- The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Limited Statehood
- Preface
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood: Conceptual Clarifications and Major Contributions of the Handbook
- Theories of Development and Areas of Limited Statehood
- A Historical-Sociological Perspective on Statehood
- Anthropological Perspectives on the Limits of the State
- Critical Approaches
- Measuring Governance and Limited Statehood
- Histories of Governance
- A Global History of Governance
- Geographies of Limited Statehood
- External State Actors
- INGOs and Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships
- ‘Traditional’ Authorities
- Business
- Violent and Criminal Non-State Actors
- Coercion and Trusteeship
- Hierarchical and Non-Hierarchical Coordination
- Brokerage, Intermediation, Translation
- Social Trust
- Security
- Foreign Aid
- Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Democracy
- Health
- Food Security
- Education
- Environmental and Natural Resources
- Migration
- International Legal Order
- Normative Political Theory
- Policy
- Name Index
- Subject Index
Abstract and Keywords
This contribution reviews historical modes of governance from ancient, medieval, and early modern times to discuss the mutual benefit of the governance concept for political and historical sciences. Focused on the transitional periods of the European Middle Ages and colonial history, the inclusion of culturally heterogeneous populations into one and the same political entity by the spread of basic values is singled out as common topic between the disciplines. Indiscriminate classifications of modern governance phenomena as ‘new medievalism’ are thus criticized by pointing to the fact that self-governance, the spread of common binding rules or rituals of self-commitment, has been the rule throughout human social evolution. Historical examples are given to show that areas of limited statehood are not ungoverned, but rather spaces of contested governance provided by a variety of actors ranging from official state agents and churchmen to local communities.
Keywords: self-governance, medieval history, colonial history, Latin America, church, state
Stefan Esders is professor of the history of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Lasse Hölck is a postdoctoral research associate at the Institute for Latin American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Stefan Rinke is professor of history at the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Friedrich Meinecke Institute, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.
Please subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.
- The Oxford Handbook of Governance and Limited Statehood
- Preface
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood: Conceptual Clarifications and Major Contributions of the Handbook
- Theories of Development and Areas of Limited Statehood
- A Historical-Sociological Perspective on Statehood
- Anthropological Perspectives on the Limits of the State
- Critical Approaches
- Measuring Governance and Limited Statehood
- Histories of Governance
- A Global History of Governance
- Geographies of Limited Statehood
- External State Actors
- INGOs and Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships
- ‘Traditional’ Authorities
- Business
- Violent and Criminal Non-State Actors
- Coercion and Trusteeship
- Hierarchical and Non-Hierarchical Coordination
- Brokerage, Intermediation, Translation
- Social Trust
- Security
- Foreign Aid
- Human Rights, the Rule of Law, and Democracy
- Health
- Food Security
- Education
- Environmental and Natural Resources
- Migration
- International Legal Order
- Normative Political Theory
- Policy
- Name Index
- Subject Index
