation, warlord politics).