State & Nation

Spring 2020
1
POL 101: Session 3

30 January 2020
 What is a State?

There is no undisputed definition

of a state but generally,

a state is a polity (institution) that

2 is typically established as a
centralized organization.
3

• State comes from the Latin word

‘status’, meaning condition of a
country.

• The “States” still refers to America,

but state can refer to any
country's civil government.
4

State is defined as a territory

with its own government and
borders within a larger country.

An example of a state is
California.
5
The most famous and widely used
definition of the state comes from the
German sociologist Max Weber. He
said,

“The state is a human community

that (successfully) claims the
monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force within a given
territory”.
 Component of a State

The concepts of territoriality,

legitimacy and violence are the
definitive factors of Weber's
6 modern State.
 Component 1: GIVEN TERRITORY

There is an obvious requirement that a state be

geographically located in a particular place.
• A state is a government structure,
usually sovereign and powerful
enough to enforce its writ.

• At last count, there were about 193

7 states in the world.
 Component 2: LEGITIMACY

 The state must have a “monopoly on

the legitimate use of physical force.”

 It is not always easy to determine

8 what is, and is not, a legitimate use of
force.
 Component 3: MONOPOLY

 There are examples in which non-state

actors have the ability to use physical
force and in which this use of force
might be considered legitimate.

 For instance, many people believe that

9 the use of force by groups such as the
Irish Republican Army in Northern
Ireland is a legitimate response to
foreign occupation and repression.
 State VS Nation
When the word state is mentioned,
many people will relate it to a nation,
or even consider the two words as
synonyms. Although many people
think they are the same, the words
10 nation and state are entirely different
from one another.
 • The word nation comes from a
Latin word meaning "birth" or
“place of birth”.

• A nation is a group of people who

share some sort of common
11 identity like a language, a
religion, an ethnicity or a shared
history and culture.
 • A nation is formed as a result of a
common race, religion, language,
territory, history, culture or political
aspirations.

12
• These elements are not essential
and are ever-changing.
 Nation and State in Political Science
In political science, a "nation" refers to a group
of people who feel bound into a single body
by shared culture, values, folkways, religion
and/or language.

A "state" just refers to a patch of land with

a sovereign government. States often coincide
13 with nations (and are called "nation-states," but
not always.
 There is a difference between the
terms state, nation and country even
though the words are often used
interchangeably. Country and states
are synonymous terms that both apply
to self governing political entities. A
nation however, is a group of people
14 who share the same culture but do
not have sovereignty.
15
Country vs Nation

The nation is the large group of people

that has a common history, language,
and culture and inhibits in a specific state
or the country.

The country refers to the particular area,

whereas the nation refers to a particular
group of people. The term 'nation' is used
more in the political field.
 Characteristics of State and Nation
Sl. State Nation
no.
1 An independent political A large body of people united by
entity with fixed common origin, history, culture,
geographic boundaries ethnicity or language
2 Refers to a territory Refers to a group of people

3 A political and legal entity A socio cultural entity

4 Cannot exist without Can exist without sovereignty

sovereignty
5 United by laws and United by bonds and shared
regulations histories
6 Inhabited by Inhabited by homogeneous
heterogeneous groups of groups of people
people
 CLASSIFICATION OF STATES

Based on strength,
territorial division and
ownership/welfare
17
benefits states are
classified into different
categories
 Classification based on Strength
EFFECTIVE STATES
■ EFFECTIVE STATES control
and tax their entire
territory. Laws are mostly
obeyed.
■ Government looks after
the general welfare and
security. Corruption is fairly
minor.
■ Effective states tend to be
better off and to collect
considerable taxes (25 to
50% of GDP).
18 states include
■ Effective
Japan, the USA and
Western Europe. Some put
the best of these states
into a “highly effective”
category.
WEAK STATES
■ WEAK STATES are
characterized by the
penetration of crime into
politics.
■ The government does not
have the strength to fight
lawlessness, drug trafficking,
corruption, poverty and
breakaway movements.
■ Justice is bought.
■ Democracy is preached
more than practiced and
elections often rigged.
■ Little is collected in taxation.
Revenues from natural
resources, such as
Mexico’s and Nigeria’s oil,
disappear into private
pockets.
■ Much of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America are weak states.
FAILED STATES
■ FAILED STATES have essentially
no national government
although some pretend they
do.
■ Warlords, militias and opium
growers do as they wish.
■ There is no law besides the
gun. Territorial breakup
threatens. Education and
health standards decline (as in
the increase of HIV/AIDS).
■ Many count Afghanistan and
Somalia as failed states. Pirates
make their home in Somalia
because there is no state
power to stop them (and no
jobs for young men). Only
outside assistance and
pressure keep these two
countries from disappearing
altogether. Some fear Yemen,
home to Islamist fighters, could
become a failed state.
 Classification based on Territory
UNITARY STATES concentrate power at the central or national level. The
United Kingdom, France, China and Japan are examples of unitary states.

FEDERAL STATES create different divisions and levels of government and

divide power among those divisions and levels. The United States is a federal
state with power accorded to offices at three levels: national or federal
offices, state offices, and local offices. Germany, India, Canada, Brazil, and
Mexico also have federal systems.

In addition to federal and unitary arrangements, states also have the option
of a CONFEDERAL type of organization with power decentralized and held
primarily or exclusively by local offices. This type of state existed briefly in the
United States prior to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. In 1781, the
Articles of Confederation established a confederation in which states had
supreme power and a central governing power was virtually nonexistent, in
that there was no central executive, no central judiciary and only a weak
central legislature.
 UNITARY STATE
 Unitary governments control local authorities and citizens’ lives
more than federal systems do.
 Unitary states have a national police force and one court
system, whose judicial officers are appointed by the national
government.
 Center–periphery tensions or regionalism grew in several
countries during the 1970s and for several reasons. Economics
was one.
 Local nationalists often claim that their region is poorer and
shortchanged by the central government. The region may
have a distinct language or culture that its people want to
preserve.
20
 Many feel that important political decisions are not under
local control that they are made by distant bureaucrats.
 Often regions harbor historical resentments at having long
ago been conquered and forcibly merged with the larger
nation.
 UNITARY STATE
Pros and Cons

 Authority in unitary states can be absurdly

overcentralized.
 Local government may not be able to install a traffic light or
bus stop without permission from the capital.
 This leads citizens to ignore local affairs and produces political
alienation.
 Centralization of power, however, can be an
advantage in facing modern problems.
 Clear lines of authority without excess bickering among units
of government can be useful.
21
 In unitary systems, the capital can marshal
economic resources and coordinate planning and
development.
 Education standards can be high and uniform, as in Japan.
 Status of Bangladesh
• Bangladesh is a unitary state in a sense that the
powers devolved to the local level (through the
ZP, UZP, UP, Municipality and City Corporation
Acts) can be broadened and curtailed by the
central government unilaterally.

• Bangladesh is a unitary, independent, sovereign

22 Republic to be known as the People's Republic
of Bangladesh.

• Besides, it contains important assertion about

elements of a state such as sovereignty
and government.
 FEDERAL STATE
 Federalism gives first-order civil divisions much autonomy while the central
government runs areas that are inherently national.
 It is a difficult balancing act that varies among federal nations. Americans,
with one of the first federal systems, sometimes urge federalism on other
nations, including Iraq, where it may not work.
 The hostility among Iraq’s Shia, Sunni, and Kurds could rip it apart.
 The ex–Soviet Union and Mexico became so centralized that some
wondered if they were still federal.
 The crux of a federal system is that the component states have some
powers that cannot be easily overridden by the central government.
 The components of a federal system are typically represented in an upper
house such as the U.S. Senate or German Bundesrat. (Unitary systems do not
really need upper houses, but most have them.)
23In federal systems, the central government has exclusive control over foreign,
defense, and monetary policy.
 The states typically control education, police, highways, and other close-to-
home affairs.
 Because the division of these powers is seldom clear or permanent, a federal
government rests on a delicate balance between central power and local
autonomy.
 FEDERAL STATE
Pros and Cons

 Citizens are closest to their local governments, where they

can influence officials and see how decisions are made.
 On the other hand, local governments may lack the money to
finance programs, and their officials are sometime
incompetent and corrupt.
 The relationship of the states or provinces to other levels of
government varies among federal systems.
 Each of America’s 50 states can legislate in any area not
delegated to the federal government or to the people.
 Usually, education, welfare, civil law, property taxes, and
24 licensing of professions are state functions. However, in the
twentieth century, the federal government expanded in the
areas of civil law, welfare, and economic regulation.
Classification based on State Ownership and
Welfare Benefits

States face two question:

1) How much of the economy

should the state own or
supervise?
25
2) How much of the nation’s
wealth should be redistributed to
help the poorer sectors of society?
 State Ownership and Welfare Benefits
LAISSEZ-FAIRE
■ In a laissez-faire system, the government owns little or
no industry and redistributes little in the form of
welfare programs.
■ These countries follow Adam Smith, seconded by
Thomas Jefferson, who argued that government
interference in the economy decreases growth and
prosperity.
■ The theory here is that private enterprise and individual
initiative make a nation both free and prosperous.
STATIST
■ Statism is an old system that predates laissez
faire. In a statist system, the state (meaning
the national government) is the number-one
capitalist, owning and running much major
industry but providing few welfare benefits.
■ Sometimes called by its French name
étatisme, it typically includes state ownership
of railroads, steel mills, banks, oil, and other
big enterprises.
■ Small and medium business is left in private
hands.
WELFARE STATE
■ A welfare state owns little or no industry but does
redistribute wealth to the less well-off.
■ Sometimes known as “social democracies,” the
welfare states of northwest Europe offer “cradle-to-
grave” benefits in health insurance, child care, job
training, and retirement funds.
■ To pay for this, they charge the world’s highest taxes—
in Sweden and Denmark, about 50 percent of GDP.
Industry, though, is private and moneymaking.
SOCIALIST
■ A socialist system practices both state
ownership and extensive welfare benefits.
■ The collapse of Communist regimes (which
called themselves “socialist”; we called them
“Communist”) indicates they worked poorly.
■ Today, only North Korea and Cuba remain as
(negative) examples of socialism, and their
systems seem ripe for change.
POLITICS & POLITICAL SCIENCE
27

Required Reading

 Roskin, M. G., Cord, R. L., Medeiros, J. A., & Jones, W. S. (2014). Political
Science: An Introduction (14th Edition). Pearson. (Chapter 3, States, Page:
49-67)