Defining the state
The force argument
Definitions of the state vary depending upon whether the question of force or
morality is stressed, or a combination of both. The definition that commands a
good deal of support is that of the German sociologist, Max Weber – that the state
is an institution that claims a monopoly of legitimate violence for a particular
territory.
Robert Dahl, a US political scientist who taught at Yale, defines Government
(with a capital ‘G’ – a term which he uses synonymously with the state) in terms
explicitly taken from Weber. David Easton, on the other hand, criticises an
anthropologist for focusing on organised force as the distinguishing quality of
political systems, and identifies this emphasis upon force with the position laid down
by Thomas Hobbes and reinforced by Weber (Hoffman, 1995: 34). Marx highly
appraised Hobbes as a theorist who saw ‘might’ rather than will as the basis of
right or the state (1976: 329) and force has been seen as the most important of the
factors that accounts for the state. It is true that it is not the only one, and supporters
of the force definition of the state acknowledge that other factors come into play.
Marx called these ‘symptoms’ (1976: 329), and Weber himself specifically stated
that force is not the only attribute of the state. Indeed his definition makes it clear
that the force of the state has to be ‘legitimate’, monopolised and focused on a
particular territory. Nevertheless, as Weber himself says, force is a ‘means specific
to the state’ (Gerth and Wright Mills, 1991: 78, 134).
The other factors are important but secondary. Force is central to the state, its
most essential attribute.The centrality of will
Those who see morality or right as the heart of the state, are often called ‘idealists’
because they consider ‘ideas’ rather than material entities to be central to reality.
Hegel, perhaps the most famous of the idealist thinkers, described the state as the
realisation of morality – the ‘Divine Idea as it exists on Earth’ (Hegel, 1956: 34).
T.H. Green argued that singling out what he called ‘supreme coercive power’ as
the essential attribute of the state, undermines the important role which morality
plays in securing a community’s interests (1941: 121). Green supports the argument
of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an eighteenth-century French writer. Rousseau took the
view that morality, rights and duty form the basis of the state. Green does not deny
that what he calls ‘supreme coercive power’ is involved in the state, but he insists
that central to the state are the moral ends for which this power is exercised. This
led Green’s editor to sum up his argument with the dictum that ‘will, not force, is
the basis of the state’ (Hoffman, 1995: 218–19).
More recently, writers like Hamlin and Pettit have argued that the state is best
defined in terms of a system of rules which embody a system of rights – this is
crucial to what they call a ‘normative analysis of the state’ (1989: 2).14 Part 1 Classical ideas