The Founding of Modern States - Softcover

Bensel, Richard Franklin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009247212 ISBN 13: 9781009247214

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2022

Synopsis

The Founding of Modern States is a bold comparative work that examines the rise of the modern state through six case studies of state formation. The book opens with an analysis of three foundings that gave rise to democratic states in Britain, the United States, and France and concludes with an evaluation of three formations that birthed non-democratic states in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Through a comparative analysis of these governments, the book argues that new state formations are defined by a metaphysical conception of a “will of the people” through which the new state is ritually granted sovereignty. The book stresses the paradoxical nature of modern foundings, characterized by “mythological imaginations,” or the symbolic acts and rituals upon which a state is enabled to secure political and social order. An extensive study of some of the most important events in modern history, this book offers readers novel interpretations that will disrupt common narratives about modern states and the state of our modern world.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Franklin Bensel is the Gary S. Professor of Government at Cornell University. He is the author of five books, including Yankee Leviathan (1991), The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (2004), The Political Economy of American Industrialization (2000: David Greenstone Prize, 2002), Passion and Preferences (2008), and Sectional Stress and American Political Development, 1880–1980 (1984).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009247212
• ISBN 13: 9781009247214
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 524