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Abstract
Amongst the ways in which American democracy is distinct, the Weberian anomaly stands out: the United States equates to a classical Weberian state with the routine trappings of bureaucratic power, national organization, stable territorial parameters, a legal code and military power. But it is at best a quasi-Weberian state in respect of state monopolization of legitimate violence. The scope of the Second Amendment means the federal government has control in many instances over the use of physical force but historically this authority coexists with the (explicit or implicit) delegation of political violence to societal actors. In this article I argue that the legitimation of political violence outside the state is endogenous to the American constitutional settlement, a feature which arises from the country's origins and the institutional arrangements adopted in key constitutional clauses and judicial decisions.

Why, many Americans rightly ask, can material racial inequality and widespread segregation still persist 50 years after the enactment of key civil rights legislation and eight years after the election of an African American to the nation's highest office? Many from outside the US pose similar questions about modern America. The explanation, I argue, lies with inconsistent and fluctuating levels of federal engagement to building material racial equality. National engagement fluctuates because it is energetically resisted and challenged by opponents of racial progress. This vulnerability to disruption is exposed by varying strategies of resistance, some fiscal, some violent, some judicial, some desultory and some combining violent protest against change with local electoral triumphs for anti-reformers. Public resistance to employing national resources to reduce inequality encouraged a de-racialization strategy amongst many African American candidates for elected office who opt to de-emphasize issues of racial inequality in campaigns and in office. Whatever the means, the effect is uniform: the slowing down or outright death of federal civil rights activism.

Suzanne Mettler's The Submerged State shows that executing policy through tax breaks and other indirect measures encourages Americans to think that they do not rely on the government for help, even when they do. The result is a distorted public discourse and an erosion of democratic legitimacy. Adapted from the source document.

I characterize American State power as the expression of a "shock and awe" strategy, that is, the style of making dramatic policy pronouncements which centralise efforts and concentrate bureaucratic resources. Shock and awe,' refers to the capacity of American state leaders to employ its sovereign power and ample resources determinedly to a particular end. This capacity rebuffs the notion of the United States as a weak state. It describes how powerful the centralized exercise of (civilian and military) bureaucratic authority bent on a single purpose has become in the US state. The state is the executive – the bureaucratic departments and agencies including the military controlled under presidential authority. Shock and awe is a strategy which presidents seek to employ definitively to address a crisis at home or abroad. It is distinctly American because of the constraints – including constitutional, political and electoral – under which the executive pursues policy and responds to crises.

'Mimicking war', that is declaring war on some undesirable phenomenon - such as crime, poverty, illegal drugs, illegal immigration, terrorism and so forth - is a recurring strategy employed by White House incumbents from the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper examines the strategy and argues that the appeal to presidents of such war like exhortations are threefold. First, they provide a means by which the political executive can overcome the great problem of American governance - separated powers. Mimicking war, that is declaring a particular problem 'public enemy number one' constitutes a means of inducing coordinated government expansion. Second, mimicking war is a means of signalling a singular priority to bureaucrats and key policy makers thereby effecting a reallocation of scarce public resources to the new priority. Last, the strategy enables a president to set a political agenda and to justify the expansion of national standards of government in a political culture inherently hostile to federal governmental activity. ; Als-Ob-Kriegsführung bedeutet, dass irgendeinem unerwünschten Phänomen wie Verbrechen, Armut, Drogen, illegale Immigration, Terrorismus politisch der Krieg erklärt wird. In immergleicher Weise wird diese Kriegserklärung von den Amtsinhabern des Weißen Hauses seit Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts strategisch eingesetzt. In diesem Arbeitspapier wird diese Strategie untersucht und der dreifachen Anziehungskraft nachgegangen, die ein derartiges kriegsähnliches Vorgehen für den Präsidenten hat. Erstens kann die politische Exekutive so das große Problem überwinden, dass sich der amerikanischen Regierung immer in den Weg stellt: die Gewaltenteilung. Einem Problem den Als-Ob-Krieg zu erklären bedeutet, es wird zum 'öffentlichen Feind Nummer eins' und jede Koordinierung des Regierungshandelns und Ausweitung staatlichen Tuns zielt auf seine Beseitigung. Zweitens bietet eine solche Kriegserklärung ein Mittel, um der Beamtenschaft und den politischen Hauptentscheidungsträgern eine einzigartige Priorität zu signalisieren; so lässt sich eine Neuverteilung der knappen allgemeinen Betriebsmittel hin zur neuen Priorität bewirken. Drittens ermöglicht es diese Strategie einem Präsidenten, überhaupt eine politische Rangordnung durchzusetzen und nationale Gestaltungsansprüche des Regierens in einer politischen Kultur auszuweiten, die einem Tätigwerden des Bundesstaates an sich von Anfang an feindlich gegenübersteht.

The American state is conventionally depicted as inactive and organizationally weak compared with the state in comparable industrial democracies, and it is sometimes depicted as weak compared with the private sector's capacities to effect change. This interpretation stems from applying an inappropriate Weberian model of stateness. This article examines the way in which measures to implement affirmative have been employed through the policy instruments of quotas to reengineer the divisions between key groups in American society. Placed in historical context, affirmative action illustrates a powerful activism associated with the American state conceived as an institution engaged in setting and monitoring national standards.

The American state is conventionally depicted as inactive & organizationally weak compared with the state in comparable industrial democracies, & it is sometimes depicted as weak compared with the private sector's capacities to effect change. This interpretation stems from applying an inappropriate Weberian model of stateness. This article examines the way in which measures to implement affirmative have been employed through the policy instruments of quotas to reengineer the divisions between key groups in American society. Placed in historical context, affirmative action illustrates a powerful activism associated with the American state conceived as an institution engaged in setting & monitoring national standards. References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis paper critically assesses the description 'empire' as applied to the United States in the twentieth century, proposing that US policy makers lack the territorial and occupation motives pre-requisite to being an imperial power. It is proposed that the USA is better described as an empire by accident than by design. Americans' domestic experience of nation-building within the USA, since the early twentieth century, helps account for their unwillingness to permit the USA to be an imperial nation.