Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Step by step

1 hour writing, 0.5 hours administrivia, page count = 195

Little better today. I made some good progress on the comparative framework: I now have the three steps by which I get from 19th-century antecedents to 20th-century conflict more or less clearly laid out.

Step 1: 19th-century outcomes of international war (success or not) + political geography (centripetal or centrifugal) --> level of army centralization (high or low) going into state formation period (starts 1880)

Step 2: Level of army centralization + level of police centralization chosen (high or low) --> security-force configuration during 1880-1910 state formation (militarized or politicized)

Step 3: Security-force configuration + strength of party system during state formation (high or low) --> type of armed threat to which regime is characteristically susceptible in early to mid-20th century (rare coup, coup cycles, revolution, insurrection cycles)

The police centralization piece in Step 2 I'm still a little hazy on - I don't have much to say right now about what causes it, but it's a better concept than what I had before, which was, is a national/federal police created or not. Now I need to collate the empirical data to evaluate this for the non-Colombia countries. Some of it I have, some I need to gather.

I also tried to figure out the best timeframe for my trip to Berkeley next month: it looks like leaving NYC on President's Day (the 18th) and returning that Friday or Saturday may work best.

Tomorrow I'll make a table of the comparative data I need to collate/gather, and visit the library to begin gathering it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm pretty sure I saw "rare coup" on a menu somewhere.

On a subject I can speak to without sounding like a total jackass: A friend of mine notes that Virgin America is selling SF-NYC one-ways for $128 through March 11. Whether that works in reverse, I don't know.

1.5hrs = 3 x Mon. Good show!

Chris said...

Nice one, thanks!

I think "rare coup" may be another way of saying "croup." That word emerged unbidden from the memory banks, and when I googled it, only knowing that it's some kind of Victorian illness, the first result was "Croup is characterized by a loud cough that resembles the barking of a seal." From kidshealth.org, no less. If I were a kid, I'm sure I would enjoy being able to bark like a seal....