The state is one of the most difficult concepts in politics.
For some scholars the discipline of politics is wholly concerned with the state; for others politics exists in social contexts outside the sphere of the state. One of the most intractable problems in such debates is that there is little agreement on what is being studied.
Is the state a body of governing institutions; a structure of legal rules; a subspecies of society; or a body of values and beliefs about civil existence? These and many other questions plague the study of the state.
We will first look at the origin of the word; then at the state’s problematic relation to other political concepts; the contending views of its history; finally, the variety of theoretical approaches to it.The word state derives from the Latin stare (to stand) and status (a standing or condition). Roman writers, such as Cicero and Ulpian, as well as later medieval lawyers, used such terms as status civitatis or status regni.
This use of status referred to the condition of the ruler, the fact of possessing stability, or the elements necessary for stability. Standing or status was usually acquired through family, sex, profession and most importantly property. This is where we also find the subtle linkage with the word ‘estate’.
The English word ‘state’ is, in fact, a contraction of the word ‘estate’. This is similar to the old French word estat and modern French état, both of which imply a profession or social status. Groups had different status and thus estate.
The term ‘estates of the realm’ is derived from this. Parallels can be found in other European languages, as in the Spanish estado. The highest estate, with property, rank and family, was usually the ruling group or person. The highest estate had potentially the greatest authority and power.
Such authority was often seen as the guarantee of order and public welfare. It was thus linked to stability, which derived from the same root term. Those in authority—the highest estate—had insignia, crests and so forth showing their stateliness.
Some argue that we find an awareness of the state in the above usage in the twelfth century or even before (Post 1964; Mitteis 1975). A popular line of interpretation stresses a later, more definite noun usage in which the state is understood as a public power above both ruler and ruled, which constitutes the locus of political and legal authority.
It is not simply a matter of standing, stability or stateliness, although this terminology is carried over into the more modern usage, but a definite new form of continuous public power which constitutes a new type of civil existence.There are two basic positions taken on this latter noun usage of state. Both identify the origin of the state in the sixteenth century;
whereas one sees Machiavelli as the prime mover (Cassirer 1946; Meinecke 1957), the other identifies heirs of Italian humanism in France such as Guillaume Budé, Bernard du Haillan and Jean Bodin, as the real formulators of the modern idea (Hexter 1973; Church 1972; Skinner 1978; Dyson 1980).There appear to be a number of formal characteristics intrinsic to the state. It has a geographically identifiable territory with a body of citizens.
It claims authority over all citizens and groups within its boundaries and embodies more comprehensive aims than other associations. The authority of the state is legal in character and is usually seen as the source of law. It is based on procedural rules which have more general recognition in society than other rules.
The procedures of states are operated by trained bureaucracies of office holders. The state also embodies the maximal control of resources and force within a territory. Its monopoly is not simply premised on force: most states try to claim legitimacy for such a monopoly, namely, they seek some recognition and acceptance from the population.
In consequence, to be a member of a state implies a civil disposition.Further, the state is seen as sovereign, both in an internal sense within its territory, and in an external sense, namely, the state is recognized by other states as an equal member of international society.
It should be noted, however, that the idea of the state changes with different senses of sovereignty. Finally, the state is a continuous public power distinct from rulers and ruled.
The state stands in a complex relation to a number of political concepts such as society, community, sovereignty and government. Many of these concepts have senses which coincide with particular views of the state.
The state can, for example, be said to create all associations within itself. In this sense nothing is distinct from the state. Society becomes an aspect of the state.
On the other hand, if sovereignty is regarded as popular, residing in the people who create the state for limited ends, then the position is reversed and society can be viewed as prior and independent of the state. Similarly, the state can be seen as synonymous with government (many contemporary pluralist writers appear to adopt this view) or separate from government and giving authority to it.
These issues present the student of politics with fundamental and intractable problems of interpretation.Essentially there are three general perspectives on the history of the state.
The first perspective argues that the state dates back to the early Greek polis (city-state) of around 500 BC. For Aristotle, political science was the study of the polis.
There were unquestionably conceptions of territory, citizenship, authority, law and so on entailed in the polis; however, there was no conception of separate powers of government, no conception of a separate civil society and no very precise idea of a legal constitution.
Furthermore, the life of the polis was deeply integrated in religious, artistic, and ethical practices. It was also on such a small scale, compared to modern states, that, overall, it is stretching the imagination to call it a state in any contemporary sense. Empires were also too loose and fragmented structures to call states.
The second perspective dates the state from the early Middle Ages. Roman and canon law had established ideas of transcendent public welfare.
Public power and law were associated with the office of the monarch, initially identified with Papal sovereignty. There were also concepts of citizenship and the rule of law in medieval political thought.
The problems with this view are:
first, etymological—can one argue seriously about a term where it does not exist? The word state does not appear in political parlance until approximately the sixteenth century.
Second, the feudal structure of the Middle Ages tended to have a fragmenting effect. Feudal life was made up of a massive subsystem of associations.
Many of the larger associations, the nobility, church and guilds, had their own laws and courts. Monarchy was not in a pre-eminently sovereign position. It was often regarded as an elective office and not necessarily hereditary.
The monarchs also relied heavily on the support of the nobility and other estates to help them rule. Medieval society was crisscrossed with overlapping associations and conflicting loyalties.
Monarchs were reliant on the community of the realm and consequently were often regarded as subject to the law, not as its source. Finally, it is difficult to identify clearly defined territorial units with consistently loyal populations in the Middle Ages.
The only loyalty that transcended local groups attachments was the Church. All were members of the respublica christiana. It was crucial for this vision to break down before the idea of independent political units could grow.
The third perspective dates the emergence of the state from the late Middle Ages and more specifically from the sixteenth century. This view finds support from the etymology.
It is a view shared by a number of more recent authorities (as argued above on the origin of the word). However, there is some debate as to which theorists introduced the idea (Machiavelli or Bodin), and when and where the practice of the modern state began.
The contending authorities, as discussed earlier, focus their attention, respectively, on Renaissance Italy and France under the early absolutist monarchs.
Having examined the main outline of its historical origin we will now turn to the variety of academic approaches to the study of the state and their respective merits. Essentially there are five approaches and these often overlap, necessarily at times. The five are:
1 juristic or legal;
2 historical;
3 sociological/anthropological;
4 political-scientific;
5 philosophical/normative.The legal approach has the oldest pedigree. It dates back to the use of Roman law vocabulary in the earliest descriptions of the state.