POLS101

Chapter 3: Politics
and The State
NOVEMBER 22-23
Chapter Outline

01 02
Defining the Debating the
State State
Origins, Development Rival theories and the
and Approaches role of the state

03 04
Eclipse of the Questions for
State? Discussion
Decline and fall of the
state, return of the state?
 01
Defining the
State
 Origins and Development of the State

The Peace of End of Overlapping System of

Westphalia (1648)
Modern notion of statehood,
principal actor in domestic and
international affairs.
Principle of territorial sovereignty
Authorities Centralized Rule
Bringing an end to the overlapping Centralized rule that succeeded in
authority system that had subordinating all other institutions
characterized Medieval Europe. and groups, including the Church.
 Approaches to the State

Idealist Organizational

Functionalist
● Hegel’s identification of ● State as the apparatus
three moments of social of government
existence: the family, ● Set of institutions that
civil society and the ● The role and purpose of
state institutions. are public, in that they
state. are responsible for the
● The state as an ethical ● Central function is the
maintenance of social collective organization
community underpinned of social existence.
by mutual sympathy, order and stability
● Adopted by ● Distinction between the
“universal altruism”. state and civil society.
Neo-Marxists as they
see state as a means of
capitalist system.
5 Key Features of State-Organizational Approach
Defining the State

The state is a political

association; Within a defined territory
- Establish sovereign - Sovereignty: Supreme
jurisdiction power or authority
Defining the State

The state is a political - They are recognizably

association; public.
- Establish sovereign
jurisdiction - Responsible for the
collective organization
- Exercise authority of communal life
through a set of
permanent - Funded at the public’s
institutions. expense
Defining the State

The state is a political - Thus the state

association; embraces various
- Establish sovereign institutions of
jurisdiction government.

- Exercise authority - It extends to the

through a set of courts, nationalized
permanent industries, social
institutions. security system…
International Approach to State
International Approach to State
International Approach to State
 Why Did the State Emerge?

Marxists thinking on the

emergence of state

● The emergence of the state

largely in economic terms

● the state’s origins being traced

back to the transition from
feudalism to capitalism

“War made the state, and state ● the state essentially being a
made war.” tool used by the emerging
bourgeois class.
Charles Tilly
Concept: Nation-state
● Nation-state is a sovereign political association
within which citizenship and nationality
overlap, i.e., one nation within a single state.

● The state have developed into the nation-state

during the nineteenth century.

● The state went through a gradual

democratization and acquired wider economic
and social responsibilities

● The European state model and process of

decolonization

● Rapid growth of UN membership

02
Debating the
State
Rival Theories of the State
The Pluralist State
The Capitalist State
The Leviathan State

The Leviathan is constructed

through contract by people in
the state of nature in order to
escape the horrors of this
natural condition. The power of
the Leviathan protects them
from the abuses of one
another.
The Leviathan State
The Leviathan State
The Patriarchal State
The Role of the State

● What should states do?

● What functions or responsibilities should the state fulfil?
● Which ones should be left in the hands of private individuals?

- Except the anarchists who dismiss the state as evil and unnecessary,
even revolutionary socialists have accepted the need for the
(proletarian) state.
- Disagreement about the exact role of the state
- Balance between the state and civil society
Minimal States
● Ideal of the classical liberals; individuals should enjoy
the widest possible realm of freedom.
● State has the capacity to prevent individuals
encroaching on the rights and liberties of others.
● State as a protective body (nightwatchman) providing a
framework of peace and social order

● State with three core functions:

○ Maintaining social order
○ Enforcement of private contracts/ voluntary
agreements
○ Protection against external attack
Minimal States
● The institutional apparatus of state is limited to a police force, a court
system and a military.
● Economic, social, cultural, moral and other responsibilities belong to the
individual and are part of civil society.
● New Right: “roll back the frontiers of the state”
○ Restatement of Lockean liberalism
○ Hayek & Friedman, state intervention as a dead hand that reduces
competition, efficiency and productivity.
○ State’s economic role: the maintenance of a stable means of
exchange and the promotion of competition (control of monopoly
power)
 Developmental States
● Late industrialization increases the state’s economic
role with the specific purpose of promoting industrial
growth and economic development.

● Japan as classical example

○ Meiji Period, close relation between the state and
zaibatsu until WWII
○ Post-war period: MITI and Bank of Japan help to
shape private investment decisions and steer the
Japanese economy towards international
competitiveness.

● Asian Tigers → tiger economies of East Asia,

export-oriented economies modelled on Japan
Social-Democratic States

● Intervene in order to bring about broader social

restructuring → fairness and equality.
● Austria, Sweden, Norway and the UK (post-war period)
● The ideal of both modern liberals and democratic
socialists
● State as an active participant helping to rectify the
imbalances & injustices of a market economy.
● Less focus on the generation of wealth, more upon
equality and just distribution of wealth
● Eradicating poverty and reducing social inequality
Concept: Welfare State

● Keynesianism and social welfare.

○ Managing / regulating capitalism
○ Promotion growth and maintaining full
employment
● Demand management through adjustments in fiscal
policy → public spending and taxation
● State is responsible for the promotion of social
well-being amongst their citizens.
● Enabling state: a range of social security, health,
education and other services
John Maynard Keynes
Collectivized States
● Collectivized states bring the entirety of economic
life under state control.
● The USSR, Eastern European countries (behind
the iron curtain)
● Abolishing private enterprise, setting up centrally
planned economies
● Command economies: directive planning of
communist party
● Common/ public ownership of private property
● Marx & Engel: dictatorship of proletariat
Totalitarian States
● Most extreme and extensive form of
interventionism
● Construction of an all-embracing state
● The state brings the economy, education, culture,
religion, family life under direct state control
● Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, North Korea
● Extinguish civil society → abolish private sphere
● Dissolving individual identity, involving pervasive
ideological manipulation and open brutality
Religious States
● Contradiction? → concept of modern state and civil
authority over religious authority
● Secularization and advance of state sovereignty
Laïcité in France, separation of church and state
● State religions in Norway, Denmark and the UK →
restricted by social secularization
● Since the 1980s, the rise of religious state due to religious
fundamentalism: Islamization in Pakistan, the
establishment of an Islamic State in Iran
● Religiously oriented governments with a commitment to
constitutional secularism → AKP rule in Turkey
03
Eclipse of the
State?
Decline and Fall of the State

● State authority having been undermined by the growing importance of the

global economy, the market, major corporations, non-state actors and
international organizations.
● Challenge of globalization → three different views
○ Emergence of post-sovereign governance: Power shifting from the state
towards global marketplaces and transnational corporations.
○ Globalization created by states and exists to serve their interests
○ Globalization transformed the state, rather than simply reduced or
increased its power.
Decline and Fall of the State
● Rise of international migration and spread of cultural globalization
making state borders “permeable”
● Economic globalization → supraterritoriality, economic activity takes
place within a borderless world.
○ Capital flows, financial markets, question of economic sovereignty

Rise of non-state actors and International bodies

● Major aspects of politics no longer take place merely in or through the state,
but, rather, outside the state.
● TNCs dwarf states in terms of their economic size → Apple, General Motors,
Exxon Mobil
● NGOs → Amnesty International, Greenpeace
● Other non-state actors → terrorist networks (e.g., ISIS)
Decline and Fall of the State

Political Globalization
● International bodies, UN, the EU,
the WTO → undermined the
capacity of states to operate as
self-governing political units.
● In the case of the EU → growing
range of decisions (monetary
policy, agriculture and fisheries
policy, defence and foreign affairs)
are made by EU institutions, rather
than member states.
Failed States
● The pre-modern world as a world of postcolonial chaos, in which such
state structures as exist are unable to establish a legitimate monopoly of
the use of force
○ This leads to endemic warlordism, widespread criminality and social
dislocation.
○ Quasi-states / failed states: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, South
Sudan and DR Congo, Cambodia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia.
○ These states are unable to maintain domestic order and personal
security, civil war become almost routine.
■ Experience of colonialism? → lacking an appropriate level of
political, economic, social development to function effectively as
separate entities.
Return of the State?
● Although globalization may make state borders more porous,
globalization has not been imposed on unwilling states.
● International organizations act as forums through which states can act in
concert over matters of mutual interest
● State’s unique capacity to maintain domestic order and protect its
citizens from external attack
○ “The State exists to master violence, it is therefore a warmaking
institution.”
○ Borders have been strengthened in Europe and the USA in response
to increased migratory flows.
04
Questions for
Discussion
1. Would life in a stateless society really be “nasty, brutish and
short”?
2. How and why the pluralist theory of the state been criticized?
3. What is the proper relationship between the state and civil
society?
4. Why have proletarian states failed to “wither away”?
5. Is the religious state a contradiction in terms?
6. Does globalization mean that the state has become irrelevant?