How modern is the concept of the state?
The question of what is the state is linked to the question of when the state emerges
historically. T.H. Green (a nineteenth-century British political philosopher) believed
that states have always existed. Families and tribes require an ideal of what is right,
and this ethical system is the basis of the state (1941). Hegel (a nineteenth-century
German philosopher) took the view that tribal societies had neither states nor
history. Lacking reason, these stateless societies cannot even be understood (1956:
61).
More common, however, is the argument that the state is a modern institution
since its ‘forms’ are as important as its ‘content’. The state, in one account, is defined
in terms of five attributes (Dunleavy and O’Leary, 1987: 2).
1.A public institution separated from the private activities of society.In ancient
Greek society, the polis (wrongly called, Dunleavy and O’Leary argue, the city-
state) did not separate the individual from the state, and in a feudal society kings
and their vassals were bound by oaths of loyalty that were both public and
private. Certain sections of society, like the clergy, had special immunities and
privilege, so that there was no sharp separation between members of society, on
the one hand, and the polity on the other.
2.The existence of sovereignty in unitary form.In a feudal society, for example,
the clergy, the nobility, the particular ‘estates’ and ‘guilds’ (merchants, craftsmen,
artisans, etc.) had their particular courts and rules, so that the only loyalty which
went beyond local attachments was to the universal Church; in Europe this was
divided between pope and emperor. Laws confirmed customs and social values- they were not made by a particular body that represented citizens and expressed
a united ‘will’.
3.The application of laws to all who live in a particular society.In the ancient
Greek polis, protection was only extended to citizens, not slaves, and even a
stranger required patronage from a citizen to claim this protection. Under
feudalism, protection required loyalty to a particular lord. It did not arise from
living in a territory, and the ruling political system could not administer all the
inhabitants.
4.The recruitment of personnel according to bureaucratic as opposed to patrimonial
criteria.Whereas the state selects people for an office according to impersonal
attributes (are they well qualified, etc.?), earlier polities identified the office-
holder with the job, so that offices belonged to particular individuals and could
be handed to relatives or friends at the discretion of the office-holder. Imagine
the vice-chancellor of a university deciding to name her own successor!
5.The capacity to extract revenue (tax) from a subject population.In pre-modern
polities, problems of transport and communication meant that tax-raising power
was limited, and rural communities in particular were left to their own devices.
The argument is that only the state is sovereign, separate from society, can
protect all who dwell within its clearly demarcated boundaries, recruits personnel
according to bureaucratic criteria and can tax effectively. These are seen not merely
as the features of a modern state, but of the state itself. We will later challenge this
argument but it is very widely held.Chapter 1 The state 13