that is mostly governmental in that its rules do not have force attached to them,
but rely upon social pressures – naming and shaming, embarrassing and using verbal
sanctions – to enforce them. On the other hand, it cannot be said that the state
(strictly defined) does not play a role as well. After all, the NHS is tax-funded, and
if people refuse to pay taxes, they are likely to be subject to more than moral
pressures to pay up!
The distinction between state and government is important, first because it
explains how stateless societies have rules and regulations which make order
possible, and why people conform or dissent through pressures which most of the
time are non-statist in character. You may try to get to the doctor’s on time – not
because you are fearful of being arrested and put in prison but because it seems
discourteous and improper not to do so. The distinction separates force (or violence)- the terms seem to boil down to the same thing in this context – from human
nature, pointing to the fact that force comes into play only in situations in which
moral and economic pressures do not work.
Chapter 1 The state 23- We have argued that the state is not just a
modern institution, even though the ‘modern
state’ does have features that distinguish it
from more traditional states. - We have defended Max Weber’s ‘force
argument’. Although force is not the only
attribute of the state, it is the central
attribute so that the state is distinguished
from other social institutions because it uses
‘legitimate force’ to address conflicts of
interest. The police, the army and the prisons
are the distinctive attributes of the state. - We have assumed that the state is an
important concept in political theory, but
there are those who argue that the state is
too vague, elusive, divisive and ambiguous
to merit attention. We have identified these
critics as behaviouralists, linguistic analysts
and radicals. Their arguments are rejected on
the grounds that since states clearly exist in
the real world, it is important to try and
define them, however difficult this task might
be.- States have not always existed. In fact,
throughout most of human history, people
have resolved conflicts without relying upon
a special institution that claims a monopoly
of legitimate force. Even today states are
(usually) bound by international law and
treaties even though there is no world-state
to maintain order. These facts make it
important that we distinguish between
constraints of a diplomatic kind (relying upon
economic pressures, self-interest, ostracism,
etc.) and force as such, just as we need to
distinguish between the state and
government.
The argument so far...State and sovereignty
It is impossible to talk about the state without saying something about sovereignty.
This is the aspect of the state that relates to its supreme and unchecked power.
Hence sovereignty is commonly regarded as an attribute of states, but here agreement