The State

The term ‘state’ can be used to refer to a bewildering range of things: a collection of institutions, a territorial unit, a historical entity, a philosophical idea and so on. In everyday language, the state is often confused with the government, the two terms being used interchangeably. However, although some form of government has probably always existed, at least within large communities, the state in its modern form did not emerge until about the fifteenth century. The precise relationship between state and government is, nevertheless, highly complex. Government is part of the state, and in some respects is its most important part, but it is only an element within a much larger and more powerful entity. So powerful and extensive is the modern state that its nature has become the centrepiece of political argument and ideological debate. This is reflected, in the first place, in disagreement about the nature of state power and the interests it represents, that is, competing theories of the state. Second, there are profound differences about the proper function or role of the state: what should be done by the state and what should be left to private individuals.

Government and the State

The state is often defined narrowly as a separate institution or set of institutions, as what is commonly thought of as ‘the state’. For example when Louis XIV supposedly declared, ‘L’e´tat c’est moi’, he was referring to the absolute power that was vested in himself as monarch. The state therefore stands for the apparatus of government in its broadest sense, for those institutions that are recognizably ‘public’ in that they are responsible for the collective organization of communal life and are funded at the public’s expense. Thus the state is usually distinguished from civil society. The state comprises the various institutions of government, the bureau-cracy, the military, police, courts, social security system and so forth; it can be identified with the entire ‘body politic’. It is in this sense, for instance, that it is possible to talk about ‘rolling forward’ or ‘rolling back’ the state, by which is meant expanding or contracting the responsibilities of state institutions and, in the process, enlarging or reducing the machinery of the state. However, such an institutional definition fails to take account of the fact that, in their capacity as citizens, individuals are also part of the political community, members of the state. Moreover, the state has a vital territorial component, its authority being confined to a precise geogra-phical area. This is why the state is best thought of not just as a set of institutions but as a particular kind of political association, specifically one that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders. In that sense, its institutional apparatus merely gives expression to state authority.

The defining feature of the state is sovereignty, its absolute and unrest-ricted power, discussed at greater length. The state commands supreme power in that it stands above all other associations and groups in society; its laws demand the compliance of all those who live within the territory. Thomas Hobbes conveyed this image of the state as the supreme power by portraying it as a ‘Leviathan’, a gigantic monster, usually represented as a sea creature. It is precisely its sovereignty which distinguishes the modern state from earlier forms of political association. In medieval times, for instance, rulers exercised power but only alongside a range of other bodies, notably the church, the nobility, and the feudal guilds. Indeed, it was widely accepted that religious authority, centring upon the pope, stood above the temporal authority of any earthly ruler. The modern state, however, which first emerged in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, took the form of a system of centralized rule that succeeded in subordinating all other institutions and groups, spiritual and temporal. Although such a state is now the most common form of political community worldwide, usually taking the form of the nation-state, there are still examples of stateless societies. Traditional societies, for instance, found amongst semi-nomadic peoples and sometimes settled tribes, may be said to be stateless in that they lack a central and sovereign authority, even though they may possess mechanisms of social control that may be described as government. Furthermore, a state can break down when its claim to exercise sovereign power is successfully challenged by another group or body, as occurs at times of civil war. In this way, Lebanon in the 1980s, racked by war among rival militias and invaded by Israeli and Syrian armies, and the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, can both be described as stateless societies.

In addition to sovereignty, states can be distinguished by the particular form of authority that they exercise. In the first place, state authority is territorially limited: states claim sovereignty only within their own borders and thus regulate the flow of persons and goods across these borders. In most cases these are land borders, but they may also extend several miles into the sea. Second, the jurisdiction of the state within its borders is universal, that is, everyone living within a state is subject to its authority. This is usually expressed through citizenship, literally membership of the state, which entails both rights and duties. Non-citizens resident in a state may not be entitled to certain rights, like the right to vote or hold public office, and may be exempt from particular obligations, such as jury service or military service, but they are nevertheless still subject to the law of the land.

Third, states exercise compulsory jurisdiction. Those living within a state rarely exercise choice about whether or not to accept its authority. Most people become subject to the authority of a state by virtue of being born within its borders; in other cases this may be a result of conquest. Immigrants and naturalized citizens are here exceptions since they alone can be said to have voluntarily accepted the authority of a state. Finally, state authority is backed up by coercion: the state must have the capacity to ensure that its laws are obeyed, which in practice means that it must possess the ability to punish transgressors. Max Weber (1864–1920) suggested in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ (1948) that ‘the state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’. By this he meant not only that the state had the ability to ensure the obedience of its citizens but also the acknowledged right to do so. A monopoly of ‘legitimate violence’ is therefore the practical expression of state sovereignty. The link between coercion and the state is also underlined by Philip Bobbitt’s (2002) portrayal of the state as essentially a ‘warmaking institution’.

Nevertheless, the relationship between the state and government re-mains complex. The state is an inclusive association, which in a sense embraces the entire community and encompasses those institutions that constitute the public sphere. Government can thus be seen as merely part of the state. Moreover, the state is a continuing, even permanent, entity. By contrast, government is temporary: governments come and go and systems of government are remodelled. On the other hand, although government may be possible without a state, the state is inconceivable in the absence of government. As a mechanism through which collective decisions are enacted, government is responsible for making and implementing state policy. Government is, in effect, ‘the brains’ of the state: it gives authoritative expression to the state. In this way, government is usually thought to dictate to and control other state bodies, the police and military, educational and welfare systems and the like. By implementing the various state functions, government serves to maintain the state itself in existence.

The distinction between state and government is not, however, simply an academic refinement; it goes to the very heart of constitutional rule. Government power can only be held in check when the government of the day is prevented from encroaching upon the absolute and unlimited authority of the state. This is particularly important given the conflicting interests which the state and the government represent. The state suppo-sedly reflects the permanent interests of society – the maintenance of public order, social stability, long-term prosperity and national security – while government is inevitably influenced by the partisan sympathies and ideological preferences of the politicians who happen to be in power. If government succeeds in harnessing the sovereign power of the state to its own partisan goals, dictatorship is the likely result. Liberal-democratic regimes have sought to counter this possibility by creating a clear divide between the personnel and machinery of government on the one hand, and the personnel and machinery of the state on the other. Thus the personnel of state institutions, like the civil service, the courts and the military, are recruited and trained in a bureaucratic manner, and are expected to observe strict political neutrality, enabling them to resist the ideological enthusiasms of the government of the day. However, such are the powers of patronage possessed by modern chief executives like the US president and the UK prime minister that this apparently clear division is often blurred in practice.

Theories of the State

In most Western industrialized countries the state possesses clear liberal-democratic features. Liberal-democratic states are, for instance, character-ized by constitutional government, a system of checks and balances amongst major institutions, fair and regular elections, a democratic franchise, a competitive party system, the protection of individual rights and civil liberties and so forth. Although there is broad agreement about the characteristic features of the liberal-democratic state, there is far less agreement about the nature of state power and the interests that it represents. Controversy about the nature of the state has, in fact, increasingly dominated modern political analysis and goes to the very heart of ideological and theoretical disagreements. In this sense, the state is an ‘essentially contested’ concept: there is a number of rival theories of the state, each offering a different account of its origins, development and impact.

Mainstream political analysis is dominated by the liberal theory of the state. This dates back to the emergence of modern political theory in the writings of social-contract theorists such as Hobbes and Locke. These thinkers argued that the state had risen out of a voluntary agreement, or social contract, made by individuals who recognized that only the establishment of a sovereign power could safeguard them from the insecurity, disorder and brutality of the ‘state of nature’. In liberal theory, the state is thus a neutral arbiter among competing groups and individuals in society; it is an ‘umpire’ or ‘referee’, capable of protecting each citizen from the encroachment of his or her fellow citizens. The state is therefore a neutral entity, acting in the interests of all and representing what can be called the ‘common good’ or ‘public interest’.

This basic theory has been elaborated by modern writers into a pluralist theory of the state. Pluralism is, at heart, the theory that political power is dispersed amongst a wide variety of social groups rather than an elite or ruling class. It is related to what Robert Dahl termed ‘polyarchy’, rule by the many. Although distinct from the classical conception of democracy as popular self-government, this nevertheless accepts that democratic processes are at work within the modern state: electoral choice ensures that government must respond to public opinion, and organized interests offer all citizens a voice in political life. Above all, pluralists believe that a rough equality exists among organized groups and interests in that each enjoys some measure of access to government and government is prepared to listen impartially to all. At the hub of the liberal-democratic state stand elected politicians who are publicly accoun-table because they operate within an open and competitive system. Non-elected state bodies like the civil service, judiciary, police, army and so on, carry out their responsibilities with strict impartiality, and are anyway subordinate to their elected political masters.

An alternative, neo-pluralist theory of the state has been developed by writers such as J.K. Galbraith and Charles Lindblom. They argue that the modern industrialized state is both more complex and less responsive to popular pressures than the classical pluralist model suggests. While not dispensing altogether with the notion of the state as an umpire acting in the public interest or common good, they insist that this picture needs qualifying. It is commonly argued by neo-pluralists, for instance, that it is impossible to portray all organized interests as equally powerful since in a capitalist economy business enjoys advantages which other groups clearly cannot rival. In The Affluent Society ([1962] 1985), Galbraith emphasized the ability of business to shape public tastes and wants through the power of advertising, and drew attention to the domination of major corporations over small firms and, in some cases, government bodies. Lindblom, in Politics and Markets (1977), pointed out that, as the major investor and largest employer in society, business is bound to exercise considerable sway over any government, whatever its ideological leanings or manifesto promises. Although neo-pluralists do not describe business as an ‘elite group’, capable of dictating to government in all areas, still less as a ‘ruling class’, they nevertheless accept that a liberal democracy is a ‘deformed polyarchy’ in which business usually exerts pre-eminent influence, especially over the economic agenda.

New Right ideas and theories became increasingly influential from the 1970s onwards. Like neo-pluralism, they built upon traditional liberal foundations but now constitute a major rival to classical pluralism. The New Right, or at least its neo-liberal or libertarian wing, is distinguished by strong antipathy towards government intervention in economic and social life, born of the belief that the state is a parasitic growth which threatens both individual liberty and economic security. The state is no longer an impartial referee but has become a self-serving monster, a ‘nanny’ or ‘leviathan’ state, interfering in every aspect of life. New Right thinkers have tried, in particular, to highlight the forces that have led to the growth of state intervention and which, in their view, must be countered. Criticism has, for instance, focused upon the process of party competition, or what Samuel Britten (1977) called ‘the economic consequences of democracy’. In this view, the democratic process encourages politicians to outbid one another by making vote-winning promises to the electorate, and encourages electors to vote according to short-term self-interest rather than long-term well-being. Equally, closer links between government and major economic interests, business and trade unions in particular, has greatly increased pressure for subsidies, grants, public investment, higher wages, welfare benefits and so forth, so leading to the problem of ‘government overload’. Public choice theorists such as William Niskanen (1971) have also suggested that ‘big’ government has been generated from within the machinery of the state itself by the problem of ‘bureaucratic over-supply’. Pressure for the expansion of the state comes from civil servants and other public employees, who recognize that it will bring them job security, higher pay and improved promotion prospects.

Pluralism has been more radically rejected by elitist thinkers who believe that behind the fac¸ade of liberal democracy there lies the permanent power of a ‘ruling elite’. Classical elitists such as Gaetano Mosca (1857–1941), Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) and Robert Michels (1876–1936) were con-cerned to demonstrate that political power always lies in the hands of a small elite and that egalitarian ideas, such as socialism and democracy, are a myth. Modern elitists, by contrast, have put forward strictly empirical theories about the distribution of power in particular societies, but have nevertheless drawn the conclusion that political power is concentrated in the hands of the few. An example of this was Joseph Schumpeter (see p. 223), whose Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy ([1944] 1976) suggested the theory of democratic elitism. Schumpeter described democ-racy as ‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’. The electorate can decide which elite rules, but cannot change the fact that the power is always exercised by an elite. Radical elite theorists have gone further and decried the importance of elections altogether. In The Managerial Revolution (1941), James Burn-ham suggested that a ‘managerial class’ dominated all industrial societies, both capitalist and communist, by virtue of its technical and scientific knowledge and its administrative skills. Perhaps the most influential of modern elite theorists, C. Wright Mills, argued in The Power Elite (1956) that US politics is dominated by big business and the military, commonly referred to as the ‘military-industrial complex’, which dictated government policy, largely immune from electoral pressure.

Marxism offers an analysis of state power that fundamentally challenges the liberal image of the state as a neutral arbiter or umpire. Marxists argue that the state cannot be understood separate from the economic structure of society: the state emerges out of the class system, its function being to maintain and defend class domination and exploitation. The classical Marxist view is expressed in Marx and Engels’ often-quoted dictum from The Communist Manifesto ([1848] 1976): ‘the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. This view was stated still more starkly by Lenin (see p. 83) in The State and Revolution ([1917] 1973), who referred to the state simply as ‘an instrument for the oppression of the exploited class’. Whereas classical Marxists stressed the coercive role of the state, modern Marxists have been forced to take account of the apparent legitimacy of the ‘bourgeois’ state, particularly in the light of the achievement of universal suffrage and the development of the welfare state. For example, Gramsci emphasized the degree to which the domination of the ruling class is achieved not only by open coercion but also by the elicitation of consent. He believed that the bourgeoisie had established ‘hegemony’, ideological leadership or domination, over the proletariat, and insisted that the state plays an important role in this process. Other Marxists have found in Marx himself the more sophisticated notion that the state can enjoy ‘relative autonomy’ from the ruling class and so can respond at times to the interests of other classes. Nicos Poulantzas (1973) portrayed the state as a ‘unifying social formation’, capable of diluting class tensions through, for example, the spread of political rights and welfare benefits. However, although this neo-Marxist theory echoes liberalism in seeing the state as an arbiter, it nevertheless emphasises the class character of the modern state by pointing out that it operates in the long-term interests of capitalism and therefore perpetuates a system of unequal class power.

The most radical condemnation of state power is, however, found in the writings of anarchists. Anarchists believe that the state and indeed all forms of political authority are both evil and unnecessary. They view the state as a concentrated form of oppression: it reflects nothing more than the desire of those in power, often loosely referred to as a ‘ruling class’, to subordinate others for their own benefit. In the words of the nineteenth-century Russian anarchist, Michael Bakunin (1814–76), the state is ‘the most flagrant, the most cynical and the most complete negation of humanity’. Even modern anarcho-capitalists such as Murray Rothbard simply dismiss the state as a ‘criminal band’ or ‘protection racket’, which has no legitimate claim to exercise authority over the individual. Modern anarchists, however, are less willing than the classic anarchist thinkers to denounce the state as nothing more than an instrument of organised violence. In The Ecology of Freedom (1982), for instance, Murray Book-chin described the state as ‘an instilled mentality for ordering reality’, emphasising that in addition to its bureaucratic and coercive institutions the state is also a state of mind.

Role of the State

With the exception of anarchists, all political thinkers have regarded the state as, in some sense, a worthwhile or necessary association. Even revolutionary socialists have accepted the need for a proletarian state to preside over the transition from capitalism to communism, in the form of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. Thinkers have, however, profoundly disagreed about the exact role that the state should play in society. This has often been portrayed as the balance between the state and civil society. The state, as explained earlier, necessarily reflects sovereign, compulsory and coercive authority. Civil society, on the other hand, embraces those areas of life in which individuals are free to exercise choice and make their own decisions; in other words, it is a realm of voluntary and autonomous associations.

At one extreme in this debate, classical liberals have argued that individuals should enjoy the widest possible liberty and have therefore insisted that the state be confined to a minimal role. This minimal role is simply to provide a framework of peace and social order within which private citizens can conduct their lives as they think best. The state therefore acts, as Locke put it, as a nightwatchman, whose services are only called upon when orderly existence is threatened. This nevertheless leaves the state with three important functions. The central function of the ‘minimal’ or ‘nightwatchman’ state is the maintenance of domestic order, in effect, protecting individual citizens from one another. All states thus possess some kind of machinery for upholding law and order. Secondly, it is necessary to ensure that the voluntary agreements or contracts which private individuals enter into are respected, which requires that they can be enforced through a court system. Third, there is the need to provide protection against the possibility of external attack, necessitating some form of armed service. Such minimal states, with institutional apparatus restricted to little more than a police force, court system and army, commonly existed in the nineteenth century, but became increasingly rare in the twentieth century. However, since the 1980s, particularly in association with the pressures generated by globalization, there has been a worldwide tendency to minimize or ‘roll back’ state power. The minimal state is the ideal of the liberal New Right, which argues that economic and social matters should be left entirely in the hands of individuals or private businesses. In their view, an economy free from state interference will be competitive, efficient and productive; and individuals freed from the dead hand of government will be able to rise and fall according to their talents and willingness to work.

For much of the twentieth century, however, there was a general tendency for the state’s role progressively to expand. This had occurred in response to electoral pressures for economic and social security, supported by a broad ideological coalition including social democrats, modern liberals and paternalistic conservatives. The principal field of government activism had been the provision of welfare designed to reduce poverty and social inequality. The form which social welfare has taken has, however, varied considerably. In some cases, the social security system operates as little more than a ‘safety net’ intended to alleviate the worst incidents of hardship. In the USA, Australia and, increasingly, the UK, welfare provision usually emphasizes self-reliance, and targets benefits on those in demonstrable need. On the other hand, developed welfare states have been established and persist in many Western European countries. These attempt to bring about a wholesale redistribution of wealth through a comprehensive system of public services and state benefits, financed though progressive taxation. The concept of welfare and controversies about it are examined in greater depth in Chapter 10.

The second major form state intervention has taken is economic management. As industrialized economies develop they require some kind of management by a central authority. In most Western societies this has led to the emergence of ‘managed capitalism’. From the viewpoint of the New Right, however, government’s economic responsibilities should be restricted to creating conditions within which market forces can most effectively operate. In practice, this means that the state should only promote competition and ensure stable prices by regulating the supply of money. Others, however, have accepted the need for more far-reaching economic management. Keynesian economic policies have, for instance, been endorsed by social democrats and modern liberals in the hope that they will reduce unemployment and promote growth. Under their influence, public expenditure grew and the state became the most influential of economic actors. Nationalization, widely adopted in the early post-1945 period, led to the development of so-called ‘mixed economies’, allowing the state to control certain industries directly and to have an indirect influence over the entire economy. Although there is now a widespread recognition of the need for a balance between the state and the market in economic life, party politics in much of the industria-lized West boils down to a debate about where that balance should be struck. Ideological battles often focus upon precisely how far the state should intervene in economic and social life as opposed to leaving matters to the impersonal pressures of the market. 

A more extensive form of state intervention, however, developed in orthodox communist countries such as the Soviet Union. These sought to abolish private enterprise altogether and set up centrally planned econo-mies, administered by a network of economic ministries and planning committees. The economy was thus transferred entirely from civil society to the state, creating collectivized states. The justification for collectivizing economic life lies in the Marxist belief that capitalism is a system of class exploitation, suggesting that central planning is both morally superior and economically more efficient. The experience of communist regimes in the second half of the twentieth century, however, suggests that state collecti-vization struggled to produce the levels of economic growth and general prosperity that were achieved in Western capitalist countries. Without doubt, the failure of central planning contributed to the collapse of orthodox communism in the Eastern European revolutions of 1989–91.

The most extreme form of state control is found in totalitarian states. The essence of totalitarianism is the construction of an all-embracing state, whose influence penetrates every aspect of human existence, the economy, education, culture, religion, family life and so forth. Totalitarian states are characterised by a pervasive system of ideological manipulation and a comprehensive process of surveillance and terroristic policing. Clearly, all the mechanisms through which opposition can be expressed – competitive elections, political parties, pressure groups and free media – have to be weakened or removed. The best examples of such regimes were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin. In effect, totalitarianism amounts to the outright abolition of civil society, the abolition of ‘the private’, a goal which only fascists, who wish to dissolve individual identity within the social whole, are prepared openly to endorse. In one sense, totalitarianism sets out to politicize every aspect of human existence: it seeks to establish comprehensive state control. However, in another sense, it can be regarded as the death of politics, in that its goal is a monolithic society in which individuality, diversity and conflict are abolished.

Summary

1 Politics involves diversity, conflict and attempts to resolve conflict. While some have seen politics as narrowly related to the affairs of government or to a public sphere of life, others believe that it reflects the distribution of power or resources and so can be found in every social institution.

2 Government refers to ordered rule, a characteristic of all organised societies. First world liberal-democratic forms of government can be distinguished from state socialist second world and various forms of third world govern-ment, though such distinctions have been blurred by developments such as the fall of communism.

3 The state is a sovereign political association operating in a defined territorial area. In the view of pluralists, the liberal democratic state acts impartially and responds to popular pressures. However, others suggest that the state is characterised by biases which either systematically favour the bureau-

cracy or state elite or benefit major economic interests.

4 The role of the state is perhaps the dominant theme of party political dis-agreement, reflecting different views about the proper relationship between the state and the individual.While some wish to roll back the state and leave matters in the hands of individuals and the market, others want to roll it forward in the cause of social justice and widespread prosperity.

Further Reading

Bauman, Z. In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999.

Crick, B. In Defence of Politics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2000.

Dunleavy, P. and O’Leary, B. Theories of the State: The Politics of Liberal

Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987.

Easton, D. A Systems Analysis of Political Life. 2nd edn. University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Elsted, J. and Slagstad, R. (eds) Constitutionalism and Democracy. Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Hague, R. and Harrop, M. Comparative Government and Politics: an Introduc-

tion, 6th edn. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Held, D. Political Theory and the Modern State. Oxford: Polity, 1990.

Leftwich, A. (ed.) What is Politics? The Activity and its Study. Oxford: Blackwell, 1984.

McLennon, G., Held, D. and Hall, S. (eds) The Idea of the Modern State. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1984.

Rosenau, J. and Czenpiel, E.-O. (eds) Governance with Government: Order and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

van Creveld, M. The Rise and Decline of the State. Cambridge University Press, 1999.