Introduction

The state is the quintessential modern political institution. What

has been referred to variously as “the modern state,” “the nation-
state,” “the constitutional state,” or “the bureaucratic state” has
existed for no longer than five centuries and no less than two. Yet,
in that time, the very nature of human society has undergone
monumental transformations, and states have been at the center
of each change. While the relevance of states to modern
society—and to modern forms of politics—is widely recognized,
the precise nature of the state and state power is the subject of
perennial debate. Over the course of the 20th century, the study
of politics has ebbed and flowed from state-centered explanations
of political phenomena to society-centered explanations, wherein
the state is seen as epiphenomenal to more-microlevel
processes. Passionate debates continue over whether states are
more or less coherent entities capable of autonomous, directed,
state-interested action, or whether they fundamentally reflect the
interests of the competing groups or classes that constitute
society. Is there a universal category of political organization
called the state or are particular institutions associated with the
state mediated through widely varying cultural practices and
institutions? More contentious still are debates over the political
implications of how states are defined and constructed, through
language and through law, and whether these images and
discourses reproduce structures of power that consistently favor
certain groups at the expense of others. Finally, as goods, capital,
information, and people cross the borders of territorial states with
increasing ease, some scholars question whether the notion of
sovereignty has become obsolete or whether new ways of
organizing social power will, if they have not already, relegate
territorial states to the dustbins of history. This article is organized
according to a loose chronology of the major approaches to and
thematic debates about the nature of the state since the early
20th century. An additional section (Conceptual Foundations)
reaches back further in order to introduce some of the theoretical
and conceptual forebears to a political science or sociology of the
state.

Imagine for a second if the police, government, the state, and

laws didn't exist. What would we do if we didn't have a formal
society? What if we didn't have government or politics? What
would hold us together? Basically, the idea of a state of
nature asks us to think about these very questions. It also asks
us to think about why we let ourselves be governed. These might
seem like odd questions, but philosophers have long been
concerned with trying to understand them.
Key to this is the concept of a social contract. This is kind of like
a hypothetical agreement between subjects or citizens and an
authority or a ruler. So, it's not as if we sign a piece of paper or
something, but rather we kind of form a contract among ourselves
to maintain order. Different philosophers have different
perspectives on what would happen in a state of nature. Let's talk
about three major philosophers who wrote about the idea of a
state of nature.
Nature OF State
The state of nature is a situation without government, employed in
social contract theory in order to justify political authority. The
device is most important in the works of the great contract theorists
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mainly Thomas
Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712–1778). But it has a long history and was used by
many other theorists. In the latter half of the twentieth century,
variants of the state of nature were revived by John Rawls and other
theorists who attempted to establish particular moral or political
principles on the grounds that they would be selected in artificially
constructed choice situations.

Accounts of humanity's purported natural condition differ in

important ways, for example, whether circumstances are peaceful
or riddled with conflict, whether there is an absence of society as
well as the state, and the extent to which the people depicted
resemble those in existing societies. These variations and others
lead to justifications of different forms of governments—and moral
principles.
Early History
Mythical accounts of a pre-social and/or pre-political Golden Age
abound in classical literature. In Plato's Protagoras, the title
character describes the original human condition as one of isolation
and peril from wild beasts and the elements. Divine intervention
provided fire and the crafts, which allowed humans to defend
themselves, and moral qualities of justice and respect, which
allowed them to live together peaceable. A variant of these themes
is that people originally enjoyed a condition of peace and plenty,
until some intervening event gave rise to conflict, which made the
state necessary. The Stoic Posidonius attributed humankind's fall to
the origin of property, while according to Ovid, the change occurred
as people began to eat meat.

Connections between an original condition and the origin of justices

are presented in Book II of Plato's Republic. Plato's spokesman,
Glaucon, argues that justice arose from a general compromise:
people agreed not to take advantage of others, in exchange for not
being taken advantage of themselves . This was perhaps the first
"social contract" argument in the Western tradition.

classical arguments blended well with Judaeo-Christian accounts of

the Garden of Eden and subsequent fall, to support the important
medieval notion that the state arose as a remedy for sin. But other
theorists, influenced by Aristotle, argued against the state of nature
and contract traditions, claiming that the human is naturally a
political animal, and so there could not have been a primordial pre-
social (or pre-political) condition.
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau’s views on
State of Nature
During the late medieval and early modern periods, claims
according to which political power originated from a pre-political,
natural condition generally supported limitations on political power—
which people would have required for renouncing their natural
liberty. The great originality of Hobbes was to use a contract
argument to establish absolute government. He accomplished this
by depicting the state of nature in horrific terms, as a war of all
against all, in which life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short"
(Leviathan, chap. 13). Hobbes argued that, in order to escape such
horrors, people would consent to absolute political authority—and
that only absolute authority could ward off the state of nature.
Although Hobbes employed the device of the state of nature for largely
analytical purposes, he also believed in its historical accuracy. Evidence
he provided is people's defensive behavior in society, the "savage
people" in America, whom he saw as living in a "brutish manner," and
how states confront one another in the international arena, "in the state
and posture of Gladiators," with their "Forts, Garrisons, and Guns"
pointed at one another (Lev. chap. 13).
The state of nature described by Locke in his "Second Treatise of
Government" People live under the law of nature, which, in the
absence of government, they enforce themselves (Secs. 6–9).
People also establish property rights, use money, and have
something of a developed economy. But conflict arises because
people are self-interested and so not impartial in their own disputes.
Recognizing the need for an impartial umpire, Lockean individuals
leave the state of nature, in two stages, forming first a community
and then government. When government violates the agreement
according to which it was established, people revert to a pre-political
but not pre-social state. The state of nature returns only with
complete destruction of society, through foreign invasion or similar
catastrophes (Sec. 211).
In his "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality," Rousseau criticized
other theorists for attributing to natural man qualities they found in
their own societies. Influenced by anthropological and zoological
discoveries, Rousseau depicted natural man as little different than
an ape: solitary, without language, and with limited reasoning
capacity. But because his purely physical needs are satisfied
relatively easily, he is content and, above all, morally innocent. Man
becomes corrupt only through a gradual process of moving into
society, and Rousseau depicted the contract through which
government originates as a clever fraud perpetrated by the rich
upon the poor. Rousseau's political theory aspired to recapture as
much primordial natural purity as possible.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the social contract was widely
criticized on historical grounds. The idea fell into general disuse,
and with it, the state of nature. Contract theory was revived by John
Rawls, in A Theory of Justice (1971), although Rawls used his
contract to justify moral principles rather than a form of government.
Rawls's principles of justice are those that would be agreed upon
under appropriately fair conditions. The state of nature reappears in
his theory as the "original position." In order to prevent people from
choosing principles that would advantage themselves, they are
placed behind a "veil of ignorance" and so deprived of knowledge of
their personal attributes, e.g., age, religion, race, and wealth. The
two principles selected under these conditions are highly egalitarian,
guaranteeing equal liberty and that economic inequalities benefit the
least-advantaged members of society. With Rawls, the state of
nature (original position) loses all historical pretense. It is simply an
analytical device to help identify appropriate moral principles.
Bibliography
Gauthier, David. Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Edited by R. Tuck. Cambridge, U.K.:

Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Locke, John. "Second Treatise of Government." In Two Treatises of

Government, edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge, U.K., and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic

Books, 1974.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "Discourse on the Origin of Inequality."

In Basic Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, edited by
Peter Gay. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.