The argument of David Easton
David Easton was a leading figure of the behavioural political scientists who
examined the theoretical credentials of the state in his book The Political System
(1953). He argues that the state is a hopelessly ambiguous term. Political scientists
cannot agree on what the state is or when it arose. Some define the state in terms
of its morality, others see it as an instrument of exploitation. Some regard it as an
aspect of society, others as a synonym for government, while still others identify it
as a unique and separate association that stands apart from social institutions like
churches and trade unions. Some point to its sovereignty, others to its limited
power.
What makes the state so contentious, Easton argues, is that the term is imbued
with strong mythical qualities, serving as an ideological vehicle for propagating
national sovereignty against cosmopolitan and local powers. Given this degree of
contention and controversy, there is no point, Easton argues, in adding a ‘definition
of my own’ (1971: 106–15). If political theory is to be scientific, then it must be
clear, and clarity requires that we abstain from using the concept of the state
altogether.
For around three decades after the Second World War the state, conceptually at
any rate, appeared in the words of one writer to have ‘withered away’ (Mann, 1980:
296). Yet in 1981 Easton commented that a concept which ‘many of us thought
had been polished off a quarter of a century ago, has now risen from the grave to
haunt us once again’ (1981: 303). What had brought the state back into political
science? Easton noted:
- the revival of interest in Marxism, which places the state at the heart of politics;
- a conservative yearning for stability and authority; a rediscovery of the
importance of the market so that the state is important as an institution to be
avoided (see case study); - a study of policy which found the state to be a convenient tool of analysis.
Easton is, however, still convinced that the state is not a viable concept in political
science. He recalls the numerous definitions that he had noted in 1953, and argues
that ‘irresolvable ambiguities’ have continued to proliferate since then. To make his
point, he engages in a hard-hitting and witty analysis of the work of a Greek Marxist,
Nicos Poulantzas (who was much influenced by the French theorist, Louis Althusser).
Poulantzas, Easton tells us, concludes, after much detailed and almost impenetrable
analysis, that the state is an ‘indecipherable mystery’. The state is ‘the eternally
elusive Pimpernel of Poulantzas’s theory’ – an ‘undefined and undefinable essence’
(Easton, 1981: 308). All this confirms Easton’s view that the concept of the state
is obscure, empty and hopelessly ambiguous. It should be abandoned by political
science.
David Easton’s concept of the political system
If the concept of the state should be pushed to one side by political theorists, what
do we put in its place? Easton argues that at the heart of our study of politics lies
not the idea of the state, but rather the concept of the political system. This Easton
Chapter 1 The state 17