The nucleus of society is situated at the local level: in the village, the neighborhood, the city district. This is where a community first develops collective rules that are intended to ensure its continued existence. The contributors look at such configurations in geographical areas and time periods that lie outside of the modern Western world with its particular development of society and statehood: in Antiquity and in the Global South of the present. Here states tend to be weak, with obvious challenges and opportunities for local communities. How does governance in this context work? Scholars from various disciplines (Classics, Theology, Political Science, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human Geography, Sinology) analyze different kinds of local arrangements in case studies, and they do so with a comparative approach. The sixteen papers examine the scope and spatial contingency of forms of self-governance; its legitimization and the collective identity of the groups behind them; the relations to different levels of state governance as well as to other local groups. Overall, this volume makes an interdisciplinary contribution to a better understanding of fundamental elements of local governance and statehood.

The debate on governance originates in the OECD world. At the latest since the postcolonial debate, we know that we need to "test" our assumptions under radically different conditions. This book offers an extended perspective of local self-governance by examining cases from South Asia, Africa, and Latin America, together with a study of militias in the USA. The chapters present a wide variety of local actors who pursue different notions of order legitimized by local traditions based on hierarchy or deeply rooted communalism, Islamic theology, or grassroots democracy. Some local actors claim a state-like authority and challenge the territorial state. In such cases, there is no longer "a shadow hierarchy" but opposition to the state. Different violent actors fight for supremacy, and the state is just one actor among others. The empirical studies presented in this book show how different kinds of local self-governance are combined with varieties of statehood, and thus contribute to an understanding of the notion of governance in a fundamental sense that goes beyond the special case of the OECD world.

In diesem Sammelband werden aktuelle Ansatze und Entwicklungen zu grundlegenden Konzepten der Vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft diskutiert, insbesondere zu den Themengebieten Staat und Staatlichkeit, Demokratie sowie Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Governance. Damit wird ein breites Spektrum der Vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft abgedeckt. Mit einem besonderen Abschnitt zu Lateinamerika werden auch uber Europa hinausgehende Themen angesprochen. Die Beitrage stammen von renommierten deutschen und europaischen Politikwissenschaftler*innen. Der Sammelband vermittelt so einen UEberblick zu zentralen aktuellen Debatten der Vergleichenden Politikwissenschaft.