International Boundary Commission United States And Mexico Treaties Joint Rules Governing The Commission Personnel

Author : James T. Sparrow
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022627781X
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Download or read book Boundaries of the State in US History written by James T. Sparrow and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-07 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of how the American state defines its power has become central to a range of historical topics, from the founding of the Republic and the role of the educational system to the functions of agencies and America’s place in the world. Yet conventional histories of the state have not reckoned adequately with the roots of an ever-expanding governmental power, assuming instead that the American state was historically and exceptionally weak relative to its European peers. Here, James T. Sparrow, William J. Novak, and Stephen W. Sawyer assemble definitional essays that search for explanations to account for the extraordinary growth of US power without resorting to exceptionalist narratives. Turning away from abstract, metaphysical questions about what the state is, or schematic models of how it must work, these essays focus instead on the more pragmatic, historical question of what it does. By historicizing the construction of the boundaries dividing America and the world, civil society and the state, they are able to explain the dynamism and flexibility of a government whose powers appear so natural as to be given, invisible, inevitable, and exceptional.