Economic Centrality Research Articles

Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of International Antitrust Economics

Antitrust economics is a subset of industrial organization economics. What makes antitrust economics rather unique is the centrality of economic analysis to the development of antitrust law and policy. In the United States antitrust economics guides all antitrust analysis by government enforcers (at the federal level the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission) and courts. In other systems, the centrality of antitrust economics to antitrust law (typically called competition law) and policy has not been established. Instead, cutting edge antitrust economic analysis competes with non-antitrust economics goals. Nevertheless, across the major non-US jurisdictions, antitrust economics is far more utilized now than previously. With global mergers and various types of conduct, increased coordination across agencies, practitioner lawyers and economists around the world trained in the latest theories of antitrust economics, and a rise of economic analysis in decision-making by adjudicators, the increasing role of international antitrust economics seems somewhat inevitable. The desire to provide scholars and policy-makers across jurisdictions a reference tool to understand the most important developments in antitrust economics motivates this intoduction to the handbook. We have assembled many of the most important scholars in the field to provide overviews and analysis of the core issuers in antitrust economics. Although no handbook can be exhaustive, we have attempted to cover all of what we believe to be the major topics in the field. The developments in economic analysis across these areas that the handbook covers will shape policy and legal issues in the field for some time.

The Ideational Shaping of State Power and Capacity: Winning Battles but Losing the War over Bank Reform in the US and UK

This article extends a recent line of research arguing that the power and capacity of political actors (including states) is not just the product of particular fixed attributes but is also the outcome of politicalrelationsbetween key interlocutors, including ideational relations. State elites, especially government leaders, have persisted with a mindset that still values the economic centrality of a large and complex banking sector. This way of thinking has conditioned the relationship between, on the one hand, the US and UK governments and, on the other, Wall Street and the City of London and has led to a form of ‘dysfunctional embeddedness’. Government leaders may have been able to win high-profile policy victories over the banking sector in the post-crisis period, but in accepting a large, complex and constantly evolving financial system with high levels of systemic risk, they have unwittingly placed themselves at a continuing disadvantage in the regulatory arena.

Beyond Efficiency in Securities Regulation

This Article argues that the rise of algorithmic trading profoundly challenges the foundation on which much of today’s securities regulation framework rests: the understanding that securities’ prices objectively reflect available information in the market. The Efficient Capital Markets Hypothesis (ECMH) has long provided the theoretical touchstone undergirding central pillars of securities regulation. Mandatory disclosure, evidentiary presumptions in anti-fraud litigation and regulation driving the design of modern exchanges all look to the ECMH for theoretical validation. It is easy to understand why. Laws that make markets better at interpreting information can also improve their ability to allocate capital across the real economy.Theory and regulation have failed to keep pace with markets where traders rely on pre-programmed algorithms to execute trades. This Article makes two claims. First, complex algorithms foster a separation between the trader and her ability to fully control the operation of the algorithm. Algorithms can execute many thousands of trades in milliseconds, crunching vast quantities of data and dynamically interacting with other traders in the process. This intelligence makes it difficult for a trader to fully predict how an algorithm might behave ex ante and near-impossible for her to track and control its activities in real-time. Secondly, though markets have traditionally relied on informed fundamental traders to decode complexity, these actors now possess reduced incentives to perform this function in algorithmic markets. Fundamental traders routinely see their gains diminished by faster, automated counterparts, able to front-run trades and to derive maximal benefit from the research of others. In arguing that algorithmic trading is transforming how markets process and interpret information, this Article shows that conventional assumptions in securities law doctrine and policy also break down. With these insights, this Article, offers a new framework to thoroughly reevaluate the centrality of efficiency economics in regulatory design.

The German Democratic Republic by Peter Grieder (review)

Reviewed by: The German Democratic Republic by Peter Grieder Andreas Agocs The German Democratic Republic. By Peter Grieder. New York: Palgrave, 2012. Pp. xviii + 155. Paper $26.00. ISBN 978-0230579378. Peter Grieder’s small volume gives a concise overview of the main developments in the GDR’s forty years of existence. In little more than 150 pages, the book introduces and discusses the wide range of themes, arguments, and interpretive challenges that recent research into the “Workers’ and Peasants’ State” has yielded. Because the GDR’s human rights abuses were dwarfed by the much larger crimes of the Third Reich, historians have been struggling to define the nature of the East German state while taking into account its repressive nature, as well as popular participation and consensus. Grieder’s definition of the GDR adopts Konrad Jarausch’s concept of a “welfare dictatorship” and combines it with classical totalitarianism theory, a concept that is, for Grieder, “flexible enough to encompass softer, subtler forms of power” (4). The GDR was thus a “totalitarian welfare dictatorship guaranteed by the Kremlin” (130). This interpretive framework allows him, he claims, to “explain as well as describe East German reality” (2)—including the many inefficiencies of the GDR’s political system, the complex and often contradictory reactions and allegiances of its population, as well as its often rocky relationship with its Soviet patrons. Grieder then traces the development of a society that was ruled through a combination of “care and coercion” (6) from its conception in the 1940s to its collapse in 1989–1990. The book’s chapters break down the GDR’s history into six phases: conception (1945–1949), construction (1949–1960), consolidation (1961–1971), conservatism (1971–1977), crisis (1977–1989), and collapse (1989–1990). Grieder uses Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s description of East Germany as a Soviet “satrapy” (Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 1949–1990 [Munich, 2008], 424–25), but he prefers the term “Bolshevization” to “Stalinization” because the SED ruled without the type of large-scale violence that characterized Stalin’s reign. During its period of construction, the party’s leadership successfully established the pillars of its rule, which included the Ministry of State Security (MfS), as well as generous state price subsidies for food, housing, and utilities. Amidst the turbulences of the 1950s, “welfare-totalitarianism was taking root in the GDR” (44). In an effort to stave off the “pull of the increasingly magnetic Federal Republic” (50), the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 enabled the [End Page 241] SED to consolidate its control. But communist party chief Walter Ulbricht’s limited market-oriented reforms in the 1960s were bogged down by the SED’s bureaucratic insistence on the primacy of politics over the economy—a self-inflicted problem that would define and plague the GDR’s “real existing socialism” until its collapse. Grieder’s periodization deliberately avoids the common division of the GDR’s history into a “Stalinist” Ulbricht era and an ostensibly post-totalitarian stage under Erich Honecker, who became party chief in 1971. Even though the Workers’ and Peasants’ state loosened its repressive rule over time, Grieder contends that “in some respects, East Germany became more totalitarian during the final two decades of its existence” (8)—as evidenced by the increased economic centralization and hypertrophy of the Stasi. Still, by the end of the 1970s the GDR had entered a destabilizing crisis that lasted until 1989. Grieder argues that the underlying “main cause for the gathering crisis was the totalitarian welfare state itself” (89). The GDR suffered from “systemic sclerosis,” brought about by the SED’s “obsessive-compulsive urge to direct an increasingly complex society, eventually leading to ‘bureaucratic overstretch’” (85). In this situation, Mikhail Gorbachev’s call for reforms in the Soviet Union became an existential threat to the East German client state. Because the SED leadership was unable and unwilling to liberalize the system that had assured its power for forty years, “totalitarianism was both the lifeblood and the wasting disease of the GDR” (93). Along with his analysis of SED policies, Grieder pays attention to popular attitudes among East Germans, even though the absence of real democratic elections and reliable polls makes the extent of popular identification...

A Tomato for All Seasons: Innovation in American Agricultural Production, 1900–1945

Economic and geographic centralization are typically seen as critical components of the industrialization of food during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The development of the fresh- and processed-tomato industries during this period offers an important counterexample to this dominant narrative. Between the late nineteenth century and World War II, the most salient characteristic of both fresh- and processed-tomato production was economic and geographic decentralization. This article argues that the emergence of sites of tomato production and processing in virtually every region of the country played a vital role in fulfilling the long-standing quest for year-round access to both fresh and processed tomatoes.

Allegories of Venice: Singapore’s Vague Concept of a Global City

This paper argues that although the state elites of Singapore use “Venice” as an image to legitimate the People’s Action Party’s continuous rule and unpopular immigration policies, the image has both empowered and constrained the state. To the state, Venice serves as a keyword that conjures up dynamism, progress, and continuity; to its critics, however, Venice signals the state’s willingness to focus on the intangible elements of nationhood, namely culture and the arts. These critics use the ambiguities of the Venice rhetoric to legitimate their own appeals for change, especially after discovering that the “shared vision” of Venice is mainly in economic terms. By so doing, detractors of the state contest the centrality of economics in the making of modern—and future—Singapore, rendering the use of “Venice” as an image to promote the concept of a Global City problematic.

Cultural Regionalism and Divergent Social Trajectories in Early Bronze Age Cyprus

The homogeneous material culture that is characteristic of the earliest phase of the Cypriot Bronze Age (the Philia phase) broke down ca. 2300–2250 B.C.E. This change was prompted by the collapse of the eastern Mediterranean systems of interaction that provided the framework for the distribution of copper from Cyprus and in turn underpinned internal social and economic networks. Different responses to this event can be discerned across the island in the following Early Cypriot I–II period. On the north coast, elaborate pottery production and complex funerary practices suggest a more or less direct evolution from an earlier system founded on economic centrality to one in which status and authority were structured in different, ritually more complex ways. In contrast, the south coast and central lowlands took a different path. Here, ceramics and mortuary facilities characterized by informality and conformity suggest that social equivalence and inclusion were more important than the assertion of individual or subgroup status, perhaps signaling a return to earlier ideological structures.

Bortko's The Master and Margarita: Adaptation in the Service of Vladimir Putin

As the most widely available medium in post-Soviet Russia, television has become central to both Russian collective memory and the formation of its national identity. This article examines Vladimir Bortko's 2005 television adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. Particular attention is given to the series's treatment of political and economic critiques of the Soviet system in order to understand how these subjects are marshaled to downplay the political repression and economic centralization in Russia following the rise to power of Vladimir Putin.

Rural household livelihood strategies in drought-prone areas: The case of Gulomekeda District, Eastern Zone of Tigray National Regional State, Ethiopia

Despite the continuing economic centrality of agriculture in the district, farm households engage and pursue diverse non-farm livelihood activities to cope with diverse challenges and risks such as drought. This paper aims to assess the relative importance of existing livelihood strategies adopted by the different socio-economic groups; the link between households’ ownership and access to different ‘livelihood assets’; and identify determinant factors for households to adopt and choose certain livelihood strategies in the district. A survey of 130 households in six administrative Kebeles and informal discussion with key informants were used to collect data. Results of the multinomial regression to identify determinants of rural household livelihood options indicated that the role of education and productive family, access to credit and receiving regular remittance, membership to formal cooperatives, access to market and business oriented extension service are of poor farm households to diversify their livelihood income into off-farm and non-farm activities. Even though- variations in livelihood strategies exist, the overall picture is still one of considerable and broad-based poverty in the area. So development of stakeholders should work together and implement target based interventions that help households to improve their livelihood in a sustainable manner by adopting higher return and sustainable livelihood strategies. Key words: Livelihood strategies, rural household, assets, determinants, on-farm, off-farm, non-farm, drought-prone areas, Ethiopia.

Not only subterranean forests: Wood consumption and economic development in Britain (1850–1938)

This paper analyzes wood consumption in Britain over the period 1850–1938. We calculate the apparent consumption of wood, taking into account both net imports of wood and the home harvest. We then develop some quantitative exercises that correlate wood consumption with GDP, with prices of wood and iron (as an alternative material to wood) and with other measures. The main conclusion is that, although wood had lost its economic centrality after the energy transition, wood consumption continued to grow in Britain both in absolute and relative terms, showing a positive elasticity to GDP superior to the unit. This result allows us to reach a more complete understanding of the socio-metabolic transition associated with the Industrial Revolution. Britain faced the increase in wood demand by relying almost entirely on imported wood, reinforcing the idea that the decoupling of economic growth from land use must to be handled with care, and should be observed not at the national level but on a global scale. Although British economic development was to a great extent focussed on what has been called the “subterranean forests” of coal, it simultaneously supported large tracts of surface foreign forest.

Rural household livelihood strategies in drought-prone areas: A case of Gulomekeda District, eastern zone of Tigray National Regional State, Ethiopia

Despite the continuing economic centrality of agriculture in the district, farm households engage and pursue diverse non-farm livelihood activities to cope with diverse challenges and risks such as drought. This paper aims to assess the relative importance of existing livelihood strategies adopted by the different socio-economic groups; the link between households’ ownership and access to different ‘livelihood assets’; and identify determinant factors for households to adopt and choose certain livelihood strategies in the district. A survey of 130 households in six administrative Kebeles and informal discussion with key informants were used to collect data. Results of the multinomial regression to identify determinants of rural household livelihood options indicated that the role of education and productive family, access to credit and receiving regular remittance, membership to formal cooperatives, access to market and business oriented extension service are of poor farm households to diversify their livelihood income into off-farm and non-farm activities. Even though- variations in livelihood strategies exist, the overall picture is still one of considerable and broad-based poverty in the area. So development stakeholders should work together and implement target based interventions that help households to improve their livelihood in a sustainable manner by adopting higher return and sustainable livelihood strategies. Key words: Ethiopia, livelihood strategies, rural household, assets, determinants, on-farm, off-farm, non-farm, drought-prone areas.

Export diversification in a transitioning economy

How does the process of export diversification take place in an economy in transition, especially in light of government policy aimed at trade liberalization? This article examines this question by considering a directed policy effort by Syria – an economy in transition from both economic centralization and resource dependence – to liberalize its trade between 2001 and 2008. In addition to documenting the patterns of diversification at the aggregate level since the implementation of the policy, we also examine factors that are related to diversification at the sectoral level. Our findings suggest that, while Syria has achieved reasonably rapid export diversification, this may to a large extent be the result of structural transformations in the economy, and that further diversification may require continued policy reform designed to strengthen Syria's weak institutional and business environment.

A hybridism model of differentiated human resource management effectiveness in Chinese context

This paper brings the differentiation perspective of human resource management (HRM) to China's context of economic transition, and constructs a hybridism rationale to explain the distinctive characteristics of Chinese HRM. We respectively discuss the effect mechanisms of commitment-based, control-based, collaboration-based, and contract-based HRM archetypes in China. Then, by comparing the paths of HRM evolution taken by China and the West, we explore the dynamic logics of fit between macroeconomic institutions (economic centralization or laissez-faire) and the organizational tradeoff of hybrid HRM approaches. Ideas for future research and practical implications are discussed.

Between Inclusion and Exclusion: Feasting and Redistribution of Meals at Late Chalcolithic Arslantepe (Malatya, Turkey)

The redistribution of meals and feasting practices in the early centralized society of Arslantepe VI A in south-eastern Anatolia (Late Chalcolithic 5 – 3300/3000 cal. BCE) are presented in this paper as examples of commensal politics. Within the framework of Mesopotamian early state formation, this period represents a stimulating case because of the evidence of economic centralization, the significant amount of materials found in in situ contexts, and the presence of functionally distinct architecture. Food and beverages were the economic base of the power of elites; yet it is not only through feasting activities that food enters Late Chalcolithic gastro-politics, but also through the meals disbursed in exchange for labor. Near Eastern Archaeology; Late Chalcolithic; Arslantepe; State Formation; Commensal Politics; Redistribution of Meals; Feasting

Imagining the Fractured East Asian Modern: Commonality and Difference in Mass-Cultural Production

It has been said (rightly) that the opposition of center and periphery goes a long way, since it stretches from the great capitals and world cities to the most miserable, so-called 'undeveloped' regions and countries, and that the domination of centers . . . guarantees the character of [for i]t exercises control at all ... of over peripheries that are both dominated and broken apart.1 What happens, though, when areas produced as subordinate and subordinated capitalist spaces start to assert their increasing centrality in the ongoing formation of a world market - and not only produce things in space2 but also start to be producers of their own space, culturally and economically?We can see all of the aforementioned in the emergence of a zone called during the two decades of the so-called East Asian Miracle, the 1980s and the 1990s. We are perhaps more familiar with the political and economic agents of the production ofthat space, but there are cultural agents who have contributed, as well. In this regard, a major cultural development of those decades is the highly intensified cultural innovation in and circulation of the visual arts3 and - even more prominently - mass culture in the 1990s within East or Pacific Asia, here taken to include Southeast Asia. Mass-consumed culture took the form of televisual programs, film, and pop music from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, plus Japanese anime. In toto, these phenomena broadly indicate the increasing economic centrality of a given area.Using indicative Hong Kong cinema productions, I will argue that the post-1980s East Asia cultural production contributed to a shared vision of a East Asia as a region predicated upon interconnected capitalist modernization and modern culture, with intense urbanization as a major defining feature of the New East Asia. In general, such cultural productions do not evoke a primordial and exotic Asian-ness, or a panAsia drawn from cultural essentialisms formulated during the colonial era. To spatialize, as the historian H. D. Harootunian has observed, is to side with modernization.4 Contemporary East Asia is located inside capitalist modernity and therefore shares the homogeneous character of space of the Western metropolitan centers, but the points of view that arise are also those of the semiperiphery and reflect their specific histories of the modern. There is underlying totality here, but one that unfurls violently, even if at a broad level modernity is an incessant production of difference as the same.5The presence of difference, though, does not mean that East Asia appears as a decentered, intercultural urban festival. The East Asian Modern that emerges, such as it is, is fractured. The historical and political divisions in the region make the recent cultural productivity, in some respects, unexpected. What can be called intra- Asia cinematic productions evocatively recognize both the shared contemporary desire for a First World East Asiaand the historic ideational and militarily enforced formation of a Greater East Asia associated with Japan's past attempts to leave backward Asia and modernize - or risk coming under Western colonial domination. The regional contemporary is haunted by modernity's debilitating entry into the region, linked as it was with colonialism and the creation of the first modern Asian nation-state of Japan, which took on the characteristics of the Western nation-states' colonizing modernity.6Specifically, this essay will examine the increased dimensions of a New Asian regional identity since the 1980s through thinking of how Hong Kong cinema at the start of the twenty-first century attempted to rework itself in terms of this fractured modern New Asia. I particularly examine two films indicative of the cultural productiveness at stake. The first is Jingle Ma's Tofyyo Raiders (Dongjing Gonglue, 2000), a film consonant with what might be said to be the libidinization of market modernity in the region. …

Economical Effects of Using Subway in the Reduction of Fuel Consumption

Abstract .Transportations one of the important indexes of air pollution in cities has always occurred in the form of a big Unavoidable problem. Lack of comprehensive approach and enough (Sufficient) attention toward transportation and traffic issues have unsparing social, economical and environmental costs and damages in the country which the most important of them are: high fuel consumption and growth of the fatal and injury crashes, air pollution and environmental damages. Among the public transportation networks, railway public transit is known as the healthiest, fastest, safest and generally the most efficient transportation network which is proved the undeniable role in solving economic, social and environmental problems caused by public transport and traffic problems. Considering the political and economic centrality of Tehran as capital of Islamic Republic of Iran with an increasing population of over 10 million people, and the construction of satellite cities, and conducting population to these cities, it is important to construct several connecting subway lines for these satellite cities. This paper focuses on economic problems via comparing underground subway as public vehicle with motor vehicle.

For a New Kind of ‘Forward Policy’

This paper argues that more than their boundary dispute, it is the place of Tibet in the Sino–Indian relationship that is at the core of the continuing mistrust between the two countries. For China, pushing economic development as a panacea to ethnic grievances has been an insufficient strategy. To ensure sustainable political stability in Tibet, it is necessary to give India greater space in Tibet in the form of improved economic, tourist and religious exchanges as a way of relieving the sense of cultural siege that ethnic Tibetans suffer from. India meanwhile, having accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, will have to reciprocate with a new ‘forward policy’ of its own allowing for greater Chinese access to its own markets and the removal of other discriminatory restrictions on Chinese travelling to India. The way ahead lies in converting Tibet’s political centrality into an economic centrality in the Sino–Indian bilateral relationship.

Trade versus Staple Economy: Some Remarks on the Background of Mesopotamian UrbanizationAncient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape. By Guillermo Algaze. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

This book by Guillermo Algaze marks a new step in his study of the phenomenon of Uruk expansion and a resumption of his theories on the “world system” applied to early urban Mesopotamia, but with a reverse approach, in which the main focus is now the “core” of the phenomenon, namely, Lower Mesopotamia. This research has the great merit of implicitly trying to answer the criticisms leveled at his work in recent years. Algaze returns to one of his favorite themes—the central role played by long-distance trade in the development of fourth-millennium urban societies—but this time starts from the internal analysis of the societies (above all, the driving center of the phenomenon, the Mesopotamian alluvium), the weakness of which had been the main target of criticism of his previous studies. Algaze has partially revised his positions on a number of points where recent field research has yielded new and clear evidence; more particularly, he acknowledges the basic autonomy of the Upper Mesopotamian and southeastern Anatolian communities during the formation process of the early centralized societies, which he now views as being less dependent on relations with the south, at least in the initial part of the process, the first half of the fourth millennium. He admits that there is a similar degree of social complexity in the northern and southern areas but then emphasizes the formation of a strong inequality between the two regions in the second half of the fourth millennium, marked by the massive urban development of Lower Mesopotamia—the “Sumerian takeoff”—and it is around the attempt to explain this divergence that the whole book hinges. His praiseworthy aim to “elucidate the economic variables underlying the processes of urban growth and socioeconomic differentiation” (p. 7) leads him to systematically review the most important aspects of a set of interconnected variables that may have created the uniqueness of Lower Mesopotamia in this phase of its history. Algaze examines a wide range of conditions and characteristics of Lower Mesopotamian societies, starting from the unique environmental conditions of the alluvium, with its marked variability in ecological niches and natural resources, already well highlighted in the past by Robert McC. Adams. He attributes enormous importance to the dense system of waterways, marshes, and natural and artificial canals, not so much as the means whereby the extraordinary development of agricultural productivity was achieved but as the condition for creating a highly efficient system of internal transport within the region. He then considers the social and economic consequences of these conditions, which may be summarized as a great need for economic specialization and intense exchange practices between the centers in the plain, high agricultural productivity, the development of sophisticated technologies for controlling human capital as a labor force, and ultimately a high level of urban concentration of the population. This concentration would have generated a high level of competition between the centers, as evidenced from the images of the use of force in glyptics and the initial fortification of some centers. The analysis correctly emphasizes that the distinctive feature of fourth-millennium societies in the alluvium is a high level of urbanization, which Algaze underlines by reexamining the old survey data. I agree that this is the real crucial difference between the southern and northern communities, where high levels of urban development occurred only in certain areas, particularly in the Khabour. But I disagree with Algaze on three fundamental related issues. (1) The northern areas cannot be treated as a single whole, because there were substantial differences between them in terms of their level of urbanization and, consequently, in the final outcomes of the processes, which were quite different, for example, in the Euphrates Valley and in the Khabour. (2) I do not believe that a decline occurred in the northern centers in the latter half of the fourth millennium, when, in the cases with which we are familiar, the highest level of development of economic and political centralization is conversely attested to. The evidence that Algaze cites in the case of Tell Brak is not sufficient to speak of a decline; the apparent decrease in Late Uruk pottery from around the site could, on the contrary, argue in favor of a higher degree of urbanization. We know almost nothing about the other main sites mentioned in the book, but another case also exists that Algaze does not mention, that of Arslantepe, which precisely at the end of the fourth millennium reached its peak of development as an early-state center. (3) The level of administrative complexity of these centers was extremely high and, in my opinion, is comparable to that of the southern centers, even though there were no written tablets; at all events, such tablets existed only in the south in the great Uruk-Warka capital, where their appearance was probably due

Storage and relative surplus at the Mississippian site of Moundville

Theories of the development of complex societies often equate the production of surpluses with centralized political economies. Most descriptions of economic intensification within Mississippian societies of Eastern North America have placed analytical explanation upon a shift from domestic autonomy to elite oversight early in the Mississippian period. This study examines storage locations, through examination of a newly recognized type of oversized ceramic storage technology, within the Moundville region. Data from this research are used to show that surplus production is not best explained using models of economic centralization. Rather, surplus production at early Moundville was organized by various distinct social groups storing and utilizing agricultural resources. Through time, some groups may have enjoyed greater success than others at producing surpluses. Evidence for storage is widely distributed, yet some differences in storage capacities are present. These spatial differences broadly mirror general patterns in the amount of labor invested in mound construction and the diachronic use of mounds across the site. These results allow us to consider the relationship between storage and relative surplus production, as well as the dynamic political-economic relations between distinct social groups through time in early complex agricultural societies.

West Virginia's Constitutional Critique of Virginia: The Revolution of 1861-1863

West Virginia's Constitutional Critique of VirginiaThe Revolution of 1861-1863 John Edmund Stealey III (bio) No citizen or governmental official of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia could have anticipated the chain of events that occurred at the Virginia Convention in Richmond on April 17, 1861, when it secretly adopted the Ordinance of Secession. Popular and scholarly attention has normally concentrated on national ramifications and how the Commonwealth responded constitutionally and militarily during its secession crisis. No modern study has investigated the full implications of the state-level constitutional response of western Virginia delegates and leaders to the event. Fleeing after the disheartening assembly vote, the delegates loyal to the United States had daily faced epithets, hangman's nooses, and secessionist flags on Richmond streets among the enflamed people. On the convention floor itself, the term "western Virginian" had become one of opprobrium and mocking ridicule. Five decades of continual Commonwealth constitutional and political discrimination had devolved on the national loyalists who secessionists cast out as "black Republicans" and "submissionists." The latter slur, perhaps worse than the former, on their honor suggested their cowardice and unmanliness. The unionist delegates had no certain idea how they and their constituents might respond.1 [End Page 9] Submit, they did not. Spontaneously, mass meetings immediately materialized in many western Virginia towns and villages. Several of the recent convention delegates, forming the leadership in rending the Commonwealth, were primary speakers. Some were more radical than others. The most important meeting occurred on two days' notice in Clarksburg on April 22. There, convention delegate John Snyder Carlile spoke and introduced a preamble and resolutions that condemned Virginia's actions and called for an assembly on May 13 in Wheeling "to consult and determine upon such action as the people of Northwestern Virginia should take in the present fearful emergency." The assembled twelve hundred citizens could not have comprehended that they had initiated a constitutional process that severed a state and created a new one.2 The separation of the Virginias in 1861-1863 is notable and exceptional enough in U.S. history to warrant detailed attention to contemporary constitutional grievances that western Virginians had long articulated and soon had the opportunity to address. Perhaps no greater failure in domestic statecraft has transpired than the Commonwealth of Virginia's inability to preserve its state union and its territorial integrity. As contemporary westerners observed with wonder in 1861, the Commonwealth always seemed obsessed with chimerical national wrongs rather than unjust and threatening internal political and constitutional discrimination and oppression within its realm. The western section's constitutional objectives reflect in undeniable ways like a mirror the Commonwealth's antebellum inadequacies that proved so detrimental. In fundamental terms, the American Civil War represented a conflict about the nature of the Union and constitutional legitimacy. Its course and outcome [End Page 10] had penetrating results on two levels, the national and the state. The U.S. victory definitively answered questions about legitimacy and surely changed national fundamental law and its interpretation in numerous spheres. Extensive constitutional ferment also existed in the states. The war effort itself and mobilization had great impact on the modernization process that required constitutional adaptation in loyal states to address national governmental and economic centralization, urbanization, economic and financial growth, the end of chattel slavery, demographic changes, public education growth, and transportation developments. Loyal Virginia itself, initially operating under the 1850-51 frame, in 1864 held a constitutional convention in Alexandria and adopted organic law that governed the Commonwealth until 1869. The war era's cathartic impact on state constitutional change in rebel states is widely known, but the effects extended beyond former Confederate states.3 In Virginia, Abraham Lincoln's election and the secession of four slave states created a volatile situation. Most westerners believed that the January 14 call by the extra session of the Virginia General Assembly, convened by Governor John Letcher, for a convention to meet on February 13 (with delegates elected on February 7) was unduly precipitous and constitutionally flawed. The bypassing of a referendum on the question of calling a convention violated Virginia precedent in summoning the conventions of 1820-39 and 1850-61. A...