State
‘State’, though a very commonly-used word in the political vocabulary, is
surprisingly opaque. Even the derivation of the term is obscure, and in many
cultures (including early medieval European society, to take one example) it
would be hard to specify what word should be translated as ‘state’. It is easier to
define it negatively; the state is, for example, not equivalent to the mere
government. Governments come and go, at least in democracies, without
changing the state. In a different way the state is often contrasted, by political
theorists, to what they callcivil society, the whole range of organized and
permanent institutions and behavioural practices, like the economy, churches,
schools and family patterns, that make up our ordinary life under the ultimate
control of the coercive force of politics. The state means, essentially, the whole
fixed political system, the set-up of authoritative and legitimately powerful
roles by which we are finally controlled, ordered, and organized. Thus the
police, thearmyand thecivil serviceare aspects of the state, as isparlia-
mentand perhaps local authorities. But many institutions with a great deal of
actual power,trade unionsfor example, are not part of the state, because they
are voluntary organizations which could, at least hypothetically, be dispensed
with, and especially because they directly represent one section of society
against another. (In contrast trade unions clearlywerepart of the state in the
Soviet Union under communist rule, because they were controlled by the
party to exercise discipline over workers. In the original Italian theory of
fascism it was bodies like unions and employers federations which became the
state.) At least in theory, state organizations are neutral in any such sectional
conflict. For this reason political parties are not part of the state (and in most
constitutions are totally ignored), and the governments formed and supported
by them are not quite seen as part of the state. The offices of, for example,
prime ministerorpresident, however, which depend entirely on parties for
their filling and operation, are state offices, even though neither the parties that
compete for them, nor the actual individuals filling them, are in their own
right part of the state, but are rather aspects of civil society. As a concept the
state was somewhat overlooked in political theory and research for much of the
20th century, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, and still creates consider-
able confusion and uncertainty. The easiest way to think of it is as the set of
fixed roles and institutions that make up the generally legitimate political
institutions within which partisan conflict takes place. A state can even survive
a revolution if the new rulers continue to use state bodies such as courts and the
pre-revolutionary personnel to control the society, as happened, for example,
in Germany when there were many such continuities between theWeimar
RepublicandHitlerregimes. Without doubt there is a cultural difference in
attitude to the state between some European countries, notably France and
State