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State & Democracy , MA (DS) First Year 2021

Class Notes October 5, 2021: Bringing the State Back in, 1985 ( Weberian- Organizational
Analytic Approach/ or known as State Autonomy Theory )

Preface
Leading scholar is Harvard -based political scientist Theda Skocpol with Peter B Evans;
Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Charles Tilly, Peter Katzenstein, Alfred Stepan, Ira Katznelson &
David Laitin among others ,

Using Max Weber’s ideas of autonomous and rational bureaucracies, & criticizing society -
centred approach to studying state led by pluralists, neo-Marxists, and power structure
researchers), Skocpol led a group of researchers to develop State Autonomy Theory. This
theory underlined the idea that state bureaucracies could have the potential for autonomous
operations, and that this potential was ignored by scientists who were focused on society-
centric studies.

Flaws in conventional ideas of State

In conventional legal and constitutional perspectives, the state was considered to be an old-
fashioned concept, associated with dry and dusty legal-formalist studies of nationally
particular constitutional principles. "Government" was viewed primarily as an arena within
which economic interest groups or normative social movements contended or allied with
one another to shape the making of public policy decisions.

Why State Autonomy Theory

Skocpol started out in the 1970s as the main advocate of state autonomy theory in American
sociology and political science. She began her research career studying the revolutions in
France, Russia, and China (Skocpol, 1979) This research led her to the conclusion that states
had the "potential" for autonomy which means effectively that state is not reducible to class logic
or it does not represent concentrated class power.

Theoretical Framework
In the decade of 1970, 'state was conspicuous by its absence' and saw an influx in pluralist,
structuralist and neo-Marxist literature on State theory through the works of Althusser,
Miliband, D.A. Gold, Poulantzas and others and inspired neo-Marxist society centered
approach in explaining state. Earlier state centered theorist like J. P. Nettl in his masterpiece
“The state as conceptual variable” warned that academicians have treated the concept of state
as a “footnote, or as a problem of semantics” and equated state with “central government

incontradistinction with society ”

Liberals, pluralists and Marxist perspective; State as reflexes of social forces (interest
group theory & class struggle) or “state as a representative of the bourgeoisie or capitalists as
if the state does not a mind of its own or its own will -power’(Sounds like crude sociological
reductionism)

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Comparative methodology and the theory of State

Theda Skocpol writes –defending “ Bringing the state back in” that “Students of Latin
America, Africa, and Asia have examined the roles of states in instituting comprehensive
political reforms, helping to shape national economic development, and bargaining with
multinational corporations” And “Scholars interested in the advanced industrial democracies
of Europe, North America, and Japan have probed the involvements of states in developing
social programs and in managing domestic and international economic problems.
The Revival of a Continental European Perspective

 In the nineteenth century, social theorists oriented to the realities of social change and
politics on the European continent refused (even after industrialization was fully
under way) to accept the de-emphasis of the state characteristic of those who centered
their thinking on Britain. Continental students of social life, especially Germans,
insisted on the institutional reality of the state and its continuing impact on and
within civil society.
 Writings of such major German scholars as Max Weber and Otto Hintze became
primary material for state autonomy theory .

Why Max Weber important here ?

Max Weber unlike Karl Marx famously argued that states are compulsory associations claiming
control over territories and the people within them. Administrative, legal, extractive, and coercive
organizations are the core of any state. These organizations are variably structured in different
countries, Political Scientist Alfred Stepan puts it in a formulation that captures the biting edge of
the Weberian perspective: “The state must be considered as more than the "government’--- It is the
continuous administrative, legal, bureaucratic and coercive systems that attempt not only to
structure relationships between civil society and public authority in a polity but also to structure
many crucial relationships within civil society as well”.

German Historian Otto Hintze’s Influence on State Theory

Otto Hintze demonstrated that state structures and actions are conditioned by historically
changing transnational contexts.
These contexts impinge on individual states through geopolitical relations of interstate
domination and competition, through the international communication of ideals and models
of public policy, and through world economic patterns of trade, division of productive
activities, investment flows, and international finance.
States necessarily stand at the intersections between domestic sociopolitical orders and the
transnational relations within which they must maneuver for survival and advantage in
relation to other states. The modern state as we know it, and as Weber and Hintze
conceptualized it, has always been, since its birth in European history, part of a system of
competing and mutually involved states.

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State as autonomous actor; Weberian Approach

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 (Theda Skocpol—Brining the state
back in) & Marx’s view on the state in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Luis Bonaparte”}

Define State as autonomous actor

Writing in her book “ Brining the State Back in”, Skocpol writes, “ we can make sense of
social revolutionary transformations only if we take the state seriously as a macro-
structure.” In other words, “The state properly conceived as no mere arena in which socio-
economic struggles are fought out. It is rather a set of administrative, policing, and military
organizations and more or less coordinated by an executive authority.”

Characteristics of State
Skocpol argues that “Any state first and fundamentally extracts resources from society
and deploys these re-sources to create and support coercive and administrative
organizations.”(taxation and standing army, necessary conditions for the state) Of
course, these basic state organizations are built up and must operate within the context of
class-divided socio-economic relations as well as within the context of national and
international dynamics., she argues without ruling out the class nature of the society.
Moreover, coercive and administrative organizations are only parts of overall political
systems. These systems also may contain institutions through which social interests are
represented in state policy-making as well as institutions through which non-state actors like
civil society actors/ social movements etc are mobilized to participate in policy
implementation. Nevertheless, the administrative and coercive organizations are the
basis of state power as such. ( Weberian insight)

What is State Autonomy ?

“States conceived as organizations claiming control over territories and people may formulate
and pursue goals that are not simply reflective of the demands or interests of social groups,
classes, or society.” ( This is quite a radical departure from liberal, pluralist and Marxist ideas
of State theory)
This is what is usually meant by "state autonomy." (Skocpol)
“Unless such independent goal formulation occurs, there is little need to talk about states as
important actors

State Autonomy Explained

 Weberian or organization-analytic approaches which emphasize the ways in which
states constitute autonomous sources of power and operate on the basis of institutional
logics and dynamics with variable forms of interaction with other sources of power in
society. as “ autonomy of the state approach”] Thus, according to Theda Skocpol

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(1985), state capacity is an ability “to implement official goals, especially over the
actual or potential opposition of powerful social groups or in the face of
recalcitrant socioeconomic circumstances.” (read Atul Kohli works as well). This
also means “the ability to formulate and pursue goals that are not simply
reflective of the demands or interests of social groups, classes, or society”

Weberian Organizational theory & Mann

Michael Mann’s central idea is that all power depends upon organizations; different kinds of
power, then, is based on the characteristics of different kinds of organizations.
“Political power” (the distinctive power linked to states) is based on the development of
organizational infrastructures to authoritatively administer territories( Weberian Idea-
meritocratic non partisan professional bureaucratic order)
Michale Mann defines two kinds of state power; Despotic power & Infrastructural power;
“infrastructural powers” of the state by which Michael Mann refers to “the capacity of the
state actually to penetrate civil society and to implement logistically decisions throughout the
realm! While the despotic power declines, infrastructural power increases. In democracies,
despotic power is weak and the infrastructural power, strong. The main dimension of
infrastructural power is territorial centralization, attribute that is specific and proper of the
state, not enjoyed by any other social group. For the state has a different territorial objective
from other social organizations, there is no way it can be mere class instrument.

It is relevant to support the autonomous action of the state over society in the argument that it
has a different territorial objective from other organizations. The territorial integrity of the
state is an important element for the investigation of the state capacities

Improving Weberian theory of State

Unlike most Weber-inspired theorists he thus sharply distinguishes the political power of
states from military/coercive power. Political power constitutes a sui generis source of power
which, in variable and often contingent ways, becomes “entwined” with other forms of power
(economic, ideological, and military). The relative power of different actors, collective and individual,
depends upon the character of this entwining.

Revision in her theory

In her 1 992 book, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers She revised her ‘state autonomy theory’
extending it she wrote in her Preface that "my state-centered theoretical frame of reference
had evolved into a fully 'polity-centered approach,'" meaning that social movements,
coalitions of pressure groups, and political parties must be given their due in understanding
power in America (Skocpol, 1992)

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