The origin of the word state

A state is a political association with effective sovereignty over a geographic area and representing a population. These may be nation states, sub-national states or multinational states. A state usually includes the set of institutions that claim the authority to make the rules that govern the exercise of coercive violence for the people of the society in that territory, though its status as a state often depends in part on being recognized by a number of other states as having internal and external sovereignty over it. In sociology, the state is normally identified with these institutions: in Max Weber’s influential definition, it is that organization that «(successfully) claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory,» which may include the armed forces, civil service or state bureaucracy, courts, and police. Recently much debate has surrounded the issue of State-building with competing schools of thought on how to support the emergence of capable states.

Definition

Although the term often includes broadly all institutions of government or rule—ancient and modern—the modern state system bears a number of characteristics that were first consolidated beginning in earnest in the 15th century, when the term «state» also acquired its current meaning. Thus the word is often used in a strict sense to refer only to modern political systems.

Within a federal system, the term state also refers to political units, not completely sovereign themselves; however, these systems are subject to the authority of a constitution defining a federal union which is partially or co-sovereign with them.

In casual usage, the terms «country,» «nation,» and «state» are often used as if they were synonymous; but in a more strict usage they can be distinguished:

* «Country» denotes a geographical area.
* «Nation» denotes a people who are believed to or deemed to share common customs, origins, and history. However, the adjectives «national» and «international» also refer to matters pertaining to what are strictly «states», as in «national capital», «international law».
* «State» refers to the set of governing and supportive institutions that have sovereignty over a definite territory and population.

Etymology

The word «state» and its cognates in other European languages («stato» in Italian, «état» in French, «Staat» in German and «estado» in Spanish and Portuguese) ultimately derive from the Latin STATVS, meaning «condition» or «status». [«state.» Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 26 February 2007. [Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/state] .] With the revival of the Roman law in the 14th century in Europe, this Latin term was used to refer to the legal standing of persons (such as the various «estates of the realm» — noble, common, and clerical), and in particular the special status of the king. The word was also associated with Roman ideas (dating back to Cicero) about the «status rei publicae», the «condition of the republic.» In time, the word lost its reference to particular social groups and became associated with the legal order of the entire society and the apparatus of its enforcement.Skinner, Quentin. 1989. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521359783&id=1QrSKH_Q5M8C&pg=RA1-PA6&lpg=RA1-PA6&ots=Nn0ouzVO1R&dq=Skinner+Political+Innovation+Conceptual+Change&sig=660qldsyiEPiohCBXir3QqAwCWE#PRA1-PA90,M1 The State] . In Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, edited by T. Ball, J. Farr and R. L. Hanson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521359783&id=1QrSKH_Q5M8C&pg=RA1-PA6&lpg=RA1-PA6&ots=Nn0ouzVO1R&dq=Skinner+Political+Innovation+Conceptual+Change&sig=660qldsyiEPiohCBXir3QqAwCWE#PRA1-PA90,M1 ISBN 0521359783] ]

In other languages meaning can be different. Polish ‘państwo’ can be derived from the word ‘pan’=lord, the one who has power (‘Lord Jesus’=’Pan Jezus’). ‘Państwo’ therefore denotes a state, when someone is governing (is in charge). The word ‘państwo’ also suggest some kind of social organisation, as its second meaning in Polish relates to «family» (państwo Smith = the Smiths).

It has also been claimed that the word «state» originates from the medieval «state» or regal chair upon which the head of state (usually a monarch) would sit. By process of metonymy, the word state became used to refer to both the head of state and the power entity he represented (though the former meaning has fallen out of use).Fact|date=February 2007 Two quotations which reference these different meanings, both commonly, though probably apocryphally, attributed to King Louis XIV of France, are «L’État, c’est moi» («I am the State») and «Je m’en vais, mais l’État demeurera toujours.» («I am going away, but the State will always remain»). A similar association of terms can today be seen in the practice of referring to government buildings as having authority, for example «The White House today released a press statement…».

Empirical and juridical senses of the word state

The word «state» has both an empirical and a juridical sense, i.e., entities can be states either «de facto» or «de jure» or both.Jackson, Robert H., and Carl G. Rosberg. 1982. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-8871%28198210%2935%3A1%3C1%3AWAWSPT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and The Juridical in Statehood] . World Politics 35 (1):1-24. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-8871%28198210%2935%3A1%3C1%3AWAWSPT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K] ]

Empirically (or de facto), an entity is a state if, as in Max Weber’s influential definition, it is that organization that has a ‘monopoly on legitimate violence’ over a specific territory.Weber, Max. 1994. The Profession and Vocation of Politics. In [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521397197&id=6uA68XdxBv4C&pg=PA394&lpg=PA394 Political Writings] . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521397197&id=6uA68XdxBv4C&pg=PA394&lpg=PA394 ISBN 0521397197] .] Such an entity imposes its own legal order over a territory, even if it is not legally recognized as a state by other states (e.g., the Somali region of Somaliland).

Juridically (or de jure), an entity is a state in international law if it is recognized as such by other states, even if it does not actually have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a territory. Only an entity juridically recognized as a state can enter into many kinds of international agreements and be represented in a variety of legal forums, such as the United Nations.

States, government types, and political systems

The concept of the state can be distinguished from two related concepts with which it is sometimes confused: the concept of a form of government or regime, such as democracy or dictatorship, and the concept of a political system. The form of government identifies only one aspect of the state, namely, the way in which the highest political offices are filled and their relationship to each other and to society. It does not include other aspects of the state that may be very important in its everyday functioning, such as the quality of its bureaucracy. For example, two democratic states may be quite different if one has a capable, well-trained bureaucracy or civil service while the other does not. Thus generally speaking the term «state» refers to the instruments of political power, while the terms regime or form of government refers more to the way in which such instruments can be accessed and employed.Bobbio, Norberto. 1989. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0816618135&id=4AE8ur83g8AC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=8883y8Du41&dq=Bobbio+Democracy+and+Dictatorship&sig=kfL3Vpo83GuEdGmhXJMmTIbBNnw Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power] . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0816618135&id=4AE8ur83g8AC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=8883y8Du41&dq=Bobbio+Democracy+and+Dictatorship&sig=kfL3Vpo83GuEdGmhXJMmTIbBNnw ISBN 0816618135] .]

Some scholars have suggested that the term «state» is too imprecise and loaded to be used productively in sociology and political science, and ought to be replaced by the more comprehensive term «political system.» The «political system» refers to the ensemble of all social structures that function to produce collectively binding decisions in a society. In modern times, these would include the political regime, political parties, and various sorts of organizations. The term «political system» thus denotes a broader concept than the state.Easton, David. 1990. The Analysis of Political Structure. New York: Routledge.]

The historical development of the state

The earliest forms of the state emerged whenever it became possible to centralize power in a durable way. Agriculture and writing are almost everywhere associated with this process. Agriculture allowed for the production and storing of a surplus. This in turn allowed and encouraged the emergence of a class of people who controlled and protected the agricultural stores and thus did not have to spend most of their time providing for their own subsistence. In addition, writing (or the equivalent of writing, like Inca quipus) because it made possible the centralization of vital information.Giddens, Anthony. 1987. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0520060393&id=wJu1Z4cTdsIC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Giddens+Contemporary+Critique+of+Historical+Materialism+the+Nation+State+and+Violence&sig=OwPRjSxlp6Hng4YHp74wHYWSaGQ#PPP1,M1A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. 3 vols. Vol. II: The Nation-State and Violence] . Cambridge: Polity Press. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0520060393&id=wJu1Z4cTdsIC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Giddens+Contemporary+Critique+of+Historical+Materialism+the+Nation+State+and+Violence&sig=OwPRjSxlp6Hng4YHp74wHYWSaGQ#PPP1,M1 ISBN 0520060393] . See [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0520060393&id=wJu1Z4cTdsIC&pg=PA121&lpg=PA121&dq=Giddens+Contemporary+Critique+of+Historical+Materialism+the+Nation+State+and+Violence&sig=OwPRjSxlp6Hng4YHp74wHYWSaGQ#PPP7,M1 chapter 2] .]

Some political philosophers believe the origins of the state lie ultimately in the tribal culture which developed with human sentience, the template for which was the alleged primal «alpha-male» microsocieties of our earlier ancestors, which were based on the coercion of the weak by the strong. Fact|date=July 2007 However anthropologists point out that extant band- and tribe-level societies are notable for their «lack» of centralized authority, and that highly stratified societies—i.e., states—constitute a relatively recent break with the course of human history. [Boehm, Christopher. 1999. [http://www.google.co.nz/books?id=ljxS8gUlgqgC|Hierarchy in the Forest] . Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [http://www.google.co.nz/books?id=ljxS8gUlgqgC|ISBN 0674006917] .]

The state in classical antiquity

The history of the state in the West usually begins with classical antiquity. During that period, the state took a variety of forms, none of them very much like the modern state. There were monarchies whose power (like that of the Egyptian Pharaoh) was based on the religious function of the king and his control of a centralized army. There were also large, quasi-bureaucratized empires, like the Roman empire, which depended less on the religious function of the ruler and more on effective military and legal organizations and the cohesion of an aristocracy.

Perhaps the most important political innovations of classical antiquity came from the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. The Greek city-states before the 4th century granted citizenship rights to their free population, and in Athens these rights were combined with a directly democratic form of government that was to have a long afterlife in political thought and history.

In contrast, Rome developed from a monarchy into a republic, governed by a senate dominated by the Roman aristocracy. The Roman political system contributed to the development of law, constitutionalism and to the distinction between the private and the public spheres.

From the feudal state to the modern state in the West

The story of the development of the specifically modern state in the West typically begins with the dissolution of the western Roman empire. This led to the fragmentation of the imperial state into the hands of private and decentralized lords whose political, judicial, and military roles corresponded to the organization of economic production. In these conditions, according to Marxists, the economic unit of society corresponded exactly to the state on the local level.

The state-system of feudal Europe was an unstable configuration of suzerains and anointed kings. A monarch, formally at the head of a hierarchy of sovereigns, was not an absolute power who could rule at will; instead, relations between lords and monarchs were mediated by varying degrees of mutual dependence, which was ensured by the absence of a centralized system of taxation. This reality ensured that each ruler needed to obtain the ‘consent’ of each estate in the realm. This was not quite a ‘state’ in the Weberian sense of the term, since the king did not monopolize either the power of lawmaking (which was shared with the church) or the means of violence (which were shared with the nobles).

The formalization of the struggles over taxation between the monarch and other elements of society (especially the nobility and the cities) gave rise to what is now called the Standestaat, or the state of Estates, characterized by parliaments in which key social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic matters. These estates of the realm sometimes evolved in the direction of fully-fledged parliaments, but sometimes lost out in their struggles with the monarch, leading to greater centralization of lawmaking and coercive (chiefly military) power in his hands. Beginning in the 15th century, this centralizing process gave rise to the absolutist state.Poggi, G. 1978. The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.]

The modern state

The rise of the «modern state» as a public power constituting the supreme political authority within a defined territory is associated with western Europe’s gradual institutional development beginning in earnest in the late 15th century, culminating in the rise of absolutism and capitalism.

As Europe’s dynastic states — England under the Tudors, Spain under the Habsburgs, and France under the Bourbons — embarked on a variety of programs designed to increase centralized political and economic control, they increasingly exhibited many of the institutional features that characterize the «modern state.» This centralization of power involved the delineation of political boundaries, as European monarchs gradually defeated or co-opted other sources of power, such as the Church and lesser nobility. In place of the fragmented system of feudal rule, with its often indistinct territorial claims, large, unitary states with extensive control over definite territories emerged. This process gave rise to the highly centralized and increasingly bureaucratic forms of absolute monarchical rule of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the principal features of the contemporary state system took form, including the introduction of a standing army, a central taxation system, diplomatic relations with permanent embassies, and the development of state economic policy—mercantilism.

Cultural and national homogenization figured prominently in the rise of the modern state system. Since the absolutist period, states have largely been organized on a national basis. The concept of a national state, however, is not synonymous with nation-state. Even in the most ethnically homogeneous societies there is not always a complete correspondence between state and nation, hence the active role often taken by the state to promote nationalism through emphasis on shared symbols and national identity.Breuilly, John. 1993. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0719038006&id=6sEVmFtkpngC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=jaRrjiINsh&dq=Breuilly+Nationalism+and+the+State&sig=xdUZ4zKU-os0Mx75Wk9gO3LuYhU Nationalism and the State] . New York: St. Martin’s Press. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0719038006&id=6sEVmFtkpngC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=jaRrjiINsh&dq=Breuilly+Nationalism+and+the+State&sig=xdUZ4zKU-os0Mx75Wk9gO3LuYhU ISBN SBN0719038006] .]

It is in this period that the term «the state» is first introduced into political discourse in more or less its current meaning. Although Niccolò Machiavelli is often credited with first using the term to refer to a territorial sovereign government in the modern sense in «The Prince», published in 1532, it is not until the time of the British thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the French thinker Jean Bodin that the concept in its current meaning is fully developed.

Today, most Western states more or less fit the influential definition of the state in Max Weber’s «Politics as a Vocation». According to Weber, the modern state monopolizes the means of legitimate physical violence over a well-defined territory. Moreover, the legitimacy of this monopoly itself is of a very special kind, «rational-legal» legitimacy, based on impersonal rules that constrain the power of state elites.

However, in some other parts of the world states do not fit Weber’s definition as well. They may not have a complete monopoly over the means of legitimate physical violence over a definite territory, or their legitimacy may not be adequately described as rational-legal. But they are still recognizably distinct from feudal and absolutist states in the extent of their bureaucratization and their reliance on nationalism as a principle of legitimation.

Since Weber, an extensive literature on the processes by which the «modern state» emerged from the feudal state has been generated. Marxist scholars, for example, assert that the formation of modern states can be explained primarily in terms of the interests and struggles of social classes.Anderson, Perry. 1979. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN086091710X&id=EhtMbM1Z8BkC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kKEFE8hSdz&dq=Perry+Anderson+Lineages+of+the+Absolutist+State&sig=6wtAz_EZf89y2x2Y6bZB3Rgkh6Y Lineages of the absolutist state] . London: Verso. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN086091710X&id=EhtMbM1Z8BkC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kKEFE8hSdz&dq=Perry+Anderson+Lineages+of+the+Absolutist+State&sig=6wtAz_EZf89y2x2Y6bZB3Rgkh6Y ISBN 086091710X] .]

Scholars working in the broad Weberian tradition, by contrast, have often emphasized the institution-building effects of war. For example, Charles Tilly has argued that the revenue-gathering imperatives forced on nascent states by geopolitical competition and constant warfare were mostly responsible for the development of the centralized, territorial bureaucracies that characterize modern states in Europe. States that were able to develop centralized tax-gathering bureaucracies and to field mass armies survived into the modern era; states that were not able to do so did not.Tilly, Charles. 1992. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1557863687&id=w4zjW_RjNb0C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&ots=uKjqZcZf6T&dq=Coercion,+Capital,+and+European+States&sig=UjCM07nwXyw8otUoSLTmdiKYUs4 Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992] . Cambridge, Massachusetts: B. Blackwell. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1557863687&id=w4zjW_RjNb0C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&ots=uKjqZcZf6T&dq=Coercion,+Capital,+and+European+States&sig=UjCM07nwXyw8otUoSLTmdiKYUs4 ISBN 1557863687] .]

State and civil society

The modern state is both separate from and connected to civil society. The nature of this connection has been the subject of considerable attention in both analyses of state development and normative theories of the state. Earlier thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes emphasized the supremacy of the state over society. Later thinkers, by contrast, beginning with G. W. F. Hegel, have tended to emphasize the points of contact between them. Jürgen Habermas, for example, has argued that civil society forms a public sphere, that is, a site of extra-institutional engagement with matters of public interest autonomous from the state and yet necessarily connected with it.

Some Marxist theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci, have questioned the distinction between the state and civil society altogether, arguing that the former is integrated into many parts of the latter. Others, such as Louis Althusser, maintain that civil organizations such as churches, schools, and even trade unions are part of an ‘ideological state apparatus.’ In this sense, the state can fund a number of groups within society that, while autonomous in principle, are dependent on state support.

Given the role that many social groups have in the development of public policy and the extensive connections between state bureaucracies and other institutions, it has become increasingly difficult to identify the boundaries of the state. Privatization, nationalization, and the creation of new regulatory bodies also change the boundaries of the state in relation to society. Often the nature of quasi-autonomous organizations is unclear, generating debate among political scientists on whether they are part of the state or civil society. Some political scientists thus prefer to speak of policy networks and decentralized governance in modern societies rather than of state bureaucracies and direct state control over policy. [Kjaer, Anne Mette. 2004. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0745629792 Governance] . London: Verso. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0745629792 ISBN 0745629792] ] Alfred Stepan also introduced the idea of `political society’ those organisations that move periodically between the state and non-state sectors (such as Political Parties). Whaites has argued that in developing countries there are dangers inherent in promoting strong civil society where states are weak, risks that should be considered and mitigated by those funding civil society or advocating its role as an alternative source of service provision [Alan Whaites. 1998. Viewpoint NGOs, civil society and the state: avoiding theoretical extremes in real world issues [http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713661019~db=all~order=page Development in Practice] ] .

The state and the international system

Since the late 19th century the entirety of the world’s inhabitable land has been parceled up into states with more or less definite borders claimed by various states. Earlier, quite large land areas had been either unclaimed or uninhabited, or inhabited by nomadic peoples who were not organized as states. Currently more than 200 states comprise the international community, with the vast majority of them represented in the United Nations.

These states form what International relations theorists call a system, where each state takes into account the behavior of other states when making their own calculations. From this point of view, states embedded in an international system face internal and external security and legitimation dilemmas. Recently the notion of an «international community» has been developed to refer to a group of states who have established , procedures, and institutions for the conduct of their relations. In this way the foundation has been laid for international law, diplomacy, formal regimes, and organizations.

The state and supranationalism

In the late 20th century, the globalization of the world economy, the mobility of people and capital, and the rise of many international institutions all combined to circumscribe the freedom of action of states. These constraints on the state’s freedom of action are accompanied in some areas, notably Western Europe, with projects for interstate integration such as the European Union. However, the state remains the basic political unit of the world, as it has been since the 16th century. The state is therefore considered the most central concept in the study of politics, and its definition is the subject of intense scholarly debate.

The state and international law

By modern practice and the law of international relations, a state’s sovereignty is conditional upon the diplomatic recognition of the state’s claim to statehood. Degrees of recognition and sovereignty may vary. However, any degree of recognition, even recognition by a majority of the states in the international system, is not binding on third-party states.

The legal criteria for statehood are not obvious. Often, the laws are surpassed by political circumstances. However, one of the documents often quoted on the matter is the Montevideo Convention from 1933, the first article of which states:

:The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Contemporary approaches to the study of the state

There are three main traditions within political science and sociology that shape ‘theories of the state’: the pluralist, the Marxist, and the institutionalist. In addition, anarchists present a tradition which is similar to, but different from, the Marxian one.

Each of these theories has been employed to gain understanding on the state, while recognizing its complexity. Several issues underlie this complexity. First, the boundaries of the state sector are not clearly defined, while they change constantly. Second, the state is not only the site of conflict between different organizations, but also internal conflict and conflict within organizations. Some scholars speak of the ‘state’s interest,’ but there are often various interests within different parts of the state that are neither solely state-centered nor solely society-centered, but develop between different groups in civil society and different state actors.

Pluralism

Pluralism has been very popular in the United States. In fact, it might be seen as the dominant vision of politics in that country.

Within this tradition, Robert Dahl sees the state as either (1) a neutral arena for settling disputes among contending interests or (2) a collection of agencies which themselves act as simply another set of interest groups. With power diffused across society among many competing groups, state policy is a product of recurrent bargaining. Although pluralism recognizes the existence of inequality, it asserts that all groups have an opportunity to pressure the state. The pluralist approach suggests that the modern democratic state’s actions are the result of pressures applied by a variety of organized interests. Dahl called this kind of state a polyarchy. [Robert Dahl. 1973. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0135969816&id=9XY5gFcp6n0C&q=Dahl+Modern+Political+Analysis&dq=Dahl+Modern+Political+Analysis&pgis=1 Modern Political Analysis] . Prentice Hall. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0135969816&id=9XY5gFcp6n0C&q=Dahl+Modern+Political+Analysis&dq=Dahl+Modern+Political+Analysis&pgis=1 ISBN 0135969816] ]

In some ways, the development of the pluralist school is a response to the «power elite» theory presented in 1956 by the sociologist C. Wright Mills concerning the U.S. and furthered by research by G. William Domhoff, among others. In that theory, the most powerful elements of the political, military, and economic parts of U.S. society are united at the top of the political system, acting to serve their common interests. The «masses» were left out of the political process. In context, it might said that Mills saw the U.S. elite as in part being very similar to that of the Soviet Union, then the major geopolitical rival of the U.S. One response was the sociologist Arnold M. Rose’s publication of «The Power Structure: Political Process in American Society» in 1967. He argued that the distribution of power in the U.S. was more diffuse and pluralistic in nature.

The importance of democratic elections of political leaders in the U.S. (and not the Soviet Union) provides evidence in favor of the pluralist perspective for that country. We might reconcile power elite theory with pluralism in terms of Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of democracy. To him, «democracy» involved the (non-elite) masses choosing «which» elite would have the power.

The absence of democratic elections do not rule out pluralism, however. The old Soviet Union is sometimes described as being ruled by an elite, which ran society via a bureaucracy which united the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the military, and Gosplan, the economic planning apparatus. However, bureaucratic rule from above is never perfect. This meant that, so to some extent, Soviet policies reflected a pluralistic competition of interest groups within the Party, the military, and Gosplan, including factory managers.

Marxism

Marxist theories of the state were relatively influential in continental Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. But it is hard to summarize the theory developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. After all, the effort by Hal Draper to distill their political thinking in his «Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution» (Monthly Review Press) took several thick volumes. But many have tried.

For Marxist theorists, the role of modern states is determined or related to their role in capitalist societies. They would agree with Weber on the crucial role of coercion in defining the state. (In fact, Weber himself starts his analysis with a quotation from Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik leader.) But Marxists reject the mainstream liberal view that the state is an institution established in the collective interest of society as a whole (perhaps by a social contract) to reconcile competing interests in the name of the common good. Contrary to the pluralist vision, the state is not a mere «neutral arena for settling disputes among contending interests» because it leans heavily to support one interest group (the capitalists) alone. Nor does the state usually act as merely a «collection of agencies which themselves act as simply another set of interest groups,» again because of the state’s systematic bias toward serving capitalist interests.

In contrast to liberal or pluralist views, the American economist Paul Sweezy and other Marxian thinkers have pointed out that the main job of the state is to protect capitalist property rights in the means of production. At first, this seems hardly controversial. After all, many economics and politics textbooks refer to the state’s crucial role in defending property rights and in enforcing contracts. But the capitalists own a share of the means of production that is far out of proportion to the capitalists’ role in the total population. More importantly, in Marxian theory, ownership of the means of production gives that minority social power over those who do not own the means of production (the workers). Because of that power, i.e., the power to exploit and dominate the working class, the state’s defense of them is nothing but the use of coercion to defend capitalism as a class society. [Sweezy, Paul. 1942. The Theory of Capitalist Development. New York: Monthly Review, ch. 13.] Instead of serving the interests of society as a whole, in this view the state serves those of a small minority of the population.

Among Marxists, as with other topics, there are many debates about the nature and role of the capitalist state. One division is between the «instrumentalists» and the «structuralists.»

On the first, some contemporary Marxists apply a literal interpretation of the comment by Marx and Frederich Engels in «The Communist Manifesto» that «The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.» In this tradition, Ralph Miliband argued that the ruling class uses the state as its «instrument» (tool) to dominate society in a straightforward way. For Miliband, the state is dominated by an elite that comes from the same background as the capitalist class and therefore shares many of the same goals. State officials therefore share the same interests as owners of capital and are linked to them through a wide array of interpersonal and political ties. [Miliband, Ralph. 1983. Class power and state power. London: Verso.] In many ways, this theory is similar to the «power elite» theory of C. Wright Mills.

Miliband’s research is specific to the United Kingdom, where the class system has traditionally been integrated strongly into the educational system (Eton, Oxbridge, etc.) and social networks. In the United States, the educational system and social networks are more heterogeneous and seem less class-dominated to many. But a social connection between state managers and the capitalist class can be seen in the dependence of the major politicians and their parties on campaign contributions from the rich, on approval from the capitalist-owned media, on advice from corporate-endowed «think tanks,» and the like.

In the second view, other Marxist theorists argue that the exact names, biographies, and social roles of those who control the state are irrelevant. Instead, they emphasize the «structural» role of the state’s activities. Heavily influenced by the French philosopher Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, a Greek neo-Marxist theorist argued that capitalist states do not always act on behalf of the ruling class, and when they do, it is not necessarily the case because state officials consciously strive to do so, but because the structural position of the state is configured in such a way to ensure that the interests of capital are always dominant.

Poulantzas’ main contribution to the Marxian literature on the state was the concept of «relative autonomy» of the state: state policies do not correspond exactly to the collective or long-term interests of the capitalist class, but help maintain and preserve capitalism over the long haul. The «power elite,» if one exists, may act in ways that go against the wishes of capitalists. While Poulantzas’ work on ‘state autonomy’ has served to sharpen and specify a great deal of Marxist literature on the state, his own framework came under criticism for its «structural functionalism.»

But this kind of criticism can be answered by considering what happens if state managers «do not» work to favor the operations of capitalism as a class society. [ Fred Block. 1977 «The Ruling Class Does Not Rule.» «Socialist Revolution» May-June.] They find that the economy are punished by a capital strike or capital flight, encouraging higher unemployment, a decline in tax receipts, and international financial problems. The decline in tax revenues makes it more necessary to borrow from the bourgeoisie. Because the latter will charge high interest rates (especially to a government seen as hostile), the state’s financial problems deepen. Such events might be seen in Chile in 1973, under Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular government. Added to the relatively «automatic» workings of the economy (under the spur of profit-seeking businesses) are the ways in which an anti-capitalist government provokes anti-government conspiracies, including those by the Central Intelligence Agency and local political forces, as actually happened in 1973.

Unless they are ready to actually mobilize the working population to revolutionize society and move beyond capitalism, «sober» state managers will pull back from anti-capitalist policies. In any event, they would likely never go so far as to «rock the boat» because of their acceptance of the dominant ideology encouraged by the prevailing educational system.

Despite the debates among Marxist theorists of the state, there are also many agreements. It is possible that both «instrumental» and «structural» forces encourage political unity of the state managers with the capitalist class. That is, both the personal influence of capitalists and the societal constraints on state activity play a role.

Of course, no matter how strong this link, the Marx-Engels dictum that «The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie» does not say that the executive will always do a «good job» in such management. (As Poulantzas pointed out, the state maintains some autonomy.) First, there is the problem of reconciling the particular interests of individual capitalist organizations with each other. For example, different parts of the media may disagree on the nature of needed government regulations. Further, it is often unclear what the long-run class interests of capitalists are, beyond the simple defense of capitalist property rights. It may be impossible to discover class interests until after the fact, i.e., after a policy has been implemented. Third, state managers may use their administrative power to serve their own interests and even to facilitate their entrance into the capitalist class.

Finally, pressure from working-class organizations (labor unions, social-democratic parties, etc.) or other non-capitalist forces (environmentalists, etc.) may push the state from toeing the capitalist «line» exactly. In the end, these problems imply that the state will always have some autonomy from obeying the exact wishes of the capitalist class.

In this view, the Marxian theory of the state does not really contradict the pluralist vision of the state as an arena for the contention of many interest groups, including those based in the state itself. Rather, the Marxian proposition is that this multi-sided competition and its results are strongly «biased» in the direction of reproducing the capitalist system over time.

It should be emphasized that all of the Marxist theories of the state discussed above refer only to the «capitalist» state in «normal» times (without civil war and the like). During a period of economic and social crisis, the absolute need to maintain order may raise the power of the military — and military goals — in governmental affairs, sometimes even leading to the violation of capitalist property rights.

In a non-capitalist system such as feudalism, Marxian historians have said that the state did not really exist in the sense that it does today (using Weber’s definition). That is, the central state did not monopolize force in a specific geographic area. The feudal king typically had to depend on the military power of his «lieges.» This meant that the country was more of an alliance than a unified whole. Further, the difference between the state and civil society was weak: the feudal lords were not simply involved in «economic» activity (production, sale, etc.) but also «political» activity: they used force against their serfs (to extract rents), while acting as judge, jury, and police.

Getting further beyond capitalism, Marxist theory says that since the state is central to protecting class inequality, it will «wither away» once class inequality of power is abolished. In practice, no self-styled Marxist leader or government has ever made attempts to move toward a society without a state. Of course, that is to be expected. After all, no society has ever completely abolished classes. In addition, no self-described «socialist» country has been able to do without a military defense against capitalist invasion or destabilization. Third, in Marxian theory, impetus for the abolition of the state would not come from the leaders or the government themselves as much as from the working people that they are supposed to represent.

Anarchism

The anarchists share many of the Marxian propositions about the state. But in contrast, anarchists argue that a country’s collective interests can be served without having a centralized organization. The maintenance of law and order does not require that there be a sector of society that monopolizes the legitimate use of force. It is possible for society to prosper without a state, even without a long period of classes «withering away.» In fact, anarchists see the state as a parasite that can and should be abolished.

Thus, they oppose the state as a matter of principle and reject the Marxian view that it may be needed temporarily as part of a transition to socialism or communism. They propose different strategies for the elimination of the state. There is a dichotomy of views regarding its replacement. Anarcho-capitalists envision a free market guided by the invisible hand offering critical or valuable functions traditionally provided by to replace the state; other anarchists (such as Bakunin and Kropotkin in the 19th century) tend to put less emphasis on markets, arguing for a form of socialism without the state. Such socialism would require worker self-management of the means of production and the federation of worker organizations in communes which will then federate into larger units.

Anarchists consider the state to be the institutionalization of domination and privilege. According to key theoristsFact|date=November 2007, the state emerged to ratify and deepen the dominance of the victors of history. Unlike Marxists, anarchists believe that the state, while reflecting social interests, is not a mere executive committee of the ruling class. In itself, without class rule, it is a position of power over the whole society that can dominate and exploit society. Naturally enough, many fractions of the ruling classes and even the oppressed classes strive to control the state, forming different and ever-changing alliances.Fact|date=November 2007 They also reject the need for a state to serve the collective needs of the people. Hence, they reject not only the current state, but the Marxian idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat). Instead, they see the state as an inherently oppressive force which takes away the ability of people to make decisions about the things that affect their lives.

Institutionalism

Both the Marxist and pluralist approaches view the state as reacting to the activities of groups within society, such as classes or interest groups. In this sense, they have both come under criticism for their ‘society-centered’ understanding of the state by scholars who emphasize the autonomy of the state with respect to social forces.

In particular, the «new institutionalism,» an approach to politics that holds that behavior is fundamentally molded by the institutions in which it is embedded, asserts that the state is not an ‘instrument’ or an ‘arena’ and does not ‘function’ in the interests of a single class. Scholars working within this approach stress the importance of interposing civil society between the economy and the state to explain variation in state forms.

«New institutionalist» writings on the state, such as the works of Theda Skocpol, suggest that state actors are to an important degree autonomous. In other words, state personnel have interests of their own, which they can and do pursue independently (at times in conflict with) actors in society. Since the state controls the means of coercion, and given the dependence of many groups in civil society on the state for achieving any goals they may espouse, state personnel can to some extent impose their own preferences on civil society. [Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Theda Skocpol, and Peter B. Evans, eds. 1985. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521313139&id=sYgTwHQbNAAC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=Jyo8optLgc&dq=Skocpol+Rueschemeyer+Bringing+the+State+Back+In&sig=1m3dvluBo9jULIAoYBzEdhVnIeU Bringing the State Back In] . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0521313139&id=sYgTwHQbNAAC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=Jyo8optLgc&dq=Skocpol+Rueschemeyer+Bringing+the+State+Back+In&sig=1m3dvluBo9jULIAoYBzEdhVnIeU ISBN 0521313139] .]

‘New institutionalist’ writers, claiming allegiance to Weber, often utilize the distinction between ‘strong states’ and ‘weak states,’ claiming that the degree of ‘relative autonomy’ of the state from pressures in society determines the power of the state—a position that has found favor in the field of international political economy.

The state in modern political thought

The rise of the modern state system was closely related to changes in political thought, especially concerning the changing understanding of legitimate state power. Early modern defenders of absolutism such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin undermined the doctrine of the divine right of kings by arguing that the power of kings should be justified by reference to the people. Hobbes in particular went further and argued that political power should be justified with reference to the individual, not just to the people understood collectively. Both Hobbes and Bodin thought they were defending the power of kings, not advocating democracy, but their arguments about the nature of sovereignty were fiercely resisted by more traditional defenders of the power of kings, like Sir Robert Filmer in England, who thought that such defenses ultimately opened the way to more democratic claims.

These and other early thinkers introduced two important concepts in order to justify sovereign power: the idea of a state of nature and the idea of a social contract. The first concept describes an imagined situation in which the state — understood as a centralized, coercive power — does not exist, and human beings have all their natural rights and powers; the second describes the conditions under which a voluntary agreement could take human beings out of the state of nature and into a state of civil society. Depending on what they understood human nature to be and the natural rights they thought human beings had in that state, various writers were able to justify more or less extensive forms of the state as a remedy for the problems of the state of nature. Thus, for example, Hobbes, who described the state of nature as a «war of every man, against every man,» [Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Hobbes0123/Leviathan1909/HTMLs/0161_Pt02_Part1.html#LF-BK0161pt01ch13 Leviathan] . Part I, chapter 13.] argued that sovereign power should be almost absolute since almost all sovereign power would be better than such a war, whereas John Locke, who understood the state of nature in more positive terms, thought that state power should be strictly limited. [Locke, John. 1689. [http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0364#hd_lf128-04_head_025 Two Treatises of Government] . Second Treatise, chapter 2.] Both of them nevertheless understood the powers of the state to be limited by what rational individuals would agree to in a hypothetical or actual social contract.

The idea of the social contract lent itself to more democratic interpretations than Hobbes or Locke would have wanted. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, argued that the only valid social contract would be one were individuals would be subject to laws that only themselves had made and assented to, as in a small direct democracy. Today the tradition of social contract reasoning is alive in the work of John Rawls and his intellectual heirs, though in a very abstract form. Rawls argued that rational individuals would only agree to social institutions specifying a set of inviolable basic liberties and a certain amount of redistribution to alleviate inequalities for the benefit of the worst off. Lockean state of nature reasoning, by contrast, is more common in the libertarian tradition of political thought represented by the work of Robert Nozick. Nozick argued that given the natural rights that human beings would have in a state of nature, the only state that could be justified would be a minimal state whose sole functions would be to provide protection and enforce agreements.

Some contemporary thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, have argued that political theory needs to get away from the notion of the state: «We need to cut off the king’s head. In political theory that has still to be done.» [Foucault, Michel. 2000 [1976] . Truth and Power. In [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565847091 Power] , edited by J. D. Fearon. New York: The New Press, p. 123. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565847091 ISBN 1565847091] ] By this he meant that power in the modern world is much more decentralized and uses different instruments than power in the early modern era, so that the notion of a sovereign, centralized state is increasingly out of date.

Others have advocated the consideration of the state within the context of complex underlying elite relationships, themselves shaped by factors that include outside pressures. This work has been prominent in the thinking of State-building theorists such as Alan Whaites, who focuses on dynamics shaping the nature and capability of states. Whaites’ model of state-building offers a conceptualization of why some states work well and others become characterized by patronage, corruption and conflict. [Whaites, Alan, States in Development: Understanding State-building, [http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/State-in-Development-Wkg-Paper.pdf] ]

See also

* Country
* Elite theory
* Failed state
* International relations
* List of countries by date of nationhood
* List of sovereign states
* Montevideo Convention
* Nation
* Nation-building
* Police state
* Political power
* Political settlement
* Province
* Regional state
* Social contract
* State-building
* State country
* Statism
* The justification of the state
* The purpose of government
* U.S. state
* Unitary state

References

What is the state , State is a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government. State is is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time.

The Term “State.”

Political science, as we have seen, deals With the phenomena of that highest of all human associations, the state. The term employed by the Greeks which corresponds mast nearly to the modern English term “state” was polis, meaning “city.” For them, the term was appropriate enough because their states were city-states, not territorial or country states such as most of those of modern times are.

In short, as Seeley remarked, political science was for the Greeks largely municipal science. The Romans employed the term civitas which connoted the same idea But they also employed the phrases status rei publicae and res publica, which implied not merely the idea of citizenship of a city but the notion of the public welfare. The terms probably conveyed to the Roman mind of the fifth century after Christ a meaning very similar to our modern nation of a state.

The early Teutons adopted only a part of the phrase status from which the modern word “state” was derived. In early modern times the coming into use of such German words as Landtag, Landesgesetz and Landesstaatsrecht indicated the new ct2nception2 of the state as a territorial rather than an urban commonwealth.

The word “state” (stato) appears to have been introduced into the modern literature of political science by Machiavelli, who in his famous book, “The Prince” ( Principe, 1523) observed at the outset that all the powers which have had and have authority over men are states (stati) and are either monarchies or republics.

In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the words state, states, Staat appeared in English, French, and German literature, although Bodin in 1576 preferred the term “republic” o(republique) as the title of the French edition of his famous treatise.

Various Uses of the Term :-

Etymologically the term is an abstract one which has reference to that which is fixed or established. Thus we speak of the “state” of a man  health, of his mind, or of his economic condition. The etymological connotation does not therefore correspond to the meaning of the word as a term of political science. Unfortunately, like many other words of common usage in the literature of political science and law, it is used in various senses Thus it is often employed as a synonym of nation, society, country, government etc.

It is commonly employed also to express the idea of the collective action of society as distinguished from individual action as when we speak of “state” aid to education, “state” regulation of industry, etc. Again, in some countries having the federal system of government, such as the United States (and the German Empire of 187 l1918),  the term is used to designate both the federation as a whole and the component members constituting it.

The effect of this dual use of the term is to introduce confusion into the terminology of political science and it sometimes leads to misconceptions in political thinking. It is regrettable that neither the English, nor the German, nor the French language contains a suitable term by which the component members of federal unions may be appropriately designated. They are not, strictly speaking, “states” nor yet are they mere provinces or administrative districts, at least not in the American, Canadian, or Australian federal unions.

Likewise the use of the terms state and government as if the two things were identical, has produced equal confession and often misunderstanding. In fact they represent widely different concepts and upon the recognition of the distinction between them depends the true understanding of some of the most fundamental questions of political science.

The state is the politically organized person or entity for the promotion of common ends and the satisfaction of common needs, while the government is the collective name for the agency, magistracy, or organization through which the will of the state is formulated, expressed, and realized. The government is an essential organ or agency of the state, but it is no more the state itself than the board of directors of a corporation is itself the corporation.

In earlier times, it was not uncommon to identify the ruling sovereign with the state, and the famous saying attributed to Louis XIV (Lfétat, c’est moi) has often been quoted as an example of such identification But if the government and state were identical, the death of the reigning, sovereign or the overthrow of the government would necessarily interrupt, if not destroy, the continuity of the state life.

As a matter of fact changes of governmental organization do not affect the existence of the state. States possess the quality of permanence. Governments, on the contrary, are not immortal, they are constantly undergoing change as a result of revolution, or through legal processes, yet the state continues unimpaired and unaffected.

Governments are mere contrivances to use the language of Professor Seeley, through which the state manifests itself. They possess no sovereignty, no original unlimited authority, but only derivative power delegated by the state through its constitution. To understand clearly, therefore, the nature of each and the relation of one to the other, we must avoid identifying them either in thought or in treatment.

The term “state” is also frequently employed as a synonym for “society.” Thus is it said that society has a right to protect itself against crime, when it is the state that is meant. Society is the more general term meaning the people, viewed in their associated aspect, that is, an aggregation having common interests and united by what the sociologists term a consciousness of kind, whereas the state is a particular portion of society politically organized for the protection and promotion of its common interests. The principal difference between society and the state, therefore, is that the latter necessarily implies political organization, while the former does not. Spencer described the state as society in its corporate capacity.

What Is The State ?

From a consideration of matters of terminology we come now to inquire what is the state. Definitions of the state are, as the German writer Schulze remarked, innumerable, almost every author-having his own and scarcely any two being alike. Aristotle, the “father of political science” defined the state as

“a union of families and villages having for its end a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life.”

If, he said,

“all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all and which embraces all the rest, aims, and in a greater degree than any other, at the highest good.”

As a general statement of the primary object of the state it can hardly be improved upon. Cicero defined the state (respublzca) as a numerous society united by a common sense of right and a mutual participation in advantages.

His definition commended itself to Grotius, who defined the state somewhat similarly as a perfect society of free men united for the sake of enjoying the advantages of right and the common utility, is and his definition in turn was adapted in substance by Vattel and Wheaton. Bodin, in 1576, defined the  state as an association of families and their common possessions, governed by a supreme power and by reason. Thus, like Aristotle, he made the family rather than the individual the unit.

Modern Definitions of the State :-

Among the definitions given by modern authorities the following are among the most satisfactory. The English writer Holland defines a state as a numerous assemblage of human beings, generally occupying a certain territory, among whom the will of the majority or of an ascertainable class of persons is by the strength of such a majority or class made to prevail against any of their number who oppose it.

Hall, viewing the state primarily as a concept of international law,says, The marks of an independent state are that the community constituting it is permanently established for a political end, that it possesses a defined territory, and that it is independent of external control .

Burgess defines it as a particular portion of mankind ,viewed as an organized unit, which is substantially the same as the definition given by Bluntschli, who says, The state is the politically organized people of a definite territory. The United States Supreme Court in an early case defined a state as a body of free persons united together for the common benefit, to enjoy peaceably what is their own, and to do justice to others.

More recently it has defined the state as a political community of free citizens occupying a territory of defined boundaries, and organized under  a government sanctioned and limited by a written constitution and established by the consent of the governed. Esmein, regarding it from the point of view of the jurist, defines the state s the juridical personification of a nation.  Duguit defines it uniquely as a human society in which there exists a political differentiation, that is, a differentiation between the governed and the governors.

Carre de Malberg defines the state concretely as a community of men fixed on a territory which is their own and possessing an organization from which results, for the group envisaged in its  relations with its members, a superior Power of action, of command, and of coercion.

Phillimore says a state for all purposes of international law is a people permanently occupying a fixed territory, bound together by common laws, habits, and customs into one body politic, exercising through the medium of an organized government: independent sovereignty and control over all persons and things within its boundaries, capable of making war and peace and of entering into all international relations with the communities of the globe.

Conclusion :-

If one more definition may be added to this long list I would say that the state, as a concept of political science and public law, is a community of persons more or less numerous permanently occupying a definite portion of territory, in dependent, or nearly so, of external control, and possessing an organized government to which the great body of inhabitants render habitual obedience. The essential constituent elements, political, physical, and spiritual, of the modern state are all brought out in this definition.

They are first, a group of persons associated together for common purposes second, the occupation of a determinate portion of the earth’s surface which constitutes the home (or, as the Germans say, the Baden) of the population, third, independence of foreign control and fourth, a common supreme authority or agency through which the collective will is expressed and enforced.

Factors Determining Definitions :-

Points of View Naturally definitions of the state are colored by the opinions of their authors and are affected by the point of view from which the state is envisaged. Thus the sociologist, viewing it primarily as a social phenomenon, usually defines it differently from the way in which the jurist, who regards it first of all as a juridical establishment, ‘usually defines it. Similarly, writers on international law in their definitions emphasize certain elements-Which the political scientist ignores or minimizes. Finally, philosophical writers who think and write in abstract terms formulate their definitions accordingly. Such, for example, were the definitions of Hegel, Who defined the state as  the incorporation of the objective spirit as  the ethical spirit, the manifest, self-conscious, substantial will of man, thinking and knowing itself and suiting its performance to its knowledge or to the proportion of its knowledge as the actualization of concrete freedom, as perfected rationality the realization of the moral idea, etc.

The objection to such definitions is that they are, aside from their highly abstract character, based on a one-sided view of the state and afford little clue to its real character and mission. In attempting to define the state we Should do well to remember that it is at the same time both an abstract conception and a concrete organization. Abstractly considered, it is merely a juridical person, a corporation, separate and distinct from the people who, with the territory which they occupy, constitute the physical state.

On the other hand, the state concretely considered is the community, the territory which it occupies, and the organization through which it wills and acts. Thus viewed, the state is identified with the physical elements which are said to constitute it. Some writers conceive it only from the first viewpoint others, denying the personality theory, regard it only from the second point of view.

The Idea and the Concept of the State :-

Political Philosophers have often discussed the idea and some have distinguished it from the concept of the state. The term idea as thus used connotes several meanings. Thus the state, when considered apart from its concrete physical existence, is sometimes referred to as an abstract idea. Again it is spoken of as existing in idea before it has acquired an objective form with an organization and institutions.

Thus Hegel said the idea of the state has immediate actuality in the individual state,  by which he apparently meant that it is merely a thing of philosophical speculation until it takes Hesh and blood and becomes a working institution serving the needs of the community. Other writers, for the most part Germans, distinguishing between the idea (Idee) and the concept (Begrig) of the state, employ the term Stateside to designate the ideally perfect state as distinguished from the imperfect actual state, that is, the state as a concept.

Some of them appear to regard the ideally perfect state as a universal state. Thus Biuntschli said,

“the concept of the state (Staatsbegiff) has to do with the natural and essential characteristics of actual states. The idea of the state (Staatszdee) presents a picture, in the splendor of imaginary perfection, of the state as not yet realized but to be striven for.”

Burgess adopts this distinction between the idea and the concept of the state.

He says:

“The idea of the state is the state perfect and complete. The concept of the state is the state developing and approaching perfection. From the standpoint of the idea, the state is mankind viewed as an organized unit”

From the standpoint of the concept, it is a particular portion of mankind viewed as an organized unit. From the stand-point of the idea the territorial basis of the state is the world, and the principle of unity is humanity. From the standpoint of the concept, again, the territorial basis of the state is a particular portion of the earth’s surface, and the principle of unity is that particular phase of human nature and of human need, which at any particular stage in the development of that nature is predominant and commanding. The former is the real state of the perfect future. The latter is the real state of the past, the present, and the imperfect future. The distinction is largely met a physical or philosophical and has little practical value. The view that the ideal state state, will, of course, find numerous combatants.

The State as a Concept of International Law :-

The state as to often defined by writers on political science and constitutional law is not necessarily a state in the sense in which the term is used in the literature of international law. Conversely, a state in the latter sense may lack some of the attributes of a state as a Concept of Political science and constitutional law.

Thus writers who do not consider sovereignty as an essential constituent element of the state regard members of federal unions, protect Orates, so-called vassal states under the suzerainty of other states, states under mandates, and autonomous dependencies like the British self governing dominions, as states, although they are not fully such in the eye of international law. Likewise, there is a group of petty states such as San Marino and Liechtenstein which although sovereign and possessing the other marks of a state when judged by the criteria of political science, are not regarded as full international persons.

A state in the sense of international law must be a fully sovereign and independent community with a legal capacity to enter into international relations, and must possess the power and will to fulfill the obligations which international law requires of all members of the family of nations.

Furthermore, it must have been recognized as such and thereby admitted to membership in the international community on a footing of , equality with other states. A community therefore may possess all the marks of a state as usually defined in terms of political science, but until it has been received into the family of nations it is not a state according to international law. International law does not deny the existence of a state before it has been recognized, but it simply takes no notice of it.

Thus the Ottoman Empire was not admitted to participate in the benefits of the European system of public law until 1856, while China and Japan were not recognized as full members of the international community until a still more recent date. Although Russia has long been a member, there is at present a disposition to treat her as being outside the circle because of the refusal of the Soviet government to recognize the validity of the international engagements and obligations entered into by the former governments of Russia.

Is the League of Nations :-

State ? The recent establishment of a new international political entity known as the League of Nations has given rise to much discussion as to its exact juristic character. Some of its friends have maintained that it is a state, at least in the sense of international law, that is an international person, while some of its critics have attacked it on the ground that it is a super-state elected over the individual states which compose its membership. It is a creation having executive, administrative, and quasi-legislative organs it has brought about the establishment of a court which may be regarded, in a sense at least, as the judicial organ of the League it has a seat or capital, a treasury, a budget, it owns buildings and other property it can probably sue in the courts and be sued, at least with its consent it is said to have the right of legation, since in fact several members of the League have accredited permanent quasi-diplomatic representatives to it and occasionally it sends temporary missions to other states , its representatives and officials. by article  of the covenant are declared to be entitled to diplomatic privileges and immunizes when engaged on the business of the League, it is said to exercise the right of sovereignty, for example, over the Saar basin and the territories under mandate, it exercises the power of intervention for the protection of minorities in certain states, it exercises the power to declare war and make peace etc.

The League Not a State :-

On the other hand, it is argued that the League cannot be properly regarded as an international person, or state, for the reason that it has no territory of its own over which it can exercise jurisdiction, no power to issue commands and enforce obedience, and if it had, it possesses no subjects to whom it could address such commands. As to the right of legation attributed to it, it has been pointed out that it is at best only a very imperfect right, since the League has no legal capacity to accord diplomatic privileges to persons accredited to it,-nor to protect those to whom it is promised, nor any power to refuse to receive a particular person because he is persona non gram Or for other reasons, Its right to declare war is nothing more than the right of the council to recommend to the members military action and if in their discretion they act upon the recommendation the war is-carried on not by the League but by the participating members.

Its alleged right of sovereignty over the Saar basin is not such in strict legal theory but merely the right of provisional government and trusteeship the dejure sovereignty remaining in the German state. The situation is essentially the same in respect to the mandated territories, the sovereignty over them belonging either to the mandatory power or to the mandated state. In either case the role of the League is merely that of supervisionthe duty to see, so far as it can, that the mandatory power exercises its control in accordance with the terms of the mandate and for the benefit of the inhabitants.

As to the right of intervention in behalf of racial, linguistic or religious minorities, that is nothing more than the right to use good offices and moral influence or to recommend military action by the members of the League. Finally, the alleged League protectorate over Danzig is not such in fact, and it is pointed out that the control of the foreign relations of the free city has been entrusted to Poland, Who exercises it not on behalf of the League or even of the free city, but in the interest of Poland itself

For these reasons it is denied that the League is an international person, that is, a state in the sense of international law. The better view is that the League is not a state, least of all a superstate, according to either political science or international law, but is rather an association of independent states and self governing dominions established for the accomplishment of Specific Objects.

As such it approximates a state, in the sense of international law, more nearly than any Other international association in existence. In the course of time it may possibly develop into an association possessing the attributes of a full-fledged international person, though it is difficult to see how it can ever evolve into a state, as the term is ordinarily defined in political science and constitutional law, without its involving the destruction, in part at least, of the individual member states composing it.

Is the Papacy a State ?

Prior to 1870 the Holy See was a state and the pope was a temporal sovereign, as well as the ecclesiastical head of the Roman Catholic Church. In that year, however the papal territories were secularized and incorporated in the new kingdom of Italy and thus the temporal sovereignty of the pope came to an end.

Nevertheless, certain Catholic writers maintained that the papacy was still a state, although they admitted that it lacked some of the characteristics of other states. They argued that although the papacy had lost its former territories it stile possessed the Vatican with its grounds , that in its officials employees, and guards it had subjects, that they were under the jurisdiction of the papacy alone , that the papacy had its own governmental organization and judicial court, that the pope was not subject to the king of Italy or any other temporal sovereign that he sent and received diplomatic representatives who were treated on an equal footing with other diplomatic representatives, that he entered into agreements (concordats) with other states, and that he was accorded (at least by Catholic powers) the honors of a temporal sovereign.

The better opinion, however, is that while the papacy was treated somewhat as if it were an international person, it was not such in fact and that it was still less a state according to political science. It was not invited to send plenipotentiaries to either of the two Hague Peace Conferences or to other international conferences later convoked. Moreover, the diplomatic representatives appointed by or accredited to the Vatican were charged only with interests of a religious character, and the concordats to which the papacy was a party dealt only with such matters.

All doubt as to whether the papacy was a state was removed, however, in 1929 by the conclusion of a treaty by which Italy recognized the sovereignty, ownership, and exclusive jurisdiction of the Holy See over the Vatican City, a small territory of 160 acres inhabited by about 400 persons. Italy also recognized the right of the Holy See to send and receive diplomatic representatives according to the general provisions of international law.

By an express declaration, however, the Holy See announced its intention of remaining aloof from all temporal disputes between nations and refraining from participation in international congresses convoked for the settlement of such disputes, except Upon special appeal from the contending parties.

«The State» redirects here. For other uses, see State.

A state is a centralized political organization that imposes and enforces rules over a population within a territory. There is no undisputed definition of a state.^[1][2] One widely used definition comes from the German sociologist Max Weber: a «state» is a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, although other definitions are not uncommon.^[3][4] Absence of a state does not preclude the existence of a society, such as stateless societies like the Haudenosaunee Confederacy that «do not have either purely or even primarily political institutions or roles».^[5] The level of governance of a state, government being considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states,^[6][7] is used to determine whether it has failed.^[8]

Most often, a country has a single state, with various administrative divisions. It is a unitary state or a federal union; in the latter type, the term «state» is sometimes used to refer to the federated polities that make up the federation. (Other terms that are used in such federal systems may include “province”, “region^{[citation needed]}” or other terms.)

Most of the human population has existed within a state system for millennia; however, for most of prehistory people lived in stateless societies. The earliest forms of states arose about 5,500 years ago^[9] as governments gained state capacity in conjunction with rapid growth of cities, invention of writing and codification of new forms of religion. Over time, a variety of forms of states developed, which used many different justifications for their existence (such as divine right, the theory of the social contract, etc.). Today, the modern nation state is the predominant form of state to which people are subject.^[10] Sovereign states have sovereignty; any ingroup’s claim to have a state faces some practical limits via the degree to which other states recognize them as such.

Etymology[edit]

The word state and its cognates in some other European languages (stato in Italian, estado in Spanish and Portuguese, état in French, Staat in German) ultimately derive from the Latin word status, meaning «condition, circumstances». Latin status derives from stare, «to stand,» or remain or be permanent, thus providing the sacred or magical connotation of the political entity.

The English noun state in the generic sense «condition, circumstances» predates the political sense. It was introduced to Middle English c. 1200 both from Old French and directly from Latin.

With the revival of the Roman law in 14th-century Europe, the term came to refer to the legal standing of persons (such as the various «estates of the realm» – noble, common, and clerical), and in particular the special status of the king. The highest estates, generally those with the most wealth and social rank, were those that held power. The word also had associations with Roman ideas (dating back to Cicero) about the «status rei publicae«, the «condition of public matters». In time, the word lost its reference to particular social groups and became associated with the legal order of the entire society and the apparatus of its enforcement.^[11]

The early 16th-century works of Machiavelli (especially The Prince) played a central role in popularizing the use of the word «state» in something similar to its modern sense.^[12] The contrasting of church and state still dates to the 16th century. The North American colonies were called «states» as early as the 1630s.^{[citation needed]} The expression «L’État, c’est moi» («I am the State») attributed to Louis XIV, although probably apocryphal, is recorded in the late 18th century.^[13]

Definition[edit]

There is no academic consensus on the definition of the state.^[1] The term «state» refers to a set of different, but interrelated and often overlapping, theories about a certain range of political phenomena.^[2] According to Walter Scheidel, mainstream definitions of the state have the following in common: «centralized institutions that impose rules, and back them up by force, over a territorially circumscribed population; a distinction between the rulers and the ruled; and an element of autonomy, stability, and differentiation. These distinguish the state from less stable forms of organization, such as the exercise of chiefly power.»^[14]

The most commonly used definition is by Max Weber^{[15][16][17][18][19]} who describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory.^[3][4] Weber writes that the state «is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.»^[20]

While defining a state, it is important to not confuse it with a nation; an error that occurs frequently in common discussion. A state refers to a political unit with sovereignty over a given territory.^[21] While a state is more of a “political-legal abstraction,” the definition of a nation is more concerned with political identity and cultural or historical factors.^[21] Importantly, nations do not possess the organizational characteristics like geographic boundaries or authority figures and officials that states do.^[21] Additionally, a nation does not have a claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over their populace,^[21] while a state does, as Weber indicated. An example of the instability that arises when a state does not have a monopoly on the use of force can be seen in African states which remain weak due to the lack of war which European states relied on.^[22] A state should not be confused with a government; a government is an organization that has been granted the authority to act on the behalf of a state.^[21] Nor should a state be confused with a society; a society refers to all organized groups, movements, and individuals who are independent of the state and seek to remain out of its influence.^[21]

Neuberger offers a slightly different definition of the state with respect to the nation: the state is “a primordial, essential, and permanent expression of the genius of a specific [nation].»^[23]

The definition of a state is also dependent on how and why they form. The contractarian view of the state suggests that states form because people can all benefit from cooperation with others^[24] and that without a state there would be chaos.^[25] The contractarian view focuses more on the alignment and conflict of interests between individuals in a state. On the other hand, the predatory view of the state focuses on the potential mismatch between the interests of the people and interests of the state. Charles Tilly goes so far to say that states “resemble a form of organized crime and should be viewed as extortion rackets.»^[26] He argued that the state sells protection from itself and raises the question about why people should trust a state when they cannot trust one another.^[21]

Tilly defines states as «coercion-wielding organisations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and exercise clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories.»^[27] Tilly includes city-states, theocracies and empires in his definition along with nation-states, but excludes tribes, lineages, firms and churches.^[28] According to Tilly, states can be seen in the archaeological record as of 6000 BC; in Europe they appeared around 990, but became particularly prominent after 1490.^[28] Tilly defines a state’s «essential minimal activities» as:

1. War making – «eliminating or neutralizing their outside rivals»
2. State making – «eliminating or neutralizing their rivals inside their own territory»
3. Protection – «eliminating or neutralizing the enemies of their clients»
4. Extraction – «acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities»
5. Adjudication – «authoritative settlement of disputes among members of the population»
6. Distribution – «intervention in the allocation of goods among the members of the population»
7. Production – «control of the creation and transformation of goods and services produced by the population»^[29][30]

Importantly, Tilly makes the case that war is an essential part of state-making; that wars create states and vice versa.^[31]

Modern academic definitions of the state frequently include the criteria that a state has to be recognized as such by the international community.^[32]

Liberal thought provides another possible teleology of the state. According to John Locke, the goal of the state or commonwealth is «the preservation of property» (Second Treatise on Government), with ‘property’ in Locke’s work referring not only to personal possessions but also to one’s life and liberty. On this account, the state provides the basis for social cohesion and productivity, creating incentives for wealth-creation by providing guarantees of protection for one’s life, liberty and personal property. Provision of public goods is considered by some such as Adam Smith^[33] as a central function of the state, since these goods would otherwise be underprovided. Tilly has challenged narratives of the state as being the result of a societal contract or provision of services in a free market – he characterizes the state more akin as a protection racket in the vein of organized crime.^[30]

While economic and political philosophers have contested the monopolistic tendency of states,^[34] Robert Nozick argues that the use of force naturally tends towards monopoly.^[35]

Another commonly accepted definition of the state is the one given at the Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States in 1933. It provides that «[t]he state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.»^[36] And that «[t]he federal state shall constitute a sole person in the eyes of international law.»^[37]

Confounding the definition problem is that «state» and «government» are often used as synonyms in common conversation and even some academic discourse. According to this definition schema, the states are nonphysical persons of international law, governments are organizations of people.^[38] The relationship between a government and its state is one of representation and authorized agency.^[39]

Types of states[edit]

Charles Tilly distinguished between empires, theocracies, city-states and nation-states.^[28] According to Michael Mann, the four persistent types of state activities are:

1. Maintenance of internal order
2. Military defence and aggression
3. Maintenance of communications infrastructure
4. Economic redistribution^[40]

Josep Colomer distinguished between empires and states in the following way:

1. Empires were vastly larger than states
2. Empires lacked fixed or permanent boundaries whereas a state had fixed boundaries
3. Empires had a «compound of diverse groups and territorial units with asymmetric links with the center» whereas a state had «supreme authority over a territory and population»
4. Empires had multi-level, overlapping jurisdictions whereas a state sought monopoly and homogenization^[41]

According to Michael Hechter and William Brustein, the modern state was differentiated from «leagues of independent cities, empires, federations held together by loose central control, and theocratic federations» by four characteristics:

1. The modern state sought and achieved territorial expansion and consolidation
2. The modern state achieved unprecedented control over social, economic, and cultural activities within its boundaries
3. The modern state established ruling institutions that were separate from other institutions
4. The ruler of the modern state was far better at monopolizing the means of violence^[42]

States may be classified by political philosophers as sovereign if they are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Other states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state.^[43] Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union. A federated state is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation.^[44] (Compare confederacies or confederations such as Switzerland.) Such states differ from sovereign states in that they have transferred a portion of their sovereign powers to a federal government.^[45]

One can commonly and sometimes readily (but not necessarily usefully) classify states according to their apparent make-up or focus. The concept of the nation-state, theoretically or ideally co-terminous with a «nation», became very popular by the 20th century in Europe, but occurred rarely elsewhere or at other times. In contrast, some states have sought to make a virtue of their multi-ethnic or multinational character (Habsburg Austria-Hungary, for example, or the Soviet Union), and have emphasised unifying characteristics such as autocracy, monarchical legitimacy, or ideology. Other states, often fascist or authoritarian ones, promoted state-sanctioned notions of racial superiority.^[46] Other states may bring ideas of commonality and inclusiveness to the fore: note the res publica of ancient Rome and the Rzeczpospolita of Poland-Lithuania which finds echoes in the modern-day republic. The concept of temple states centred on religious shrines occurs in some discussions of the ancient world.^[47] Relatively small city-states, once a relatively common and often successful form of polity,^[48] have become rarer and comparatively less prominent in modern times. Modern-day independent city-states include Vatican City, Monaco, and Singapore. Other city-states survive as federated states, like the present day German city-states, or as otherwise autonomous entities with limited sovereignty, like Hong Kong, Gibraltar and Ceuta. To some extent, urban secession, the creation of a new city-state (sovereign or federated), continues to be discussed in the early 21st century in cities such as London.

State and government[edit]

A state can be distinguished from a government. The state is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time.^[49][50][51] That is, governments are the means through which state power is employed. States are served by a continuous succession of different governments.^[51] States are immaterial and nonphysical social objects, whereas governments are groups of people with certain coercive powers.^[52]

Each successive government is composed of a specialized and privileged body of individuals, who monopolize political decision-making, and are separated by status and organization from the population as a whole.

States and nation-states[edit]

States can also be distinguished from the concept of a «nation», where «nation» refers to a cultural-political community of people. A nation-state refers to a situation where a single ethnicity is associated with a specific state.

State and civil society[edit]

In the classical thought, the state was identified with both political society and civil society as a form of political community, while the modern thought distinguished the nation state as a political society from civil society as a form of economic society.^[53]

Thus in the modern thought the state is contrasted with civil society.^[54][55][56]

Antonio Gramsci believed that civil society is the primary locus of political activity because it is where all forms of «identity formation, ideological struggle, the activities of intellectuals, and the construction of hegemony take place.» and that civil society was the nexus connecting the economic and political sphere. Arising out of the collective actions of civil society is what Gramsci calls «political society», which Gramsci differentiates from the notion of the state as a polity. He stated that politics was not a «one-way process of political management» but, rather, that the activities of civil organizations conditioned the activities of political parties and state institutions, and were conditioned by them in turn.^[57][58] Louis Althusser argued that civil organizations such as church, schools, and the family are part of an «ideological state apparatus» which complements the «repressive state apparatus» (such as police and military) in reproducing social relations.^[59][60][61]

Jürgen Habermas spoke of a public sphere that was distinct from both the economic and political sphere.^[62]

Given the role that many social groups have in the development of public policy and the extensive connections between state bureaucracies and other institutions, it has become increasingly difficult to identify the boundaries of the state. Privatization, nationalization, and the creation of new regulatory bodies also change the boundaries of the state in relation to society. Often the nature of quasi-autonomous organizations is unclear, generating debate among political scientists on whether they are part of the state or civil society. Some political scientists thus prefer to speak of policy networks and decentralized governance in modern societies rather than of state bureaucracies and direct state control over policy.^[63]

State symbols[edit]

• flag
• coat of arms or national emblem
• seal or stamp
• national motto
• national colors
• national anthem

History[edit]

The earliest forms of the state emerged whenever it became possible to centralize power in a durable way. Agriculture and a settled population have been attributed as necessary conditions to form states.^{[64][65][66][67]} Certain types of agriculture are more conducive to state formation, such as grain (wheat, barley, millet), because they are suited to concentrated production, taxation, and storage.^{[64][68][69][70]} Agriculture and writing are almost everywhere associated with this process: agriculture because it allowed for the emergence of a social class of people who did not have to spend most of their time providing for their own subsistence, and writing (or an equivalent of writing, like Inca quipus) because it made possible the centralization of vital information.^[71] Bureaucratization made expansion over large territories possible.^[72]

The first known states were created in the Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. It is only in relatively modern times that states have almost completely displaced alternative «stateless» forms of political organization of societies all over the planet. Roving bands of hunter-gatherers and even fairly sizable and complex tribal societies based on herding or agriculture have existed without any full-time specialized state organization, and these «stateless» forms of political organization have in fact prevailed for all of the prehistory and much of human history and civilization.

The primary competing organizational forms to the state were religious organizations (such as the Church), and city republics.^[73]

Since the late 19th century, virtually the entirety of the world’s inhabitable land has been parcelled up into areas with more or less definite borders claimed by various states. Earlier, quite large land areas had been either unclaimed or uninhabited, or inhabited by nomadic peoples who were not organised as states. However, even within present-day states there are vast areas of wilderness, like the Amazon rainforest, which are uninhabited or inhabited solely or mostly by indigenous people (and some of them remain uncontacted). Also, there are so-called «failed states» which do not hold de facto control over all of their claimed territory or where this control is challenged. Currently the international community comprises around 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of which are represented in the United Nations.^{[citation needed]}

Pre-historic stateless societies[edit]

For most of human history, people have lived in stateless societies, characterized by a lack of concentrated authority, and the absence of large inequalities in economic and political power.

The anthropologist Tim Ingold writes:

It is not enough to observe, in a now rather dated anthropological idiom, that hunter gatherers live in ‘stateless societies’, as though their social lives were somehow lacking or unfinished, waiting to be completed by the evolutionary development of a state apparatus. Rather, the principal of their socialty, as Pierre Clastres has put it, is fundamentally against the state.^[74]

Neolithic period[edit]

During the Neolithic period, human societies underwent major cultural and economic changes, including the development of agriculture, the formation of sedentary societies and fixed settlements, increasing population densities, and the use of pottery and more complex tools.^[75][76]

Sedentary agriculture led to the development of property rights, domestication of plants and animals, and larger family sizes. It also provided the basis for the centralized state form^[77] by producing a large surplus of food, which created a more complex division of labor by enabling people to specialize in tasks other than food production.^[78] Early states were characterized by highly stratified societies, with a privileged and wealthy ruling class that was subordinate to a monarch. The ruling classes began to differentiate themselves through forms of architecture and other cultural practices that were different from those of the subordinate laboring classes.^[79]

In the past, it was suggested that the centralized state was developed to administer large public works systems (such as irrigation systems) and to regulate complex economies. However, modern archaeological and anthropological evidence does not support this thesis, pointing to the existence of several non-stratified and politically decentralized complex societies.^[80]

Ancient Eurasia[edit]

Mesopotamia is generally considered to be the location of the earliest civilization or complex society, meaning that it contained cities, full-time division of labor, social concentration of wealth into capital, unequal distribution of wealth, ruling classes, community ties based on residency rather than kinship, long distance trade, monumental architecture, standardized forms of art and culture, writing, and mathematics and science.^[81][82] It was the world’s first literate civilization, and formed the first sets of written laws.^[83][84] Bronze metallurgy spread within Afro-Eurasia from c. 3000 BCE, leading to a military revolution in the use of bronze weaponry, which facilitated the rise of states.^[85]

Classical antiquity[edit]

Although state-forms existed before the rise of the Ancient Greek empire, the Greeks were the first people known to have explicitly formulated a political philosophy of the state, and to have rationally analyzed political institutions. Prior to this, states were described and justified in terms of religious myths.^[86]

Several important political innovations of classical antiquity came from the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. The Greek city-states before the 4th century granted citizenship rights to their free population, and in Athens these rights were combined with a directly democratic form of government that was to have a long afterlife in political thought and history.

Feudal state[edit]

During Medieval times in Europe, the state was organized on the principle of feudalism, and the relationship between lord and vassal became central to social organization. Feudalism led to the development of greater social hierarchies.^[87]

The formalization of the struggles over taxation between the monarch and other elements of society (especially the nobility and the cities) gave rise to what is now called the Standestaat, or the state of Estates, characterized by parliaments in which key social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic matters. These estates of the realm sometimes evolved in the direction of fully-fledged parliaments, but sometimes lost out in their struggles with the monarch, leading to greater centralization of lawmaking and military power in his hands. Beginning in the 15th century, this centralizing process gives rise to the absolutist state.^[88]

Modern state[edit]

Cultural and national homogenization figured prominently in the rise of the modern state system. Since the absolutist period, states have largely been organized on a national basis. The concept of a national state, however, is not synonymous with nation state. Even in the most ethnically homogeneous societies there is not always a complete correspondence between state and nation, hence the active role often taken by the state to promote nationalism through emphasis on shared symbols and national identity.^[89]

Charles Tilly argues that the number of total states in Western Europe declined rapidly from the Late Middle Ages to Early Modern Era during a process of state formation.^[90] Other research has disputed whether such a decline took place.^[91]

For Edmund Burke (Dublin 1729 — Beaconsfield 1797), «a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation» (Reflections on the Revolution in France).^[92]

According to Hendrik Spruyt, the modern state is different from its predecessor polities in two main aspects: (1) Modern states have greater capacity to intervene in their societies, and (2) Modern states are buttressed by the principle of international legal sovereignty and the juridicial equivalence of states.^[93] The two features began to emerge in the Late Middle Ages but the modern state form took centuries to come firmly into fruition.^[93] Other aspects of modern states is that they tend to be organized as unified national polities, and that they have rational-legal bureaucracies.^[94]

Sovereign equality did not become fully global until after World War II amid decolonization.^[93] Adom Getachew writes that it was not until the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples that the international legal context for popular sovereignty was instituted.^[95] Historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper argue that «Westphalian sovereignty» – the notion that bounded, unitary states interact with equivalent states – «has more to do with 1948 than 1648.»^[96]

Theories for the emergence of the state[edit]

Earliest states[edit]

Theories for the emergence of the earliest states emphasize grain agriculture and settled populations as necessary conditions.^[82] Some argue that climate change led to a greater concentration of human populations around dwindling waterways.^[82]

Modern state[edit]

Hendrik Spruyt distinguishes between three prominent categories of explanations for the emergence of the modern state as a dominant polity: (1) Security-based explanations that emphasize the role of warfare, (2) Economy-based explanations that emphasize trade, property rights and capitalism as drivers behind state formation, and (3) Institutionalist theories that sees the state as an organizational form that is better able to resolve conflict and cooperation problems than competing political organizations.^[93]

According to Philip Gorski and Vivek Swaroop Sharma, the «neo-Darwinian» framework for the emergence of sovereign states is the dominant explanation in the scholarship.^[97] The neo-Darwininian framework emphasizes how the modern state emerged as the dominant organizational form through natural selection and competition.^[97]

Theories of state function[edit]

Most political theories of the state can roughly be classified into two categories. The first are known as «liberal» or «conservative» theories, which treat capitalism as a given, and then concentrate on the function of states in capitalist society. These theories tend to see the state as a neutral entity separated from society and the economy. Marxist and anarchist theories on the other hand, see politics as intimately tied in with economic relations, and emphasize the relation between economic power and political power. They see the state as a partisan instrument that primarily serves the interests of the upper class.^[51]

Anarchist perspective[edit]

Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state and hierarchies to be unnecessary and harmful and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy, a self-managed, self-governed society based on voluntary, cooperative institutions.

Anarchists believe that the state is inherently an instrument of domination and repression, no matter who is in control of it. Anarchists note that the state possesses the monopoly on the legal use of violence. Unlike Marxists, anarchists believe that revolutionary seizure of state power should not be a political goal. They believe instead that the state apparatus should be completely dismantled, and an alternative set of social relations created, which are not based on state power at all.^[98][99]

Various Christian anarchists, such as Jacques Ellul, have identified the state and political power as the Beast in the Book of Revelation.^[100][101]

Anarcho-capitalist perspective[edit]

Anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard come to some of the same conclusions about the state apparatus as anarchists, but for different reasons.^[102] The two principles that anarchists rely on most are consent and non-initiation.^[103] Consent in anarcho-capitalist theory requires that individuals explicitly assent to the jurisdiction of the State excluding Lockean tacit consent. Consent may also create a right of secession which destroys any concept of government monopoly on force.^[102][104] Coercive monopolies are excluded by the non-initiation of force principle because they must use force in order to prevent others from offering the same service that they do. Anarcho-capitalists start from the belief that replacing monopolistic states with competitive providers is necessary from a normative, justice-based scenario.^[103]

Anarcho-capitalists believe that the market values of competition and privatization can better provide the services provided by the state. Murray Rothbard argues in Power and Market that any and all government functions could better be fulfilled by private actors including: defense, infrastructure, and legal adjudication.^[102]

Marxist perspective[edit]

Marx and Engels were clear in that the communist goal was a classless society in which the state would have «withered away», replaced only by «administration of things».^[105] Their views are found throughout their Collected Works, and address past or then extant state forms from an analytical and tactical viewpoint, but not future social forms, speculation about which is generally antithetical to groups considering themselves Marxist but who – not having conquered the existing state power(s) – are not in the situation of supplying the institutional form of an actual society. To the extent that it makes sense, there is no single «Marxist theory of state», but rather several different purportedly «Marxist» theories have been developed by adherents of Marxism.^{[106][107][108]}

Marx’s early writings portrayed the bourgeois state as parasitic, built upon the superstructure of the economy, and working against the public interest. He also wrote that the state mirrors class relations in society in general, acting as a regulator and repressor of class struggle, and as a tool of political power and domination for the ruling class.^[109] The Communist Manifesto claims the state to be nothing more than «a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.”^[106]

For Marxist theorists, the role of the modern bourgeois state is determined by its function in the global capitalist order. Ralph Miliband argued that the ruling class uses the state as its instrument to dominate society by virtue of the interpersonal ties between state officials and economic elites. For Miliband, the state is dominated by an elite that comes from the same background as the capitalist class. State officials therefore share the same interests as owners of capital and are linked to them through a wide array of social, economic, and political ties.^[110]

Gramsci’s theories of state emphasized that the state is only one of the institutions in society that helps maintain the hegemony of the ruling class, and that state power is bolstered by the ideological domination of the institutions of civil society, such as churches, schools, and mass media.^[111]

Pluralism[edit]

Pluralists view society as a collection of individuals and groups, who are competing for political power. They then view the state as a neutral body that simply enacts the will of whichever groups dominate the electoral process.^[112] Within the pluralist tradition, Robert Dahl developed the theory of the state as a neutral arena for contending interests or its agencies as simply another set of interest groups. With power competitively arranged in society, state policy is a product of recurrent bargaining. Although pluralism recognizes the existence of inequality, it asserts that all groups have an opportunity to pressure the state. The pluralist approach suggests that the modern democratic state’s actions are the result of pressures applied by a variety of organized interests. Dahl called this kind of state a polyarchy.^[113]

Pluralism has been challenged on the ground that it is not supported by empirical evidence. Citing surveys showing that the large majority of people in high leadership positions are members of the wealthy upper class, critics of pluralism claim that the state serves the interests of the upper class rather than equitably serving the interests of all social groups.^[114][115]

Contemporary critical perspectives[edit]

Jürgen Habermas believed that the base-superstructure framework, used by many Marxist theorists to describe the relation between the state and the economy, was overly simplistic. He felt that the modern state plays a large role in structuring the economy, by regulating economic activity and being a large-scale economic consumer/producer, and through its redistributive welfare state activities. Because of the way these activities structure the economic framework, Habermas felt that the state cannot be looked at as passively responding to economic class interests.^{[116][117][118]}

Michel Foucault believed that modern political theory was too state-centric, saying «Maybe, after all, the state is no more than a composite reality and a mythologized abstraction, whose importance is a lot more limited than many of us think.» He thought that political theory was focusing too much on abstract institutions, and not enough on the actual practices of government. In Foucault’s opinion, the state had no essence. He believed that instead of trying to understand the activities of governments by analyzing the properties of the state (a reified abstraction), political theorists should be examining changes in the practice of government to understand changes in the nature of the state.^{[119][120][121]} Foucault developed the concept of governmentality while considering the genealogy of state, and considers the way in which an individual’s understanding of governance can influence the function of the state.^[122]

Foucault argues that it is technology that has created and made the state so elusive and successful, and that instead of looking at the state as something to be toppled we should look at the state as technological manifestation or system with many heads; Foucault argues instead of something to be overthrown as in the sense of the Marxist and Anarchist understanding of the state. Every single scientific technological advance has come to the service of the state Foucault argues and it is with the emergence of the Mathematical sciences and essentially the formation of Mathematical statistics that one gets an understanding of the complex technology of producing how the modern state was so successfully created. Foucault insists that the nation state was not a historical accident but a deliberate production in which the modern state had to now manage coincidentally with the emerging practice of the Police (Cameral science) ‘allowing’ the population to now ‘come in’ into jus gentium and civitas (Civil society) after deliberately being excluded for several millennia.^[123] Democracy wasn’t (the newly formed voting franchise) as is always painted by both political revolutionaries and political philosophers as a cry for political freedom or wanting to be accepted by the ‘ruling elite’, Foucault insists, but was a part of a skilled endeavour of switching over new technology such as; Translatio imperii, Plenitudo potestatis and extra Ecclesiam nulla salus readily available from the past Medieval period, into mass persuasion for the future industrial ‘political’ population(deception over the population) in which the political population was now asked to insist upon itself «the president must be elected». Where these political symbol agents, represented by the pope and the president are now democratised. Foucault calls these new forms of technology Biopower^{[124][125][123]} and form part of our political inheritance which he calls Biopolitics.

Heavily influenced by Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, a Greek neo-Marxist theorist argued that capitalist states do not always act on behalf of the ruling class, and when they do, it is not necessarily the case because state officials consciously strive to do so, but because the ‘structural’ position of the state is configured in such a way to ensure that the long-term interests of capital are always dominant. Poulantzas’ main contribution to the Marxist literature on the state was the concept of ‘relative autonomy’ of the state. While Poulantzas’ work on ‘state autonomy’ has served to sharpen and specify a great deal of Marxist literature on the state, his own framework came under criticism for its ‘structural functionalism’.^{[citation needed]}

Structural universe of the state or structural reality of the state[edit]

It can be considered as a single structural universe: the historical reality that takes shape in societies characterized by a codified or crystallized right, with a power organized hierarchically and justified by the law that gives it authority, with a well-defined social and economic stratification, with an economic and social organization that gives the society precise organic characteristics, with one (or multiple) religious organizations, in justification of the power expressed by such a society and in support of the religious beliefs of individuals and accepted by society as a whole. Such a structural universe, evolves in a cyclical manner, presenting two different historical phases (a mercantile phase, or “open society”, and a feudal phase or “closed society”), with characteristics so divergent that it can qualify as two different levels of civilization which, however, are never definitive, but that alternate cyclically, being able, each of the two different levels, to be considered progressive (in a partisan way, totally independent of the real value of well-being, degrees of freedom granted, equality realized and a concrete possibility to achieve further progress of the level of civilization), even by the most cultured fractions, educated and intellectually more equipped than the various societies, of both historical phases.^[126]

State autonomy within institutionalism[edit]

State autonomy theorists believe that the state is an entity that is impervious to external social and economic influence, and has interests of its own.^[127]

«New institutionalist» writings on the state, such as the works of Theda Skocpol, suggest that state actors are to an important degree autonomous. In other words, state personnel have interests of their own, which they can and do pursue independently of (at times in conflict with) actors in society. Since the state controls the means of coercion, and given the dependence of many groups in civil society on the state for achieving any goals they may espouse, state personnel can to some extent impose their own preferences on civil society.^[128]

Theories of state legitimacy[edit]

States generally rely on a claim to some form of political legitimacy in order to maintain domination over their subjects.^{[129][130][131]}

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Various social contract theories have been proffered to establish state legitimacy and to explain state formation. Common elements in these theories are a state of nature that incentivizes people to seek out the establishment of a state. Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature as «solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short» (Leviathan, Chapters XIII–XIV).^[132] Locke takes a more benign view of the state of nature and is unwilling to take as hard a stance on the degeneracy of the state of nature. He does agree that it is equally incapable of providing a high quality of life. Locke argues for inalienable human rights. One of the most significant rights for Locke was the right to property. He viewed it as a keystone right that was inadequately protected in the state of nature.^[133][134] Social contract theorists frequently argue for some level of natural rights. In order to protect their ability to exercise these rights, they are willing to give up some other rights to the state to allow it to establish governance.^{[citation needed]} Social contract theory then bases government legitimacy on the consent of the governed, but such legitimacy only extends as far as the governed have consented. This line of reasoning figures prominently in The United States Declaration of Independence.

Divine right of kings[edit]

The rise of the modern day state system was closely related to changes in political thought, especially concerning the changing understanding of legitimate state power and control. Early modern defenders of absolutism (Absolute monarchy), such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin undermined the doctrine of the divine right of kings by arguing that the power of kings should be justified by reference to the people. Hobbes in particular went further to argue that political power should be justified with reference to the individual (Hobbes wrote in the time of the English Civil War), not just to the people understood collectively. Both Hobbes and Bodin thought they were defending the power of kings, not advocating for democracy, but their arguments about the nature of sovereignty were fiercely resisted by more traditional defenders of the power of kings, such as Sir Robert Filmer in England, who thought that such defenses ultimately opened the way to more democratic claims.^{[citation needed]}

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Max Weber identified three main sources of political legitimacy in his works. The first, legitimacy based on traditional grounds is derived from a belief that things should be as they have been in the past, and that those who defend these traditions have a legitimate claim to power. The second, legitimacy based on charismatic leadership, is devotion to a leader or group that is viewed as exceptionally heroic or virtuous. The third is rational-legal authority, whereby legitimacy is derived from the belief that a certain group has been placed in power in a legal manner, and that their actions are justifiable according to a specific code of written laws. Weber believed that the modern state is characterized primarily by appeals to rational-legal authority.^{[135][136][137]}

State failure[edit]

Some states are often labeled as «weak» or «failed». In David Samuels’s words «…a failed state occurs when sovereignty over claimed territory has collapsed or was never effectively at all».^[138] Authors like Samuels and Joel S. Migdal have explored the emergence of weak states, how they are different from Western «strong» states and its consequences to the economic development of developing countries.

Samuels introduces the idea of state capacity, which he uses to refer to the ability of the state to fulfill its basic functions, such as providing security, maintaining law and order, and delivering public services. When a state does not accomplish this, state failure happens (Samuels, 2012). Other authors like Jeffrey Herbst add to this idea by arguing that state failure is the result of weak or non-existent institutions, which means that there is no state legitimacy because states are not able to provide goods or services, or maintain order and safety (Herbst, 1990). However, there are also ideas that challenge this notion of state failure. Stephen D. Krasner argues that state failure is not just the result of weak institutions, but rather a very complex phenomenon that varies according to context-specific circumstances, and should therefore not be analyzed through a simplistic understanding like the one normally presented (Krasner, 2004).

The problem with state failure[edit]

In «The Problem of Failed States,» Susan Rice argues that state failure is an important threat to global stability and security, since failed states are vulnerable to terrorism and conflict (Rice, 1994). Additionally, it is believed that state failure hinders democratic values, since these states often experience political violence, authoritarian rules, and a number of human rights abuses (Rotberg, 2004). While there is great discussion regarding the direct effects of state failure, its indirect effects should also be highlighted: state failure could lead to refugee flows and cross-border conflicts, while also becoming safe havens for criminal or extremist groups (Corbridge, 2005). In order to solve and prevent these issues in the future, it is necessary to focus on building strong institutions, promoting economic diversification and development, and addressing the causes of violence in each state (Mkandawire, 2001).

Early state formation[edit]

To understand the formation of weak states, Samuels compares the formation of European states in the 1600s with the conditions under which more recent states were formed in the twentieth century. In this line of argument, the state allows a population to resolve a collective action problem, in which citizens recognize the authority of the state and this exercise the power of coercion over them. This kind of social organization required a decline in legitimacy of traditional forms of ruling (like religious authorities) and replaced them with an increase in the legitimacy of depersonalized rule; an increase in the central government’s sovereignty; and an increase in the organizational complexity of the central government (bureaucracy).

The transition to this modern state was possible in Europe around 1600 thanks to the confluence of factors like the technological developments in warfare, which generated strong incentives to tax and consolidate central structures of governance to respond to external threats. This was complemented by the increase of the production of food (as a result of productivity improvements), which allowed to sustain a larger population and so increased the complexity and centralization of states. Finally, cultural changes challenged the authority of monarchies and paved the way to the emergence of modern states.^[139]

Late state formation[edit]

The conditions that enabled the emergence of modern states in Europe were different for other countries that started this process later. As a result, many of these states lack effective capabilities to tax and extract revenue from their citizens, which derives in problems like corruption, tax evasion and low economic growth. Unlike the European case, late state formation occurred in a context of limited international conflict that diminished the incentives to tax and increase military spending. Also, many of these states emerged from colonization in a state of poverty and with institutions designed to extract natural resources, which have made more difficult to form states. European colonization also defined many arbitrary borders that mixed different cultural groups under the same national identities, which has made difficult to build states with legitimacy among all the population, since some states have to compete for it with other forms of political identity.^[139]

As a complement of this argument, Migdal gives a historical account on how sudden social changes in the Third World during the Industrial Revolution contributed to the formation of weak states. The expansion of international trade that started around 1850, brought profound changes in Africa, Asia and Latin America that were introduced with the objective of assure the availability of raw materials for the European market. These changes consisted in: i) reforms to landownership laws with the objective of integrate more lands to the international economy, ii) increase in the taxation of peasants and little landowners, as well as collecting of these taxes in cash instead of in kind as was usual up to that moment and iii) the introduction of new and less costly modes of transportation, mainly railroads. As a result, the traditional forms of social control became obsolete, deteriorating the existing institutions and opening the way to the creation of new ones, that not necessarily lead these countries to build strong states.^[140] This fragmentation of the social order induced a political logic in which these states were captured to some extent by «strongmen», who were capable to take advantage of the above-mentioned changes and that challenge the sovereignty of the state. As a result, these decentralization of social control impedes to consolidate strong states.^[141]

See also[edit]

• Civilian control of the military
• Civilization state
• Colony
• International relations
• List of sovereign states
• Puppet state
• Rule of law
• Statism
• Supranational union
• Warlordism

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

Quotations related to State at Wikiquote

• Barclay, Thomas (1911). «State» . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 25 (11th ed.). pp. 799–801.