(Western European) agreement in the Peace of Westphalia mentioned previously and was solidified in Weber’s formal definition of state as an entity characterized by:
a. control over a well-defined, usually continuous territory;
b. a relatively centralized administration;
c. differentiation from other societal associations through the develop- ment of permanent and society-overarching institutions; and
d. a monopoly over the use of coercion, assuring that it could pass justice in the name of all (Tilly, 1975, p. 27; Dyson, 1980).
This is a twentieth century understanding of state, that is, a political entity defined in terms that are (1) territorial, (2) top-down and centralized, (3) autonomous, and (4) sovereign, and was as such confirmed at the Montevideo Conference of Rights and Duties of States (1933), the partici- pant countries of which were all located in the Western hemisphere, but its notion of an internationally recognized sovereignty was adopted across the globe. It is important to recognize that this is a truly twentieth century definition of state, for it assumes that military power is subject to political power, and that is a situation most unusual in history (Mann, 1986a, p. 11;
Mosca, 1972).
Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this definition of state dominates juridical understanding and so international law. After all, a state is not expected to invade another without expecting others, such as allies, to come to the latter’s need. A state’s internal affairs should not be tampered with unless under circumstances of severe duress (however defined: genocide, economic crisis, medical crisis such as Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and so forth). We emphasize this juridical or legal definition of state because it dominated twentieth century thought about state. The authors of this volume grew up unaware of any other than this legal definition of state. However, growing up, the authors of this volume also encountered doubts about this Weberian definition of state.
These doubts were not inspired by pristine or rather philosophical thoughts about state (as in contrasting to nation, or contrasting to the earlier medieval notion of“status in life”); instead they were inspired by a more sociological sense of state. In a legal sense it is quite clear what constitutes a state. In a sociological and psychological sense the meaning of state varies with country and with perspective, attitude, and behavior.
Where legal perspectives tend to present cases in terms of black or white, that is, a territory is a state or not, a sociological or psychological
perspective (troubling to some) presents reality in terms of shades of grey.
Just considering and scanning literature on state in the twentieth century we find that a legal or juridical definition of it dominates until the 1960s. It is then that many new states enter the world stage and that is when, as John Nettl noted, the link between state and nation—so taken for granted—was snapped (1968, p. 560). In the wake of decolonization, and then with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it became clear that some newly indepen- dent countries were successful in meeting the domestic and international expectations that came with being a state while others were not. Hence, people and scholars (in whichever order) have—slowly—warmed up to the idea that the state as a juridical concept is no longer sufficient when characterizing reality.
Scholars do not often distinguish a juridical from a sociological or psychological definition and understanding of state. The juridical one is that which is given earlier; it is Weberian, and part of international law. The sociopsychological perspective is one that does not really define a state but, rather, one that designates it, positions it, in the past, at the present, and even an (undetermined) future within the society it circumscribes. Why is defining and/or understanding that role and position of the state so important in the effort of understanding government’s role and position in society today? The answer is quite simple. State and government today are hand-in-glove to a degree they never were before. State was a territorial circumscription—that is, property—of an individual ruler or elite, until it became an abstraction—that is, divorced from a living being—and became the entity of a people in one country with an elected representative body.
The state today is sovereign, irrespective of who is divined, inherited, or elected as its ruler. Clearly, in terms of international law the 1648 agreement still reigns supreme, and there is then only one type of state. In a socio- psychological perspective, however, there are different types of states and different types of citizens who populate them.
The most well-known distinction is that between strong and weak states.
For example, Vigoda-Gadot (2009, p. 8) suggests that if one were asked to divide the world into strong and weak nations, there is little doubt what the resulting list would be. Most probably, a majority of the respondents would put the developed world of wealthy, Western states and some of the richest Asian countries in the column of strong nations, while the poorest countries in the developing world would be defined as weak nations. There would probably be little debate about the political, economic, and military power of each state. Still, one wonders what makes some nations strong, regardless of their military power, natural resources, capital, and geopolitical situation,
and other nations weak, even when they hold several assets of the kind mentioned previously. It is puzzling that states with few resources are viewed both by public opinion and according to objective measures as“stronger”or as“weaker.”What is the secret of building strong states, and how can we penetrate this enigma to help governments build stronger nations? In a more conventional view a strong state is one that provides security to its people and protects them from foreign aggression, for which there is the military; as well as from internal dangers, for which there are, for instance, police andfire departments. It is also one where government is accepted as the adjudicator in disputes; where citizens can participate in the political process without fear; where people can expect provisions for medical and health care, for education, and for navigable physical infrastructures (roads, railways, harbors); where there is a reliable banking and insurance system;
where people can pursue their own dreams; and where civil society is promoted as an important good (Rotberg, 2003, p. 3).Weak statesperform less well on several or many of these features of a strong state. They may be weak because of environmental constraints, because of economic problems (e.g., lack of natural resources), or because there are significant social cleavages (along, for instance, ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines). Weak states also often experience higher or rising crime rates, and they are often ruled by despots (Rotberg, 2003, p. 4). When a weak state performs poorly on most features it may be on its way to become afailing stateand even a failed state(Chomsky, 2006) that can no longer control its borders and where most institutions disintegrate save the executive arm of government that is controlled by a small power elite. The most extreme type of failed state is the collapsed state,which“exhibits a vacuum of authority . . . [that is] is a mere geographical expression, a black hole into which a failed polity has fallen.”
(Rotberg, 2003, p. 9) These designations of states are not static. Countries have moved from being fairly strong to failing, or from being collapsed to simply weak (for examples see Rotberg, 2003; also Hanlon, 2011).
The designations of strong, weak, and failing states are usually applied to countries at a specific moment in time. For instance, Richard Stillman defined periods in the history of his country in terms of different designa- tions. What makes his analysis interesting is that it shows how much a specific perspective upon the state actually has clear consequences for the nature of its administration.
Theno-state(or negative state, orlaissez-fairestate) is one with a limited government, mainly responsible for traditional public services (defense, police, justice, taxation). It is the kind of government advocated by the Jeffersonians in the late eighteenth century and by monetarists and public
choice theorists since the 1970s. It is also a government with a very clear distinction between elected officeholders and career civil servants. The latter simply carry out the directives of the former. In its internal function- ing it is a highly decentralized government (Stillman, 1999, 175–185, 226–227).
Thebold-stateor (positive state) is pretty much the opposite of the no- state, and is characterized by an expansive government providing a wide range of services. It is also a much more fragmented state with several public, nonprofit, and private actors taking action at national, regional, and local levels (Stillman, 1999, pp. 185–197). Theprestate(or halfway-state) sits smack in the middle between the no-state and the bold-state, and its advocates are less definite about the role of the state (Stillman, 1999, pp. 197–205). Most important, they point to the existence of a so-called
“unwritten constitution,”which Don Price describes as“. . . a reflection of the basic political philosophy of the people, of their traditional prejudices and attitudes, often incoherent and not explicitly formulated as important.”
(Price, 1983, p. 9) This is considered as important as the formal institutional superstructure established by the Founding Fathers. This prestate or half- way-state is somewhat reminiscent of what Huntington labeled aTudor polity, a political system where power is both horizontally and vertically dispersed across a variety of institutions and where, e.g., legislative and judicial functions are fused in some respects (e.g., consider the role of jurispru- dence) (Huntington, 1973, pp. 173, 183, and 190). We will get back to this point later, about the United States being a Tudor polity. Finally, theprostate (or professional technocracy) is one where government is run by experts, the ultimate administrative state where expert elites in the career civil service know which decisions are best for society. It is, thus, the most antidemocratic of the four types (Stillman, 1999, pp. 205–213).
Earlier in his book Stillman discusses, as he calls it, the “peculiar
‘stateless’origins of American Public Administration Theory” (Stillman, 1999, pp. 19–41). Hefinds, as so many authors before him (for instance, Nettl, 1968, p. 561), that at the time of its creation the United States embarked upon a unique experiment, designing a polity with a very small bureaucracy and with strong suspicion of anything that resembled“state,”
understood as a top-down, highly centralized polity that acted irrespective of the desires of its population. The Founding Fathers wanted to create a state very different from that of the English, which simply imposed taxes upon the colonies without consultation. This notion of “statelessness”
has been very pervasive and also affirmed in Nelson’s superb 1982 article where he argued that “the establishment of democratic political
institutions preceded the establishment of administrative ones.” (1982, p. 775) Indeed, in Europe, state and its bureaucracy had existed prior, and sometimes even centuries prior, to the creation of democratic political institutions through, for instance, the expansion of the franchise.
While one can argue that England was the prime example of a stateless society (Nettl, 1968, p. 562) from which the United States adopted many features (for instance, the Tudor polity mentioned earlier), it is important to remember that the term“stateless”is sooner obfuscating than enlight- ening. After all, the territoriality that is captured in the state concept was reality throughout history. Were there truly“weak”states in the sense that they were strong enough to survive yet did so with only a skeleton bureauc- racy? When clinging to Weber’s definition of state, the American early state was weak in comparison to European states, but it has been strong from the beginning in terms of the extent to which American government was able to shape civil society. Novak unmasked the“weak”American state as a myth, pointing out the fact that state power is hidden; that is, widely distributed across a multitude of institutions at all levels of government (Novak, 2008).
Classic state theory assumes strong state power at the center; it does not consider the possibility of political power as being dispersed, and not only limited to public organizations but including nonprofit and private organi- zations as actively involved in governance.
To bolster his argument, Novak calls upon the distinction Michael Mann (Mann, 1986b, p. 115) made between two types of state power:
despotic and infrastructural power. Despotic power is exercised by a small power elite that can do whatever it likes and whose actions go unchecked by other societal institutions. In democracies despotic power is weak, while infrastructural power—the capacity of the state to shape civil society and successfully pursue policies throughout the territory—is strong (hence, also a strong bureaucracy). In feudal societies both despotic and infrastructural power are low (for example, medieval Europe), while both are high in authoritarian polities (Nazi Germany, former Soviet Union, People’s Republic of North Korea). In imperial (or patrimonial) systems despotic power is high, but the penetration of society is low (which holds for most empires to varying degrees, such as, for instance, ancient China). In modern democracies, clearly, the possibility of despotic power is severely curbed but the ability of the state to shape its society is high. By all accounts, once the United States had shed the Confederacy, it became a strong state given its growing capacity to penetrate society. This type of strong state survives because the political and economic institutions allow full partici- pation and development of its citizenry; it is as Acemoglu and Robinson
named it: aninclusive state.We agree with Michael Mann that true stateless societies were primitive (1986b, p. 119); that is, they existed before the creation of formal political institutions. In other words, the concept of
“weak state”is not really helpful in describing the current situation in which any state finds itself.
When using designations such as strong, weak, or failing states, etc., we should therefore adopt a sociopsychological perspective that really asks: in whose eyes and by what criteria? Clearly the Western conception of state dominates when the political, social, economic, and cultural situation in non-Western states is evaluated. And, equally clear, the situation in non- Western countries has been evaluated in terms irrelevant to it. Pierre Englebert and Denis Tull convincingly argued with regard to Africa that assessments of the plight of non-Western countries areflawed because they assume that Western state institutions can be successfully transferred, that Western donors and African leaders are cooperating, and that donors can marshal the resources for long-term state reconstruction (2008, pp. 110–111).
Meanwhile, the juridical notion of state has come under fire in the Western world for at least two reasons. First, the concept ofgovernance,as it emerged from the 1980s on, emphasizes that the state is not the only actor responsible for governing of society. There are, in fact, multiple actors in the nonprofit and private spheres that contribute significantly to the steering of society. Indeed, nonstate actors are increasingly involved in the delivery of social services, a trend captured in the concept of thehollow state (Milward and Provan, 2000). Second, while the state in the interna- tional arena is formally still the only actor that can make binding decisions for its population as a whole, in practice it cannot but accept the increasing involvement of subnational and supranational actors in defining domestic and global policies. This is perhaps most clear in the European Union, but has really happened everywhere.
Is the strong or active state a thing of the past? Perhaps this question cannot be answered unless we can show that the strong or active state, defined as one where government provides the bulk of services, actually existed. We suggest that a democratic strong or active state never really existed, in the sense that states and their governments have always shared power to a smaller or larger degree with other social institutions (most prominently with organized religion, but one could add in the past 170 years labor unions and voluntary associations). Sharing power with citizens in a democratic state is also known as the bureaucracy-democracy paradox and is widely discussed in extensive literature (for instance,
Gawthrop, 1998; Goodsell, 1983; Vigoda-Gadot, 2009). If anything, the democratic state has been an enabling statewhere government allows to a smaller or larger degree service provision by other actors (for instance, voluntary, private, semipublic, regional/local government, and arms-length agencies) (see for discussion Page and Wright, 2007, pp. 3–5). The state, however, not only enables other actors to partake in the governance of society; it most certainly supervises the activities of other actors and provides a legal framework within which government, nonprofit, and private actors can and have to act. Placing the responsibility for the delivery of public services in the hands of other actors increases the need for accountability and centralized rulemaking, thus for an enabling framework state (Raad- schelders and others, 2007, p. 310). The institutional framework within which governance manifests itself is in a legal sense still decided by those who have been designated to design the state; that is, those whom the people have elected into legislative office. So, the enabling framework state is also anensuringstate (Schuppert, 2003) that guarantees the delivery of public or collective services even when private actors are responsible for providing them (through contracting out, public-private partnerships, or collaborative governance).
States and their governments are regarded as legitimate when the population accepts their actions. While some policies target specific groups within a given population, there are many policies that concern the people as a whole. No matter how differentiated in an ethnic, linguistic, and cultural sense, a population is frequently treated as if it is one nation, a concept that initially denoted a homogeneous community of people with a shared language and history and close kinship ties. The concept ofnation- state, then, denotes a close relation between a people and its territory; that is, assumes that at least 95 percent of its population shares a common ancestry.
There have been, however, very few such nation-states in the history of humankind. City-states may have been fairly homogeneous, but empires certainly were not. One example of a true contemporary nation-state is that of Iceland, where the large majority of the population can actually trace its ancestry back to the tenth century of the Common Era. Almost all other states in the world are at best territorial states because their populations consist of people from various backgrounds. Especially in the Western world, population diversity has been increasing since the 1960s with the immigration of political and, more important in terms of numbers, eco- nomic refugees (Arnold, 2010). In the non-Western world, populations are as diverse, but then often as a consequence of having been “thrown”
together by colonial powers carving up territories in foreign lands without
knowing anything about existing or previously existing indigenous tribal boundaries or polities (Davidson, 1992) and unaware of its urban past (Davidson, 1987). The story of state making is in the case of Europe indige- nous; in the case of much of the rest of the world, at first sight it appears simply imposed.