in the government and politics of nation states, so that the activities
of the World Trade Organisation, NATO, the United Nations and its
agencies must also be considered in this context. We need to analyse,
therefore, the differences between levels of government, the relation-
ships between them and what each level of government does, or
should do.
In the Social ContractJean Jacques Rousseau suggested that giant
nation states could only really be free once every few years at general
election time. He compared all such arrangements unfavourably with
his native Geneva in which the citizens could be intimately involved
in the sovereign government of their own community. One obvious
way to minimise the degree to which state decision making is seen
as remote is to try to keep the state concerned as small and conse-
quently unbureaucratic as possible. As we have seen, anarchists
advocate dividing the whole world into a network of such voluntary
self-governing communities.
The disadvantages of a multitude of small-scale states may include
an increased likelihood of inter-state violence. Another problem
might be a failure to express larger senses of national or regional
identity. Possibly, too, there would be a lack of capacity for large-
scale investment necessary for complex transport systems, advanced
health, education and research facilities. Manned exploration of outer
space and nuclear weaponry would be unlikely in the absence of
‘super-states’ like the USA and EU.
The actual distribution of governmental powers between layers
of government is somewhat haphazard in practice with historical
influences being very important. In the UK the idea of the
sovereignty of the national parliament, has contributed to a strong
concentration of power at the national level. In the United States and
in Switzerland, many of the component states or cantons preceded
the federal governments and retain exceptionally strong powers.
However, the trend in most parts of the world, however unpalatable
it may be, has been toward a greater concentration of powers at the
higher levels of government.
Many factors have contributed to this trend toward centralisation.
One simple factor is that the central government will normally be the
biggest government in the state and therefore contains the greatest
concentration of expertise. The doctrine of national state sovereignty
not only lends legitimacy to central government decision makers but156 STATES