FURTHER READING

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1035.

STATE

The state can most simply be defined as a political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders and exercises *authority through a set of permanent institutions. It is possible to identify five key features of the state. First, the state exercises *sovereignty – it exercises absolute and unrestricted *power in that it stands above all other associations and groups in society; Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), for this reason, portrayed the state as a ‘leviathan', a gigantic monster. Second, state institutions are recognisably ‘public', in contrast to the ‘private' institutions of *civil society – state bodies are responsible for making and enforcing collective decisions in society and are funded at the public's expense. Third, the state is an exercise in legitimation – its decisions are usually (although not necessarily) accepted as binding on its citizens because, it is claimed, it reflects the permanent interests of society. Fourth, the state is an instrument in domination – it possesses the coercive power to ensure that its *laws are obeyed and that transgressors are punished; as Max Weber (1864–1920) put it, the state has a monopoly of the means of ‘legitimate violence'. Fifth, the state is a territorial association – it exercises jurisdiction within geographically defined borders and in international politics is treated (at least in theory) as an autonomous entity.

States nevertheless come in different shapes and sizes. Minimal states or ‘nightwatchman' states, advocated by classical liberals and the New Right, are merely protective bodies whose sole function is to provide a framework of peace and social order within which citizens can conduct their lives as they think best. Developmental states, found in Japan and the ‘tiger' economies of East and Southeast Asia, operate through a close relationship between the state and major economic interests, notably big business, and aim to develop strategies for national prosperity in a context of transnational competition. Social-democratic states, the ideal of both modern liberals and democratic socialists, intervene widely in economic and social life in order to promote growth and maintain full employment, reduce poverty and bring about a more equitable distribution of social rewards. Collectivised states, found in orthodox communist countries, abolished private enterprise altogether and set up centrally planned economies administered by a network of economic ministries and planning committees. Totalitarian states, as constructed in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR (although modern regimes such as Saddam Hussain's Iraq arguably have similar characteristics), penetrate every aspect of human existence through a combination of comprehensive surveillance and terroristic policing, and a pervasive system of ideological manipulation and control.

A distinction should be drawn between the state and the *government, two terms that are often used interchangeably. The state is more extensive than government. The state is an inclusive association that encompasses all the institutions of the public realm and embraces all the members of the community (in their capacity as citizens), meaning that government is merely part of the state. In this sense government is the means through which the authority of the state is brought into operation; it is ‘the brains' of the state. Nevertheless, the state is a continuing, even permanent, entity, while government is temporary. Within an enduring state system, governments may come and go, and systems of government may be reformed and remodelled. Moreover, the state exercises impersonal authority, in the sense that the personnel of state bodies is recruited and trained in a bureaucratic manner and is (usually) expected to be politically neutral, enabling state bodies to resist the ideological enthusiasms of the government of the day. Finally, the state, in theory at least, represents the public interest or the common good. Government, on the other hand, represents the partisan sympathies of those who happen to be in power at any particular time.

Significance

The state has always been central to political analysis, to such an extent that *politics is often understood as the study of the state. This is evident in two key debates. The first and most fundamental of these focuses upon the need for the state and the basis of political *obligation. The classic justification for the state is provided by social contract theory, which constructs a picture of what life would be like in a stateless society, a so-called ‘state of nature'. In the view of thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke (1632–1704), as the state of nature would be characterised by an unending civil war of each against all, people would be prepared to enter into an agreement – a social contract – through which they would sacrifice a portion of their liberty in order to create a sovereign body without which orderly and stable existence would be impossible. In the final analysis, then, individuals should obey the state because it is the only safeguard they have against disorder and chaos. The rival view, advanced by *anarchism, is based upon markedly more optimistic assumptions about *human nature, and places a heavier emphasis upon natural order and spontaneous cooperation amongst individuals. Anarchists have also looked to a range of social institutions, such as common ownership or the market mechanism, to underpin social stability in the absence of a state.

The second area of debate concerns the nature of state power. Much of *political theory deals specifically with rival theories of the state. The major positions in this debate can be summarised as follows. Liberals view the state as a neutral arbiter amongst competing interests and groups in society, a vital guarantee of social order; the state is at worst a ‘necessary evil'. Marxists have portrayed the state as an instrument of class oppression, a ‘bourgeois' state, or, allowing for its ‘relative autonomy' from the ruling class, have emphasised that its role is to maintain stability within a system of unequal class power. Democratic socialists often regard the state as an embodiment of the common good, highlighting its capacity to rectify the injustices of the class system. Conservatives have generally linked the state to the need for authority and discipline to protect society from incipient disorder, hence their traditional preference for a strong state. The New Right has highlighted the non-legitimate character of the state by drawing attention to the extent to which it articulates its own interests separate from those of the larger society and often to the detriment of the economic performance. Feminists have viewed the state as an instrument of male power, the ‘patriarchal' state serving to exclude women from, or subordinate them within, the ‘public' or political sphere of life. Finally, anarchists argue that the state is nothing less than legalised oppression operating in the interests of the powerful, propertied and privileged.

The late twentieth century nevertheless witnessed a general ‘hollowing out' of the state, leading, some argue, to its growing irrelevance in the modern world. Chief amongst these developments have been: *globalisation and the incorporation of national economies into a global one that cannot be controlled by any state; privatisation and the growing preference for market organisation over state management; and localism, the unleashing of centrifugal pressures through a strengthening of regional and community politics and the rise of particularist *nationalisms.

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