2.3: Characteristics of Modern States

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Mar 8, 2023
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- 2.2: The Origin of States
- 2.4: How to Compare States

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State Formation

State Formation and the Centralization of Power

Today we take it for granted that different societies are governed by different states, but this has not always been the case. Since the late nineteeth century, virtually the entirety of the world's inhabitable land has been parceled 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 organized as states. In fact, 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 first known states were created in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, the Americas (e.g., Aztec civilization, Inca civilization). Most agree that the earliest states emerged when agriculture and writing made it possible to centralize power in a durable way. Agriculture allowed communities to settle and also led to class division: some people devoted all their time to food production, while others were freed to specialize in other activities, such as writing or ruling. Thus, states, as an institution, were a social invention. Political sociologists continue to debate the origins of the state and the processes of state formation.

Competing Theories of State Formation

Hydraulic Civilization

According to one early theory of state formation, the centralized state was developed to administer large public works systems (such as irrigation systems) and to regulate complex economies. This theory was articulated by German American historian Karl August Wittfogel in his book 1957 Oriental Despotis. Wittfogel argued that most of the earliest states were formed in hydraulic civilizations, by which he meant civilizations where leaders controlled people by controlling the water supply. Often, these civilizations relied on complex irrigation systems that had to be centrally managed. The people, therefore, had good reason to give control to a central state, but in giving up control over the irrigation system, they also gave up control over their own livelihoods and, thus, the central state gained immense control over people in general. Although Wittfogel's theory is well known, it has also been criticized as inaccurate. Modern archaeological and anthropological evidence shows that many early societies were not as centralized, despotic, or unequal as the hydraulic theory would suggest.

Coercion, War, and the State

An alternative theory of state formation focuses on the rise of more modern nation-states and explains their rise by arguing they became necessary for leveraging the resources necessary to fight and defend against wars. Sociologist Charles Tilly is the best known theorist in this tradition. Tilly examined political, social, and technological change in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present and attempted to explain the unprecedented success of the nation-state as the dominant form of state on Earth. In other words, instead of asking (like Wittfogel) where the very first states came from, Tilly asked where the types of states with which we're most familiar came from, and why they became so common.

According to Tilly's theory, military innovation in pre-modern Europe (especially gunpowder and mass armies) made war extremely expensive. As a result, only states with a sufficient amount of capital and a large population could afford to pay for their security and ultimately survive in the hostile environment. Thus, the modern states and its institutions (such as taxes) were created to enable war making.

Rationalization and Bureaucracy

Yet another theory of state formation focuses on the long, slow, process of rationalization and bureaucratization that began with the invention of writing. The Greeks were the first people known to have explicitly formulated a political philosophy of the state, and to have rationally analyzed political institutions. In Medieval Europe, feudalism furthered the rationalization and formalization of the state. Feudalism was based on the relationship between lord and vassal, which became central to social organization and, indeed to state organization. The Medieval state was organized by Estates, or parliaments in which key social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic matters. Since then, states have continued to grow more rational and bureaucratic, with expanding executive bureaucracies, such as the extensive cabinet system in the United States. Thus, states have evolved from relatively simple but powerful central powers to complex and highly organized institutions.

Legitimacy

If the (implicit) theory underwriting this segment of the essay is correct, order occupies the top line among the consequences of politics and legitimacy forms its bottom line. In between, production/distribution, recognition/respect and internalities/externalities connect the two. There will only be legitimacy if there is order and how much of it and what kind of it will depend on the intervening consequences.

Power and legitimacy are among the most frequently used and essentially contested concepts in politology.²¹ They are also very difficult to measure quantitatively or even to observe qualitatively because they share a peculiar characteristic: when they are most present, they are least evident. An agent with absolute power does not have to act in order to produce compliant behavior; an agent who is absolutely legitimate can invoke conformity without doing anything and without meeting resistance from others. How do you explain something that is not happening – a dog that is not barking? The only available instrument that we can think of depends on the plausibility of exploring a counterfactual, namely, what would the compliant-conformist agent have done if the powerful-legitimate agent had not been there? Even the most gifted of politologists will find it difficult to make such an assessment credible.

First, let us define this elusive concept. Legitimacy is a shared expectation among agents in a relation of power such that the actions of those who rule are accepted voluntarily by those who are ruled because the latter are convinced that the actions of the former conform to pre-established and mutually acceptable norms. This implies:

That the bases upon which these norms are pre-established and become acceptable can vary from one arrangement, site or time to another – not only from one country or culture to another, but also within a single country/culture according to function or place.
That these bases can come in a wide variety of flavors – historical, political, material, economic, social, cultural, legal, linguistic – that can combine in a rich panoply of concatenations.
That the units within which relations of sub- and super-ordination are being voluntarily practiced can also vary in both time and space. While there is a tendency in the politological literature on legitimacy to accept passively the sovereign national state as the “natural” and “exclusive” site for it, there is no reason why other (sub- or supra-national) “polities” cannot have their own normative basis of legitimate authority.²²
That the norms must be accepted and “shared” by the agents, both those who rule and those who are ruled. This implies, first of all, that they must know who they are and what their respective roles should be. It also implies that the exercise of authority is “systemic,” i.e., it is embedded in a collectivity that is sufficiently interdependent and mutually trustful so that disputes over the validity or application of rules can be (and usually are) resolved by the intervention of trusted third parties within them.
That the agents involved may be individuals or collectivities of various sorts. Most of the literature conveniently makes the liberal assumption that the unique judges of legitimacy are individual human beings. This allows it to rely heavily on notions of family socialization, “moral sentiment” and a personal ethic of responsibility as the source of norms and the virtually unconscious mechanism for their enforcement. And this, in turn, tends to lead one to the conclusion that it is only in polities that have acquired a high degree of cultural homogeneity – e.g., nation-states – that legitimate political authority is possible. When one introduces (as we have done infra) the heterodox idea that most of the exchanges in modern politics are between organizations, and that these organizations tend to rely upon and reproduce norms of prudence, legal propriety and “best practice” that transcend individual preferences and even national borders, it then becomes possible to speak of legitimacy as “systemic” and not just “personal,” and as “strategic” and not just “cultural.” Organizations, including historically quite staid ones, do not always display this naturally “conservative” tendency. When they radicalize, they discard the norms and practices underlying the legitimacy in which they previously operated, and often are quite explicit about their project of “de-legitimation.”
That the basis for voluntary conformity is presumably normative, not instrumental. In a legitimate polity, agents agree to obey decisions that they have not supported made by rulers for whom they have not voted or otherwise endorsed. They also agree to do so even if it is not in their (self-assessed) interest to do so – and they should continue to do so even when the effectiveness of the polity is in manifest decline.

Authority and Legitimate Violence

Read this short article. In his seminal essay "The Politics of Vocation", German sociologist Max Weber argues that the state is essentially a form of government in which, even when not at war, there is an implicit assumption that internal peace is maintained by the potential threat of violence by the police and government. Written in 1919, this essay informed Weber's opinions and reflected his experiences while living in war-torn Europe.

Click https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-sociology/chapter/politics-power-and-authority/ link to open resource.

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