CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE David Held CONTENTS ! INTRODUCTION T 1.1 Some preliminary definitions 72 1.2 The structure of the chapter 73 2 A BRIEF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPEAN S7Ai ES 2.1 Empires 79 2.2 Systems of divided authority in mediaeval Europe 79 2.3 The polity of estates 81 2.4 Absolutist states 83 2.5 Modern states 87 3 WHY DID NATION STATES BECOME SUPREME - vO 3.1 War and militarism 90 3.2 States and capitalism 98 3.3 Summary: the story so far 103 4 SOVEREIGNTY AND THE MODERN NAT (ON STA' ► COMPETING CONCEPTIONS 4.1 What is the proper nature of political authority? 105 4.2 Hobbes 106 4.3 Rousseau 108 4.4 Locke 110 4.5 Mill 112 4.6 Marx and Engels 113 4.7 Weber 114 5 CONCLUSION References 117 READINGS Reading A: Leviathan 120 Reading B: The social contract 122 FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY 1 INTRODUCTION This chapter has three overall purposes: first, to introduce the diversity of state forms which have existed over time and which constitute the broad historical context for understanding the nature of the modern state; secondly, to explore the question: Why did the nation-state become the supreme form of the modern state?; thirdly, to examine competing conceptions of the modern state — its sovereignty, authority and legitimacy. Those objectives are clearly wide-ranging; but by devoting attention to all three I hope to shed some light on the key formative processes of the modern state and the controversies that surround it. The prime focus of this chapter will be the making of the modern state in Europe. There are a number of important reasons for this geographic restriction. In the first instance, the story of the formation of the modern state is in part the story of the formation of Europe, and vice versa. The development of a distinctive 'European' identity is closely tied to the creation of Europe by states. Moreover, the states system of Europe has had extraordinary influence in the world beyond Europe: European expansion and development has had a decisive role in shaping the political map of the modern world. Furthermore, debates about the nature of the modern state in large part derive from European intellectual traditions, notably the Enlightenment, although to recognize this is by no means to suggest that everything of importance about the state was understood and expressed in Europe alone. 1.1 SOME PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS__ It is intriguing to note that for the greater part of human history states have not existed at all. Slates arc historical phenomena, constructed under particular conditions, and far from fixed or 'natural' entities. In hunting-and-gathcring communities, in small agrarian cultures, and in the regions wandered by semi-nomadic or nomadic peoples there has been no recognizably separate state or political organization. Today, there are still many communities which anthropologists refer to as 'stateless' — communities such as the Jale people of the New Guinea highlands, the pastoral Nuer of the South Sudan, the M'dendeuili and Arusha of East Africa. 'Stateless', however, should not be taken to mean the absence of any mechanisms of regulation or government through which decisions affecting the community can be made and disputes settled. A diverse array of such mechanisms have existed, from family and kinship structures to the rules and norms of custom or tradition, and to the established powers of a chief (a warrior or priest, or both), often assisted by a council or court. Table 2.1 provides a useful starting point by juxtaposing stateless and state societies in order to bring the latter's broad characteristics into relief. Table 2.1 offers only rudimentary definitions. One reason for this is that states, like other social phenomena, have changed over time, partly in relation to the transformation of the conditions of the societies CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 73 Table 2.1 Features of stateless and state societies Stateless societies informal mechanisms of government no clear boundaries to a society disputes and decisions settled by family or kin groups, or by larger tribal structures headed by a chief with the support of a council relationships and transactions significantly defined by custom State societies political apparatus or governmental institutions differentiated from other organizations in the community rule takes place over a specific population and territory legal system, backed by a capacity to use force institutional divisions within government (the executive, civil service and army, for example) are formally coordinated in which they arose. There have been many different state forms which have set down elements of rule in a succession of different ways. Rule or rulership has no single 'essence' or fixed quality. Examples which will be drawn upon to highlight this are empires, feudal political relations and absolutist monarchies. This chapter distinguishes the characteristics of stateless and state societies from those of the modern state. Several key features of the latter will be elucidated in Section 2.5, but for the present it is sufficient to stress that the concept of the modern state refers to that type of state which emerged in the European states system from the sixteenth century onwards. The concept connotes an impersonal and privileged legal or constitutional order with the capability of administering and controlling a given territory; that is, a distinct form of public power, separate from both ruler and ruled, and forming the supreme political authority within certain defined boundaries (Skinner, 1978, p.353; cf. Neumann, 1964). The 'other side' of the modern state is 'civil society'. Civil society — like nearly all concepts in social and political analysis — has a long and complex history; but by 'civil society' I will here mean those areas of social life — the domestic world, the economic sphere, cultural activities and political interaction — which are organized by private or voluntary arrangements between individuals and groups outside the direct control of the state (cf. Bobbio, 1989; Pelczynski, 1985; Keane, 1988). The modern state and civil societv were formed, as will be seen, through distinct but interrelated processes. 1.2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE CHAPTER_ This chapter has three main parts which correspond to the aims stated at the outset. The objective of the first part (Section 2) is to provide a brief chronological sketch of the development of the state in Europe, and an account of its chief variants. It is not my intention here to suggest that the variants followed one another according to an evolutionary pattern through which states passed from the 'primitive' to the 'civilized', from the 'simple' to the 'complex', or from Tower' to 'higher' stages — far from it! My aim is to establish a political map or set of bearings which can become a basis for asking in the next section FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY ____ --CHAPTER^JTHE r^ELOPMENT^FTHE MODERN STATE 75 (Section 3): What explains the movement and change among state forms, and how can one understand the rise of the nation-state? If Section 2 expounds a typology of states, Section 3 seeks to explicate the underlying processes or causal patterns which might illuminate why particular types of state have taken the form they have, and why one of these types — the modern nation-stale — became the dominant form over time. In the third major part nf the chapter (Section 4). the meaning and significance of the development of the modern state is explored via an introduction to the work of some of its leading political interpreters. It will be readily seen that the history of the interpretation of the modern state contains sharp conflicts of view. It will be my aim to explicate these conflicts, rather than to try and resolve the differences among them. However, I hope also to establish a framework which will aid an assessment of the relevance of the various interpretations to an understanding of the modern state, as it was and is. The particular emphasis of this chapter is on the active role played by the state in the making and shaping of modernity. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries most of the leading perspectives on social change emphasized that the origins of social transformation were to be found in processes internal to society and, above all, in sovio-\ economic factors. In many of these perspectives, the interrelations xamong states and societies were barely explored. By focusing on the war-making capacity of states, and on the role of the state in domestic and international affairs, this chapter sets itself against this neglect. In so doing, it aligns itself with a notable strand of recent scholarship on the history of states (much of it referred to in the pages which follow), which emphasizes the independent and autonomous part played by political and military factors in the formation of Europe and the modem world. While this story could be told from a number of different starting points, the initial focus will be a sketch of the history and geography of European states, beginning with Rome. This sketch provides a useful background to the diversity of states and their alteration over time. 2 A BRIEF HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPEAN STATES Sixteen hundred years or so ago 'Europe' was dominated by the Roman Empire, albeit an empire divided and disintegrating. Theodosius I (ad 379-95) was the last 'sole ruler' of the Roman Empire, which, after his death, split into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires. The Western Empire suffered from repeated attacks and grew weak in comparison with the East. In 410, the city of Rome was sacked by the Visigoths, a wandering Germanic people from the North-east. The fall of Rome was completed in 476, when the last Roman emperor of the West was deposed. The Eastern Empire, economically securer than its Western counterpart owing to spice and other exports, continued as the Byzantine Empire through the Middle Ages until it was successfully challenged and displaced by the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1453. In the centuries which succeeded the disintegration of the Roman Empire, 'Europe' did not experience the rise of another imperial society, although it was chronically engaged in war and harassed from outside. A contrast has often been drawn between an essentially civilized Europe and a despotic or barbarous East. There are many reasons for distrusting this contrast (sec Bernal, 1987; Springborg, 1991). Some of these reasons will be explored in Chapter 6 of this volume, but two should be emphasized here. First, as recent historical and archaeological research has shown, some of thokev political innovations, conceptual and institutional, of the putativcly western political tradition can be traced to the East; for example, the 'citv-state' or polls society can be found in Mesopotamia long before it emerged in the West. Second, 'Europe' was the creation of many complex pi'ocesses at the intersection of'internal' and 'external' forces and relations. A thousand years ago Europe as such did not exist. The roughly thirty million people who lived across the European landmass did not conceive of themselves as an interconnected people, bound by a common history, culture and fate (Tilly, 1990, p.38). The larger power divisions on a map of'millennial Europe' (c. ad 1000) to some extent mask the area's fragmented and decentred nature. Those who prevailed over territories — emperors, kings, princes, dukes, bishops and others — did so above all as military victors and conquerors, exacting tribute and rent to support their endeavours; they were far from being heads of state governing clearly demarcated territories according to formal law and procedure. As the historian Charles Tilly put it, 'nothing like a centralized national state existed anywhere in Europe' (199U, p.40). Yet one can talk about the beginnings of a recognizable states system at the millenium. In the Italian peninsula, the Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire claimed most of the territory, even though these claims intermingled and were contested routinely by many localized powers and independent and semi-autonomous city-states. But the political map of Europe was to be shaped and reshaped many times. For example, the European map of the late fifteenth century included some five hundred more or less independent political units, often with ill-defined boundaries. By 19UU the number had dwindled to about twenty-five (Tilly, 1975, p.15). It took a long time for national states to dominate the political map, but the era they ushered in was to change fundamentally the nature and form of political life itself. I tl'.o lollow in;; mmstloas: Ihr polite ill ■! (if 147»':' FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY (IP-. .6\ \ 1 ft «Swftrifis a-> ',-ít ■vri-' , ty --^arjöals) Vandala " t (Vi v ■ Ksrtgöorrt ingdon of Larisa If 0t ifc&tia WESTERN( x / ROMAN/'E M P I R E ^ \ ^JC \ Cv^.O A9TERH i- ^ < ^ ' Ktnfetom of V ,—' Pers&rfiifMiiar' PEBSIAM EMPIRE Figure 2.1 Europe in AD 406 pfi ncipaltty of Russia / Voiga ! í Bulgars f /íí " - - - K Principalis' o* ^..J^ • •• ' \ Poland ' Duchyof^m^d, n ^ C GEB**» V -DuchyofB'ľlď'V-^ 1 r - ' \ EMPÍRE .ľ? j "V Kinqdom I—■ ■ ./ ^ of Rance 'cj^?-'. ...../-. K^om rf Navar™ /\ %||> J C , Í^V^ "\ ^>stert*? West' Patztnak? Duchy ol Hungary ^Ql Usov ■s1— -r -r" i - . County ol / ' L-Bai / Umayyad .,- - - ^ Caliphate / Bulgarian \ B%g A N 1 I N E EMPIRE r-' r í- ^ Pr!reip=i% of * -v1/-* ,TT.iítsrcfcari '-\, ^^-i „ -^= —' ~" } 5hľ_yan ArmenlanP.irKí.fMl'tieso^- í T^f<*^'A ■ ' Fmirato Erfiate of .< vEmirsae ot ^ ^_ isía^an I ' "n. Harradarl 1 ' buwayhid'fwihat^s I PAT)ÍÍÍ0~ICALI "MA L CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 77 ^ 1 kSngcom of Kingdon of Sweden jJ\ J? Teutonic —■'of ■, ■ 1 Knights ^ V.- 11! / " . ; Darn.arkp \ _ jv -'Irish) w( Kingdom of f-'iljB-'; '^f /> J*. ^".j^-^S> .'QEHMAN ,-■ ^ J~^<~ B - EMPIRE . -Hung. Grfi.it Principally of Moscow jbolic ot Pshoi/ Khanale of Kazan Kirghiz-Kazak Kingdom of Poland Khanate of the Go den Hordu Khanate of r Astrakhan J Kingdom ol s France 1° /Kingdom ■' tt 1 Cdliphaie" 'O B Burgundian possessions Gen. Genoese possessions Ven. Venetian possessions Figure 2.3 Europe in AD 1478 ■i"r > Knights Kingdom of/ ; Si John "ypr"s , Suita na te^S Emirate of the White Sheep Turks S pai n & P^ r^*!?- '..Kingdoii DeSirk j J ' t \ \ \ ^Yugoslavia Morocco '( 0 Malta Crj^i Akrotinand'' /' ■- < ,B'r'h) isJfj*»" '-Tunisia/—^-'-^ "s ■v. Algeria Areas under Israeli military occupation Libya Egypt Figure 2.2 Europe in AD 998 Figure 2.4 Europe in AD 1980 „.„_, CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 79 FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY _______- _______ _ _________________________ Since the fall of Rome, it is not just the number of states which has altered dramatically, but the forms and types of states as well. There are five main clusters of state systems which uan be distinguished: 1 traditional tribute-taking empires; 2 systems of divided authority, characterized by feudal relations, city-states and urban alliances, with the Church (Papacy) playing a leading role; 3 the polity of estates; 4 absolutist states; 5 modern nation-states, with constitutional, liberal democratic or single party polities locked progressively into a system of nation-states. Figure 2.5 provides an approximate guide to the periods in which each type of state system could be found. For the remainder of this section, I shall examine each type in turn before pursuing the question: What accounts for the eventual dominance of the nation-state? 1 Empires Feudalism (systems ot divided authority) Papacy" Holy Roman Empire* Polity of estates Absolutist states Modern states i_ J— i —i 10 11 12 13 Centuries .1 — i— 16 17 18 19 20 Broken lines indicate that a political system s influence was not continuous, but rather broken from time to time. * The Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, while at certain stages essential elements of the feudal system of authority, have been separated out for later reference. Figure 2.5 State forms and historical periods 2.1 EMPIRES Empires or imperial systems have dominated the history of states over the centuries, particularly in their size and grandeur. Some, notably Rome (and China in the East), retained identifiable institutional forms over long periods. Empires required an accumulation and concentration of coercive means — above all, of war-making ability — to sustain themselves. When this ability waned, empires disintegrated. All 'traditional' empires developed as a result of expansion from initially more restricted power bases and confined states. Moreover, the deployment of military strength was uppermost in the creation and maintenance of frontiers or territorial boundaries, though the latter were often in flux and shifted according to patterns of rebellion and invasion. Territorial boundaries were by no moans yet 'fixed borders' (Giddens, 1985, pp.80-1). While empires frequently were crossed by long-distance trading routes, and indeed often engaged directly in long-distance trade themselves, their economic requirements were largely met through the exaction of tribute, some of which was used to buy off threatened assaults if military power fell short. The tribute system supported the emperor, his administrative apparatus and the military. But however powerful empires might have been relative to contending power centres, they could sustain only limited administrative authority. Empires stretched over a plethora of communities and societies which were culturally diverse and heterogeneous. Empires were ruled but they were not governed; that is to say, emperors dominated a limited social and geographical space, but lacked the administrative means — the institutions, organizations, information, personnel and so on — to provide regularized administration over the territories they claimed as their own. The politics of empires busied themselves with conflicts and intrigue within dominant groups and classes and within local urban centres', beyond that the resort to military force was the key mechanism for binding and integrating peoples and territories. Although force was frequently effective, its significance should not be exaggerated. For the size, mobility and deployment of armies depended on the availability of water and local harvests to plunder. The military depended on the countryside and could move no more quickly than its men could march in a day, subject to the availability of foodstuffs. 2.2 SYSTEMS OF DIVIDED AUTHORITY IN MEDIAEVAL EUROPE Feudalism — a political system of overlapping and divided authority -assumed many forms between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries. But it is probably fair to say that it was distinguished in general by a network of interlocking ties and obligations, with systems of rule fragmented into many small, autonomous parts (Poggi, 1978, p.27). Political power became more local and personal in focus, generating a 'social world of overlapping claims and powers' (Anderson, 1974, p.149). Some of these claims and powers conflicted; and no ruler or 80 FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 81 state was sovereign in the sense of being supreme over a given territory and population (Bull, 1977, p.254). Within this system of power, tensions were rife ant] war was frequent. The early roots of feudalism can be traced to left-overs of the Roman Empire and to the militaristic culture and the institutions of Germanic tribal peoples (Poggi, 1990, pp.35-7). A concern with loyalty in war and effective leadership among these peoples led to a special relationship between a ruler or lord or king (generally acclaimed or 'appointed' by his followers on the basis of his military and strategic skills) and the tribe's leading warriors, called vassi ('vassals'; 'servants'). The warriors declared bonds of loyalty and homage to their lord in return for privileges and protection. In the late seventh century, Frankish rulers connected the idea of a vassalic bond not just to military endeavour, but to the governing of territories more generally: rulers endowed vassals with rights of land, later called feudum ('fief'), in the hope of securing continued loyalty, military service and flows of income. Ttie result, however, was rarelv a simple hierarchy of lord, vassal and peasants; rather, the hierarchy was often characterized by a great chain of relations and obligations as major vassals 'sub-contracted' parts of their lands to others. At the bottom of the hierarchy was, of course, the vast majority of the population: 'the object of rule ... but never the subject of a political relationship' (Poggi, 1978, p.23). While feudal kings were primus inter pares ('first among equals'), they were locked (with certain exceptions, notably in England and northern France) into wide-ranging systems of privileges and duties which often imposed on them a requirement to consult and negotiate with the most powerful lords or barons, when taxes or armies were to be raised. Lords were expected to maintain an autonomous military capability to support their kings; but if was a capability that provided them with an independent power base which they could be tempted to use to further their own interests. With some political forces seeking to centralize power and others seeking local autonomy, the feudal states system contained significant disintegrative tendencies. Within mediaeval Europe the economy was dominated by agriculture, and any surplus generated was subject to competing claims. A successful claim constituted a basis to create and sustain political power. But the web of kingdoms, principalities, duchies and other power centres which depended on these arrangements was complicated further by the emergence of alternative powers in the towns and cities. Cities and urban federations depended on trade and manufacture and relatively high accumulations of capital. They developed different social and political structures and frequently enjoyed independent systems of rule specified by charters. Among the best known were the Italian cities of Florence. Venice and Sienna, but across Europe hundreds of urban centres developed. Nowhere, however, did they (and the web of feudal relations in the countryside) alone determine the pattern of rule or political identity. For in the Middle Ages 'Europe' more accurately meant 'Christendom'. And the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire gave Christendom what overarching unity it had. The Holy Roman Empire existed in some form from the eighth until the early nineteenth century. For while the Roman imperial title had lapsed in the fifth century, it was revived in 800 by Pope Leo III and conferred on Charlemagne, King of the Franks. Later, the title Holy Roman Emperor was borne by successive dynasties of German kings, although its actual significance, like that of the Empire more generally, varied considerably over time. At its height, the Holy Roman Empire represented an attempt, under the patronage of the Catholic Church, to unite and centralize the fragmented power centres of western Christendom into a politically-unified Christian empire. The countries federated under the Empire spread from Germany to Spain, and from northern France to Italy. However, the actual secular power of the Empire was always limited by the complex power structures of feudal Europe on the one hand, and the Catholic Church on the other. The chief rival power to the mediaeval feudal and city networks was the Catholic Church itself. Throughout the Middle Ages the Catholic Church sought to place spiritual above secular authority. While it would be quite misleading to suggest that the rise of Christianity effectively banished secular considerations from the lives of rulers and ruled, it unquestionably shifted the source of authority and wisdom from this-worldly to otherworldly representatives. The Christian world-view transformed the rationale of political action from an earthly to a theological framework; it insisted that the Good lay in submission to God's will. In mediaeval Europe there was no theoretical alternative — no alternative 'political theory' — to the theocratic positions of Pope and Holy Roman Emperor. The integration of Christian Europe came to depend above all on these authorities. This order has been characterized as the order of 'international Christian society' (Bull, 1977, p.27). International Christian society was conceived as being Christian first and foremost; it looked to God for the authority to resolve disputes and conflicts; its primary political reference point was religious doctrine, and it was overlaid with assumptions about the universal nature of human community. It was not until western Christendom was under challenge, especially from the conflicts generated by the rise of national states and by the Reformation, that the idea of the modern state was born, and the ground was created for the development of a new form of political identity — national identity. 2.3 THE POLITY OF ESTATES Some date the crisis of feudalism as early as 1300. But whether or not one accepts this date, the decay of feudalism can be detected over a substantial period as competing claims to more extensive and penetrating political power were fought out. Within this process of transformation, new understandings about political arrangements emerged. Some writers argue that these 'new' concepts and ideas — tor example, the claims nf various social groups or 'estates' (the nobility, clergy, and leading townsmen or burghers) to political prerogatives. FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY __ _______ CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 83 particularly to rights of representation — were merely extensions of existing feudal relations. However, others emphasize their novel and distinctive qualities. Those that emphasize the innovative nature of the post-feudal system of rule draw attention to a number of larger territories in which successful rulers created new kinds of political relations with various elements of society. One observer has described the arrangements thus: In the first place, in the polity of estates the rulers present themselves primarily not as Feudal superiors, but as the holders of higher, public prerogatives of non- and often pre-feudal origins, surrounded by the halo of a higher majesty; often imparted by means of sacred ceremonies (for example, the sacre du mi ['consecration of a king']). In the second place, the counterpart to the ruler is typically represented not by individuals, but by constituted bodies of ' various kinds: local assemblies of aristocrats, cities, ecclesiastical bodies, corporate associations. Taken singly, each of these bodies — the 'estates' — represents a different collective entity: a region's noblemen of a given rank, the residents of a town, the faithful of a parish or the practitioners of a trade. Taken together, these bodies claim to represent a wider, more abstract, territorial entity — country, Land, terra, pays — which, they assert, the ruler is entitled to rule only to the extent that he upholds its distinctive customs and serves its interests. In turn, however, these interests are largely identified with those of the estates: and even the customs of the country or the region in question have as their major components the different claims of the various estates. Thus, the ruler can rule legitimately only to the extent that periodically he convenes the estates of a given region or of the whole territory into a constituted, public gathering. (Poggi, 1990, pp.40-1) In these circumstances, rulers had to deal with estates and estates had to deal with rulers. Out of this emerged a variety of estates-based assemblies, parliaments, diets and councils which sought to legitimate and enjoy autonomous faculties of rule. The 'polity of estates' was characterized by a 'power dualism': power was split between rulers and estates. This 'power dualism' did not endure; it was challenged by the estates seeking greater power and by monarchs hoping to subvert the assemblies in order to centralize power in their own hands. As the grip of feudal traditions and customs was loosened, the nature and limits of political authority, law, rights and obedience emerged as a preoccupation of political thought. 2.4 ABSOLUTIST STATES The historical changes that contributed to the transformation of mediaeval notions of politics were complicated. Struggles between monarchs and barons over the domain of rightful authority: peasant rebellions against the weight of excess taxation and social obligation; the spread of trade, commerce and market relations; the flourishing of Renaissance culture with its renewed interest in classical political ideas (including Athenian democracy and Roman law); changes in technology, particularly military technology; the consolidation of national monarchies (notably in England. France and Spain); religious strife and the challenge to the universal claims of Catholicism; the struggle between Church and State — all played a part. In the sections that follow, I shall return to discuss a number of these developments, but it is important first to clarify the notion of the 'absolutist' state. From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century two different forms of regime can be distinguished in Europe: the 'absolute' monarchies of France, Prussia, Austria, Spain, Sweden and Russia, among other places, and the 'constitutional' monarchies and republics found principally in England and Holland (Mann. 1986, p.476). There are important conceptual and institutional differences between these regime types, although in terms of the history of state/societv relations some of the differences have, as we shall see, been more apparent than real. I shall discuss constitutional states shortly, but will focus in the first instance on absolutism. Absolutism signalled the emergence of a form of state based upon: the absorption of smaller and weaker political units into larger and stronger political structures; a strengthened ability to rule over a unified territorial area; a tightened system of law and order enforced throughout a territory; the application of a 'more unitary, continuous, calculable, and effective' rule by a single, sovereign head; and the development of a relatively small number of states engaged in an 'open-ended, competitive, and risk-laden power struggle' (Poggi, 1978, pp.60-1). Although the actual power of absolutist rulers has often been exaggerated, these changes marked a substantial increase in 'public authority' from above. Certainly, absolutist rulers claimed that they alone held the legitimate right of decision over state affairs. One of the most remarkable statements of this view has been attributed to Louis XV, king of France from 1715 to 1774: In my person alone resides the sovereign power, and it is from rne alone that the courts hold their existence and their authority. That ... authority can only be exercised in my name ... . For it is to me exclusively that the legislative power belongs ... . The whole public order emanates from me since I am its supreme guardian. ... The rights and interests of the nation ... are necessarily united with my own and can only rest in my hands, (quoted in Sr.hama, 1989. p.104) The absolutist monarch claimed to be the ultimate source of human law, although it is important to note that his broad writ was understood to FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY _ _ CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 85 derive from the law of God. The king's legitimacy was based on 'divine right'. In this very particular sense, political authorities were regarded as being as much under the law as any other corporate institution (Benn and Peters, 1959, p.256). In a striking and somewhat (maliciously) humorous account of the public standing of the French monarch, perhaps the supreme example of an absolutist figure, the sociologist Gianfranco Poggi has written: [The] King of France was thoroughly, without residue, a 'public' personage. His mother gave birth to him in public, and from that moment his existence, down to its most trivial moments, was acted out hefore the eyes of attendants who were holders of dignified public offices. He ate in public, went to bed in public, woke up and was clothed and groomed in public, urinated and defecated in public. He did not copulate in public; but near enough, considering the circumstances under which he was expected to deflower his august bride. He did not much bathe in public; but then, neither did he in private. When he died (in public) his body was promptly and messily chopped up in public, and its severed parts ceremoniously handed out to the more exalted among the personages who had been attending him throughout his mortal existence. (Poggi, 1978, pp.68-9) The absolutist monarch was at the apex of a new system of rule which was progressively centralized and anchored on a claim to supreme and indivisible power: sovereign authority. All these qualities were manifest in the routines and rituals of courtly life. However, linked to the court there developed a new administrative apparatus involving the beginnings of a permanent, professional bureaucracy and army (Mann, 1986, p.476). If the French monarchy of the seventeenth century represents the best example of an absolutist court, Prussia under the Hohenzollern dynasty provides the best example of the 'prototypes of ministries' (Poggi, 1990, p.48), These 'prototypes' increased the state's involvement in the promotion and regulation of a hitherto unparalleled diversity of activities. Six ensuing developments were of great significance in the history of the states system: 1 the growing coincidence of territorial boundaries with a uniform system of rule; 2 the creation of new mechanisms of law-making and -enforcement; 3 the centralization of administrative power; 4 the alteration and extension of fiscal management; 5 the formalization of relations among states through the development of diplomacy and diplomatic institutions; and f> the introduction of a standing army (see Anderson, 1974, pp.15-42; Giddens, 1985. ch. 4). Absolutism helped set in motion a process of state-making which began to reduce the social, economic and cultural variation within states and expand the variation among them (Tilly, 1975. p. 19). According to one interpretation of these changes, the expansion of state administrative power was made possible to a significant extent by the extension of the state's capacity for the surveillance of its subjects; that is, the collection and storing of information about members of society, and the related ability to supervise subject populations (Giddens, 1985, pp.14-15). However, as the state's sovereign authority expanded and its administrative centres became more powerful, there was not simply a concentration of power at the apex. For the increase in administrative power via surveillance increased the state's dependence on cooperative forms of social relations; it was no longer possible for the state to manage its affairs and sustain its offices and activities by force alone. As a result, greater reciprocity was created between the governors and the governed, and the more reciprocity was involved, the more opportunities were generated for subordinate groups to influence their rulers (Ciddens, 1985. pp.l98ff.). Absolutism, in short, created within itself a momentum toward the development of new forms and limits on state power — constitutionalism and (eventually) participation by-powerful groups in the process of government itself. Whatever the other merits of this particular interpretation, it usefully draws attention to the gulf that existed between the claims of the absolutist monarch, on the one hand, and a reality, on the other hand, which imposed on the monarch requirements of negotiation and cooperation if the state was to function effectively. This gulf has been explored further in the recent work of the sociologist Michael Mann, who distinguishes between a 'strong' regime's power to effect its will over civil society, which he calls 'despotism', and its power to coordinate civil society, which he refers to as 'infrastructural strength' (1986, p.477). Comparing a range of absolutist regimes, Mann argues that the absolute monarch was 'no ancient emperor — he was not the sole source of law; of coinages, weights and measures; of economic monopolies ... .He could not impose compulsory cooperation. He owned only his own estates' (Mann, 1986, p.478). Absolutist regimes, Mann concludes, had limited despotic reach; they were weak in relation to powerful groups in society, for example, the nobility, merchants and urban bourgeoisie. But, like their constitutional counterparts, they were engaged increasingly in the coordination of the activities of these groups and in building up the state's infrastructural strength. By the end of the seventeenth century Europe was no longer a mosaic of states. For the 'consolidated independent sovereignty of each individual state ... was at the same time part of a process of overall inter-state integration' (Giddens, 1985, p.91). A concomitant of each and every stale's claim to uncontestable authority was the recognition that such a claim gave other states an equal entitlement to autonomy and respect within their own borders. The devekipmenl of state sovereignty was part of a process of mutual recognition whereby states granted each other rights of jurisdiction in their respective territories and communities. 86 FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY _______________ _______ _ RAFTER 2_THE DEVELOPMENT^OF^THE MODERN^STATE 87 In the international context, sovereignty has involved the assertion by Ihe state of independence; that is, of its possession of sole rights to jurisdiction over a particular people and territory. This dimension of sovereignty has, in addition, been associated with the claim that, by virtue of the very argument which establishes tiie sovereignty of a particular state, that state must accept that it will be one among many states with, in principle, equal rights to self-determination. In the world of relations among states, the principle of the sovereign equality of all states was to become paramount in the formal conduct of states towards one another. The conception of international law which emerged within the new 'international society of states' has boon referred lo by international lawyers, notably Richard Falk and Antonio Cassese. as the 'Westphalian mode)' (after the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which brought to an end the Eighty Years War between Spain and the Dutch and the German phase of the Thirty Years War). The model covers the period of international law from 1048 to 1945 (although some would say it still holds today). It depicts the emergence of a world community consisting of sovereign states which settle their differences privately and often by force; which engage in diplomatic relations but otherwise minimal cooperation; which seek to place their own national interest above all others; and which accept the logic of the principle of effectiveness, that is, the principle that might eventually makes right in the international world — appropriation becomes legitimation. The model of Westphalia can be summarized by the following seven points [see Cassese, 1986, pp.396-9; Falk, 1969): The model of Westphalia 1 The world consists of, and is divided by, sovereign states which recognize no superior authority. 2 The processes of law-making, the settlement of disputes and law-enforcement arc largely in the hands of individual states subject to the logic of'the competitive struggle for power'. 3 Differences among states are often settled by force: the principle of effective power holds sway. Virtually no legal fetters exist to curb the resort to force; international legal standards afford minimal protection. 4 Responsibility for cross-border wrongful acts are a private matter concerning only those affected; no collective interest in compliance with international law is recognized. 5 All states are regarded as equal before the laxv: legal rules do not take account of asymmetries of power. 6 International law is oriented to the establishment of minimal rules of co-existence; the creation of enduring relationships among states and peoples is an aim only to the extent that it allows military objectives to be met. 7 The minimization of impediments on state freedom is the 'collective' priority. The new international order, ushered in by the era of the absolutist state (and its constitutional counterpart, a discussion of which follows), had a lasting and paradoxical quality rich in implications: an increasingly integrated slates system simultaneously endorsed the right of each state to autonomous and independent action. The upshot of this development was, as one commentator has aptly noted, that states were 'not subject to international moral requirements because they represent separate and discrete political orders with no common authority among them' (Beitz, 1979, p.25). According to this model, the world consists of separate political powers pursuing their own interests, and backed ultimately by their organization of coercive power. 2.5 MODERN STATES The proximate sources of the modern state were absolutism and the interstate system it initiated. In condensing and concentrating political power in its own hands, and in seeking to create a central system of rule, absolutism paved the way for a secular and national system of power. Moreover, in claiming sovereign authority exclusively for itself, it threw down a challenge to all those groups and classes which had had a stake in the old order (the polity of estates), and to all those with a stake in the new developing order based on capital and the market economy. It forced all these collectivities to rethink their relationship to the state, and to re-examine their political resources. In addition, the myriad battles and wars fought out in the interstate system altered fundamentally the boundaries of both absolutist states and the emerging modern states — the whole map of Europe changed as territorial boundaries progressively became fixed borders. Although the transition from the absolutist to the modern state was marked by dramatic events and processes such as the English (1640-88) and French (1789) Revolutions, an exclusive focus on these hinders an understanding of the way in which the absolutist state itself was crucial in the development of modern political rule. It was the confluence of 'internal' transformations in European states with shifting geopolitical relations and forces which provided a, if not the, key impetus to the formation of the modern state. 1 shall return to elements of these 'macropatterns' in Section 3; in the meantime, what should be understood by the term 'modern state': All modern states are nation-states — political apparatuses, distinct from both ruler and ruled, with supreme jurisdiction over a demarcated territorial area, hacked by a claim to a monopoly of coercive power, and enjoying a minimum level of support or loyalty from their citizens (cf. Skinner, 1978, pp.349-58; Giddens, 1985, pp.17-31,116-21). Like all definitions in the social sciences, this one is controversial; and Section 4 of this chapter will, as previously noted, focus directly on the controversy about how the modern state should be understood. But for my purposes here, this particular definition is useful because it underscores a number of the crucial innovations of the modern states system; these are: FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 1 Territoriality. While all states have made claims to territories, it is only with the modern states system that exact borders have been fixed. 2 Control of the means of violence. The claim to hold a monopoly on force and the means of coercion (sustained by a standing army and the police) became possible only with the 'pacification' of peoples — the breaking down of rival centres of power and authority — in the nation-state. This element of the modern state was not fully present until the nineteenth century. 3 Impersonal structure of power. The idea of an impersonal and sovereign political order — i.e. a legally circumscribed structure of power with supreme jurisdiction over a territory — could not predominate while political rights, obligations and duties were conceived as closely tied to property rights, religion and the claims of traditionally privileged groups such as the nobility. This matter was still in contention in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 4 Legitimacy. It was only when claims to 'divine right' or 'state right' were challenged and eroded that it became possible for human beings as 'individuals' and as 'peoples' to be active citizens of a new order — not merely dutiful subjects of a monarch or emperor. The loyalty of citizens became something that had to be won by modern states: invariably this involved a claim by the state to be legitimate because it reflected and/or represented the needs and interests of its citizens. There is a further clarification which should be made at this juncture. The concept of the nation-state, or national state, as some prefer, ought not to be taken to imply that a state's people necessarily 'share a strong linguistic, religious, and symbolic identity' (Tilly, 1990, pp.2-3). Although some nation-states approximate to this state of affairs, many do not (for example, in the United Kingdom there are significant differences in national tradition). It is therefore important to separate out the concepts of 'nation-state' and 'nationalism'. Anthony Giddens has made the point succinctly: '... what makes the 'nation' integral to the nation-state ... is not the existence of sentiments of nationalism but the unification of an administrative apparatus over precisely defined territorial boundaries (in a complex of other nation-states)' (Giddens, 1987, p.172). The concept of 'nationalism' — denoting the existence of symbols and beliefs which create patterns of ethnic, or religious, or linguistic commonality and political ambition — should be reserved for highlighting particular types of configuration of peoples and states. It has been argued that the difference between absolute and modern states is not as great as conventionally thought, for two reasons (see Mann, 1986. pp.450-99). First, absolutist states, as already noted, had less power over civil society than is frequently claimed. Second, modern states are rarely 'bounded' by their constitutions and borders and, hence, have often behaved like arrogant 'absolutist' states, especially in their dealings with peoples and cultures overseas. Both points carry weight and need to be borne in mind in what follows. However, neither point negates fully the conceptual and institutional innovations introduced by the modern state. In order to highlight these, it is useful to draw attention to a number of forms of the modern state itself. These are the constitutional state, the liberal state, the liberal-democratic state, and the single-party polity. Forms of the modern state 1 Constitutionalism or the constitutional stale refers to implicit and/or explicit limits on political or stale decision-making, limits which can be either procedural or substantive; that is, specifying how decisions and changes can be made (proceduralism), or blocking certain kinds of changes altogether (substautivism) (see Elster, 1988). Constitutionalism defines the proper forms and limits of state action, and its elaboration over time as a set of doctrines and practices helped inaugurate one of the central tenets ol European liberalism: that the state exists to safeguard the rights and liberties of citizens who are ultimately the best judges of their own interests; and. accordingly, that the state must be restricted in scope and constrained in practice in order to ensure the maximum possible freedom of every citizen. 2 The liberal state became defined in large part by the attempt to create a private sphere independent of the state, and by a concern to reshape the state itself, i.e. by freeing civil society — personal, family and business life — from unnecessary political interference, and simultaneously delimiting the state's authority (Held, 1987, r.hs 2-3). The building blocks of the liberal state became constitutionalism, private property, the competitive market economy anrl the distinctively patriarchal family (see Chapter 4 of this volume). But while liberalism celebrated the rights of individuals to 'life, liberty and property' (John Locke), it should bo noted from the outset that it was generally the male property-owning individual who was the focus of so much attention; and the new freedoms were first and foremost for the men of the new middle classes or the bourgeoisie. The western world was liberal first, and only later, after extensive conflicts, liberal democratic; that is, oulv later was a universal franchise won which in principle allowed all mature adults the chance to express their judgement about the performance of those who govern them (Macpherson, 1966, p.6). 3 The third variant of the modern state is liberal or representative democracy itself, a system of rule embracing elected 'officers' who undertake to 'represent' the interests or views of citizens within the framework of the 'rule of law'. Representative democracy means that decisions affecting a community arc not taken by its members as a whole, but bv a sub-group of representatives whom 'the people' have elected for this purpose. In the arena of national politics, representative democracy takes the form of elections to congresses, parliaments or similar national bodies, and is now associated with the system of government in countries as far afield as the United States. Britain, Germany, Japan. Australia and New Zealand. 4 Finally, there is the form of the modern state known as the one-party or single-partvpolity. Until recently, the Soviet Union, many East European societies and some Third World countries have been governed CHAPTEH 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE by this system. The principle underlying one-party polities is that a single party can be the legitimate expression of the overall will of the community. Voters have the opportunity to affirm the party's choice of candidate, or occasionally to choose from among different party candidates (although some may doubt whether this constitutes an opportunity for the exercise of choice at all). Little further will be said about the single-party polity in this chapter. (For further discussion of this state form, see Book 2 (Allen et al., 1992), Chapter 1, and Book 4 (Hall et al., 1992), Chapter 1.) This chapter will instead attend to those elements of the first three state forms listed above which require elaboration and examination. But before turning to this task, it is important to respond to the question: What accounts for the emergence of the modern nation-state? In other words, why did national states come to predominate in the political world? 3 WHY DID NATION-STATES BECOME SUPREME?___________________..... In order to address the above question, this section will examine a number of key factors, or causal patterns, in the development of the states system and of the modern state in particular. The prime focus will be on war and militarism and on the relationship between states and capitalism, although other significant factors will be touched on. Once again, it will be useful to examine deeply structured processes of change taking place over long periods. It should be noted that the stress is on processes, factors and causal patterns; that is to say, this section is guided by the assumption that there is no mono-causal explanation — no single phenomenon or set of phenomena — which fully explains the rise of the modern state. States, like other collectivities and institutions, depend for their existence on broad experiences and diverse conditions. It is in a combination of factors that the beginnings of an explanation for the rise of the modern state can be found. 3.1 WAR AND MILITARISM It has already been suggested that the nature and form of the states system crystallized at the intersection of 'international' and 'national' conditions and processes (the terms in inverted commas are so expressed because they did not take on their contemporary meaning until the era of fixed borders, i.e. the era of the nation-state). In fact, it is at this intersection that the 'shape' of the state was largely determined — its size, external configuration, organizational structure, ethnic composition, material infrastructure and so on (Hintzc, 1975, chs 4-6, 11). At the heart of the processes involved was the ability of states to secure and strengthen their power bases and, thereby, to order their affairs, internally and externally. What was at issue, in short, was the capacity of states to organize the means of coercion (armies, navies and other forms of military might) and to deploy them when necessary. How important this element of state power has been to the history of states can be gleaned by examining the case of England/Britain. From an analysis of state finances (how the state raised and spent what money it had] over several centuries, Michael Mann has shown that 'the functions of the state appear overwhelmingly military and overwhelmingly geopolitical rather than economic and domestic' (Mann, 1986, p.511; see also Mitchell and Deane, 1962; Mitchell and Jones, 1971). Mann calculates that from about the twelfth to the nineteenth century, between 70 and 90 per cent of the English state's financial resources were continuously devoted to the acquisition and use of the instruments of military force, especially in international wars. For most of this period the state grew slowly and fitfully (although when it did grow it was due to warfare and related developments), and its size, measured in relation to the resources of the economy and its impact on the daily life of most people, was small. But in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the state's real finances grew rapidly, largely in response to the escalating costs of the means of 'coercive power'; in this case, the growing professional, standing armies and navies. Expenditures on non-military civil functions remained minor. Reliable annual sets of accounts are available for central government expenditure in Britain for the period after 1688. These are presented in Figure 2.6 and Table 2.3, both taken from Mann (1986). ACTIVITY 2 Turn lo Figure 2.6 and Table 2.3 (o\urleaf) now. Consider how militan and total exnenditure fluctuate! toiir-llmr. Mann's comments on Figure 2.6 and Table 2.3 are telling: Note first the upward trend in the financial size of the British state: Between 1700 and 1815 real expenditures rise fifteenfold (and the increase at current prices is thirty-fivefold!). This is easily the fastest rate of increase we have seen for any century .... But the upward trend is not steady. The total rockets suddenly six times. It will come as no surprise that all but one of these are at the beginning of a war, and all six are due primarily to a large rise in military expenditures. Furthermore debt repayment, used exclusively to finance military needs, rises toward the end of each war and is maintained in the first years of peace. The pattern is beautifully regular .... These figures confirm every hypothesis made for previous centuries on the basis of sketchier data. State finances were dominated by foreign wars. As warfare developed more professional and permanent forces, so the state grew both in overall size and (probably) in terms of its size in relation to its 'civil society'. (Mann, 1986, pp.485-6) 92 FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 93 38 36^ 34 32l 30 h Z3r 26'-24 h 22 - 20 181 16 - 14l 12 h 10r al- 6 ■ 4 2 Total expenditures Military expenditures Debt repayment Civil expenditures — OJ o ^ War War War War War War War Figure 2.6 British state expenditure, 1695-1820 (at constant prices: 1690-9 = 100) Source: Mann, 1986. p.484 The significance of these remarks is highlighted further if it is recalled that they bear on the activities and functions of a constitutional state. In fact, over the whole period in question, broadly the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, whether a state was 'constitutional' or 'absolutist' made little difference to the proportion of its expenditure on the military. This can bo seen by comparing Table 2.3 with Table 2.2, which shows Austrian state expenditure for part of the same period. Table 2.2 Austrian state expenditure, 1795-1817 (in percent) Year Military Debt repayment Civil Total expenditure at current prices (in millions of guldern) 1795 71 12 17 133.3 1800 67 22 11 143.9 1805 63 25 12 102.7 1810 69 20 11 76.1 1815 75 4 21 121.2 1817 53 8 38 98.8 Source: Mann, 1986, p.487 Sketchier evidence appears to confirm a similar pattern of income and costs for France, Prussia and Russia, although each had its peculiarities. The above material is not an argument for 'military determinism'; that is, for a view which asserts that changes in war and the military are the Table 2.3 State expenditure for Great Britain, 1695-1820 (in millions of pounds at current and constant prices: 1690-9 = 100)* Military expenditure Debt Civil expenditure Total expenditure repayment Year Price Current Constant Current Constant Current Constant Current Constant index 1695 102 4.9 4.8 0.6 0.6 0.8 0.8 6.2 6.1 1700 114 1.3 1.1 1.3 1.1 0.7 0.6 3.2 2.8 1705 87 4.1 4.7 1.0 1.2 0.7 0.8 5.9 6.8 1710 106 7.2 6.8 1.8 1.7 0.9 0.8 9.8 9.2 1715 97 2.2 2.3 3.3 3.4 0.7 0.8 6.2 6.4 1720 94 2.3 2.4 2.8 3.0 1.0 1.0 6.0 6.4 1725 89 1.5 1.7 2.8 3.1 1.3 1.5 5.5 6.2 1730 99 2.4 2.4 2.3 2.3 0.9 0.9 5.6 5.6 1735 82 2.7 3.3 2.2 2.7 0.9 1.1 5.9 7.1 1740 90 3.2 3.6 2.1 2.3 0.8 0.9 6.2 6.8 1745 84 5.8 6.9 2.3 2.7 0.8 1.0 8.9 10.6 1750 93 3.0 3.2 3.2 3.5 1.0 1.1 7.2 7.7 1755 92 3.4 3.7 2.7 2.9 1.0 1.1 7.1 7.7 1760 105 13.5 12.8 3.4 3.2 1.2 1.1 18.0 17.1 1765 109 6.1 5.6 4.8 4.4 1.1 1.0 12.0 11.0 1770a 114 3.9 3.4 4.8 4.2 1.2 1.1 10.5 9.2 1775 130 3.9 3.0 4.7 3.6 1.2 0.9 10.4 8.0 1780 119 14.9 12.5 6.0 5.0 1.3 1.1 22.6 19.0 1786b 131 5.5 4.2 9.5 7.2 1.5 1.2 17.0 13.0 1790 134 5.2 3.9 9.4 7.0 1.7 1.3 16.8 12.5 1795 153 26.3 17.2 10.5 6.8 1.8 1.2 39.0 25.5 1801° 230 31.7 13.8 16.8 7.3 2.1 0.9 51.0 22.2 1805 211 34.1 16.2 20.7 9.8 7.8 3.7 62.8 30.0 1810 245 48.3 19.7 24.2 9.9 8.8 3.6 81.5 33.3 1815 257 72.4 28.2 30.0 11.7 10.4 4.0 112.9 44.0 1820 225 16.7 7.4 31.1 13.8 9.8 4.4 57.5 25.6 * NB: Constant prices are prices controlled for inflation; i.e. they compensate for the existence of inflation. Current prices are the real prices paid at the time of purchase: i.e. they include inflation. a Between 1770 and 1801 the detailed items fall short of the total given by about £500.000. No reason for this is given in the source. b 1785 figures follow an idiosyncratic budgeting system. c 1800 figures are incomplete. Source: Mann, 1986, p.485. exclusive source of change in the state and the states system. However, it does indicate that the development and maintenance of a coercive capability was central to the development of the state: if states wished to survive they had to fund this capability and ensure its effectiveness. Precisely what this involved can be analysed further by means of Figure 2.7. (Note that the discussion which follows concentrates initially on the central and left-hand columns of Figure 2.7.) The process of state-making, and the formation of the modern states system, was to a large degree the result, as Poggi has observed, 'of the 94 FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY______ CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 95 Rulers seek to secure and strengthen their power base in the context of potential challenges and actual threats from rivals Impetus to organize and centralize means of war Policy implementation requires non-state actor co-operation Extraction of resources from society to support the use of force: men, arms, food, income and other supplies Stimulates pressure for involvement and participation in government: 'no taxation without representation' Creation and support of coercive and administrative organizations; elaborated over time with technical, social and economic changes Most powerful subjects/classes mobilize effectively first Protection and war-making Pacification of state territories (removal of internal rivals) '^j Representation and growth of representative institutions States system: independent sovereign states in competition and so enhancing mutual insecurity Figure 2.7 War and the modern state strenuous efforts made by rulers, each by means of his/her apparatus of rule, to widen and secure their power base and to increase their own effectiveness and discretion in managing and mobilizing societal resources' (1990, p. 101). State-makers were locked into an open-ended and ruthless competition in which, as Tilly put it, 'most contenders lost' (1975, p.15). The successful cases of state-making such as England, France and Spain were the 'survivors'. The competition among states was driven not just hy the ambitions of rulers and internal or domestic considerations, but also by the very structure of the international system: individual states, pursuing their own security, had to be prepared for war, a process which itself generated insecurity in other states which sought to respond in kind. In short, states armed and became militaristic partly to ensure their own safety and, in so doing, they ensured the insecurity of others who armed in turn — thus making all states less secure. (This vicious circle of mutual insecurity is often referred to as the 'security dilemma' of the state.) The ability to wage war was dependent on a successful process of extraction; that is, un a state's capacity to extract resources — whether these be men, weapons, foodstuffs, taxes or income substitutes — in support of its endeavours. Few subjects, however, were willing to sacrifice their resources or lives without a struggle for some kind of return or recognition, and conflicts and rebellions against economic and political demands were rife. In response, state rulers built state structures — administrative, bureaucratic and coercive — in order to aid the coordination and control of their subject populations. In short, direct connections can be traced between a growth in the requirement for the means of waging war, an expansion in processes of extraction, and a concomitant formation of state executive and administrative offices to organize and control these changes. The development of some of the key organizations of the modern state emerged at the intersection : of warfare and the attempt to pay for it. War and its financial burdens promoted 'territorial consolidation, centralization, differentiation of the instruments of government and monopolization of the means of coercion (Tilly, 1975, p.42). It has already been noted (in Section 2) that different state forms prevailed in Europe in different eras and regions. The organizational form of the state varied too. In his most recent work, Tilly has sought to examine this variation with reference to the ways state development was mediated by, or filtered through, the social structure of particular societies — that is, the particular constellation of social classes and groups which existed within the terrain of the state and which were either cooperative with or resistant to state-makers (Tilly, 1990, pp.15, 27-8, 57,117ff.). The shape of each such constellation was significantly affected by the different kinds of resource base which could be drawn upon by the various groups and classes comprising it, and the options they had for involvement (or otherwise) in state politics. As Tilly explains: 97 The organization of major social classes, and their relations to the state, varied significantly from Europe's coercion-intensive regions (areas of few cities and agricultural predominance, where direct coercion played a major part in production), to its capital-intensive regions (areas of many cities and commercial predominance, where markets, exchange, and market-oriented production prevailed). The demands major classes made on the state, and their influence over the state, varied correspondingly. (Tilly, 1990, p.15) For example, in 'capital-intensive' regions, like those found in the Dutcli Republic in the seventeenth century, city-based merchants and capitalists favoured, and sometimes achieved, state structures which extended representation to include their interests. By contrast, in 'coercion-intensive' areas such as the Russian Empire, landlords gained greater control of the state and were able to hinder or block the development of representative councils or assemblies. Over time it was the increasing scale of war, and particularly its growing reliance on technological change, industrialization and specialization which, in combination with the growth of commercial, legal and diplomatic interaction among states, gave the modern centralized nation-state its distinctive edge over other state forms. States that could mobilize and sustain standing armies and/or navies gained a war-making advantage. To quote Tilly again:'... states having access to a combination of large rural populations, capitalists, and relatively commercialized economies won out. They set the terms of war, and their form of state became the predominant one in Europe. Eventually European states converged on that form: the national state' (Tilly, 1990, p.15). The above discussion has concentrated on the relationship between warfare, state-building and the modern state. However, the relationship between warfare, state-building and democratic representation — i.e. the relationship set out on the right-hand side of Figure 2.7 — needs further specification. Yet, here too the role and changing form of war was important. It has been argued by a number of scholars that the more military superiority depended on the ability of a state to mobilize large numbers of soldiers, particularly large numbers of lightly-armed foot soldiers, the greater have been the prospects for representative or popular government (Dahl, 1989, p.245; Andreski, 1908). The subject-soldier has often become, and struggled to become, a citizen-soldier (Janowitz, 1978, pp.1 78-9; cf. Dahl. 1989, p.247). As the political scientist Robert Dahl put it: ... to see oneself as a member of a nation, a privilege for which one was expected to make sacrifices, could also justify one in making a more expansive claim, including a right to a fair share in governing ... or at any rate [as] entitled to the franchise. Countries with mass armies now found that they had ushered in the Age of Democratic Revolutions. It was under these historical conditions in which military organisation and technology were more favourable to democratisation than they had been for many centuries that ... the institutions of polyarchy ['representative government'] took root in one country after another. (Dahl, 1989, p.247) The more costly and demanding war became, the more rulers had to bargain for and win the support of their subjects. And the more people were drawn into preparations for war and war-making, the more they became aware of their membership in a political community and of the rights and obligations such membership might confer. While the nature of this emergent identity was often initially vague, it grew more definite and precise over time. The conditions for the development of citizenship varied across countries and regions (see Therhorn, 1977; Mann, 1987; Turner, 1986). But the expansion of citizenship, or membership of an overall political community, was undoubtedly bound up with the military and administrative requirements of the modern state and the 'politicization' of social relations and day-to-day activities which followed in its wake (cf. Giddens, 1985. ch. 8). In fact, it has been argued that the democratization of the modern nation-state was largely 'a martial accomplishment' (Therborn, 1977). Whether or not this statement is fully justified, it usefully highlights the impetus received by institutions of representation and democracy from the conditions of mass mobilization and the political demands created by the modern state, although it is also important to stress that while some democracies were stimulated by processes of mass mobilization (Britain, Canada), others became democracies by defeat (Austria, Germany, Italy and Japan; see Therborn, 1977). It would be misleading to suggest that war created any one single pattern of causation in the building of democratic institutions. There is not scope here to focus on nationalism as such, but it is useful to add that nationalism was a critical force in the development of the democratic nation-state. The conditions involved in the creation of the modern state were also often the conditions which generated nationalism. Nationalism has been closely linked to the administrative unification of the state. For the process by which national identities were formed was often the result of both a struggle for membership in the new political communities, and a struggle by elites and governments to create a new identity to legitimize the actions of the state. In other words, the construction of national identity has been part of an attempt to bind people together within the framework of a delimited territory in order to gain or enhance state power. The requirements of political action have led to the deployment of national identity as a means of ensuring the coordination of policy, mobilization and legitimacy (Breuilly, 1982, pp.365ff.). However, the conditions of'state-making' and nationalism or 'nation-building' never fully overlapped — and nationalism itself, especially in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, became a force frequently deployed to challenge existing nation-state boundaries (e.g. Northern Ireland; see Poggi. 1990, pp.26-7). CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 99 It is a paradoxical result of the waging of war that it stimulated the formation of representative and democratic institutions. But to note this is not to claim that democracy is fully explained by the pursuit of war. The historical conditions surrounding the rise of democracy have been complex and varied (Dahl, 1989; Held, 1991). It is one thing to suggest that there is a direct connection in certain countries between, for example, the extension of the universal franchise and the emergence of modern infantry armies, but it is quite another to argue that democracy is thereby fully explained. Furthermore, if war gave democracy an impetus within particular nation-states, the rights and principles of democracy were often explicitly denied to those who were conquered, colonized and exploited by powerful nation-states. While the expansion of Europe became the basis of the political unification of the world into a system of nation-states, the main purpose of this expansion was to further European commerce and trade; the rights of colonial subjects were a secondary matter, if a matter of concern at all. 3.2 STATES AND CAPITALISM___ In the interpretation that has been offered so far- about the development of the modern state, little has been said about the economic motives or economic interests of political and social actors, and about the economic conditions and limits of state action, other than to examine the issue of extraction of men, arms, income etc. (see Section 3.1). The main emphasis has been on the non-economic features of the modern state; that is, on the independent and autonomous capacities of its organizations and agencies. Does the introduction of an account of economic relations, and of the impact of the development of capitalism especially, alter the view set out so far of states as competing geopolitical institutions, above all else? Did the modern state system shape and constrain the modern capitalist economy as the latter developed after AD 1500? Or was the formation of the capitalist economy on a progressively more international basis a, if not the, prime determinant of the scope or limits of state power? As state boundaries became more fixed, did the formal state rulers 'rule the roost, or was the 'roost' impinged upon more and more by the rising economic classes? In short, what was the effect upon the nation-state of the development of the modern economic system; and who exactly rules the nation-state? As with previous sections, it is useful to take several steps back in time before seeking to discriminate among, and weigh up, the multifarious factors which were at play. At about AD 1000 the nearest approximation to a worldwide order of politics and trade was the Moslem world. Its dominance, however, was slowly challenged: faced with Mongol invasions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the one hand, and later outflanked by European naval expeditions, on the other, the vitality of the Islamic world declined (Modelski, 1972). Europe was to 'explode outward upon the world' (Mann, 1986, p.500). The growth of interconnections between states and societies — that is, of globalization — became progressively shaped by the expansion of Europe. Globalization meant western globalization. Key features of the modern states system — the centralization of political power, the expansion of administrative rule, the emergence of massed standing armies, the deployment of force_ which existed in Europe in embryo in the sixteenth century were to become prevalent features of the entire global system. The chief vehicle for this was, to begin with, the European states' capacity for overseas operations by means of naval and military force capable of long-range navigation. Among the early leaders in exploration were the Spanish and Portuguese (see Chapter 6. Section 2.3). If the Iberian monarchies led the first two centuries of 'European globalization', their position was eroded in the seventeenth century by the Dutch and then by the English. English influence was markedly in the ascendant in the eighteenth century and quite dominant in the nineteenth. British naval and military power conjoined with London as the centre of world trade and finance. However, it is doubtful whether any one single power was dominant until the nineteenth century. At least two powerful states were always contending for hegemony in Europe, and the expansion of world commerce drew in non-state actors as well (Tilly, 1990, p.189). The expansion of Europe across the globe enhanced the demand, as one observer has noted, 'for organizations that would he capable of operating on such a scale. All the basic organization types of modern society — the modern state, modern corporate enterprise, modern science — were shaped by it and benefited greatly from it' (Modelski, 1972, p.37). In particular, globalization itself became a major source of expansion of state activity and efficiency. Governments organized and reaped some of the fruits of the 'discovery' and exploitation of non-European lands as it hecame essential to equip, plan and finance exploration and manage newly acquired posts and territories. In turn, state bureaucracies and executive powers were better resourced and this enhanced their autonomy in the face of local assemblies and parliaments. Once again, those states which were able to call upon an administrative infrastructure, substantial manpower and a wide tax base, alongside arms and shipbuilding industries, gained an advantage. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this advantage was enjoyed by absolutist and constitutional governments; in the nineteenth century by the emergent leading nation-states. If the consolidation of the modern European state was aided by globalization, this process involved great social costs: the progressive collapse of non-European civilizations, among them the Moslem, Indian and Chinese; the disorganizing effects of western rule on a large number of small societies; and the interlinked degradation of the non-European and European worlds caused by the slave trade. The benefits and costs were not, however, just the result of the expansion of the European states system: the picture was more complicated. The diffusion of European power occurred mainly through the medium of sea-going military and commercial endeavours; and in the process 101 Europe became connected to a global system of trade and production relationships. At the centre of the latter were newly expanding capitalistic economic mechanisms which had their origins in the sixteenth century, or in what is sometimes called the 'long sixteenth century' running from about 1450 to 1640 (Braudel, 1973). One of the foremost analysts of this period is the sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. As Wallerstein points out, 'capitalism was from the beginning an affair of the world economy and not of nation-states .... Capital has never allowed its aspirations to be determined by national boundaries' (1979, p.19). The emergence of capitalism ushered in a quite fundamental change in the world order: for the first time genuinely global interconnections were achieved among states and societies. Capitalism has been able to penetrate the distant corners of the world. Wallerstein makes a fundamental distinction between two types of world-svslem which have existed historically: world-empires and world-economics. Whereas world-empires were political units characterized by imperial bureaucracies, with substantial armies to exact tax and tribute from territorially dispersed populations, their capacity for success depended upon political and military achievements. World empires were not as flexible and, ultimately, as adaptable as the emerging world-economy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they were finally displaced by the European world-economy as it expanded globally- They were displaced, Wallerstein argues, because the new world economic system was based on a process of endless accumulation of wealth. This world-economy was an economic unit which transcended the boundaries of any given political structure. If it constrained anything it was states, not the process of economic expansion. According to this view, the modern world-system is divided into three components: the core (initially located in north-west and central Europe); the semi-periphery (the Mediterranean zone after its decline from earlier prominence): and the periphery (colonized and captured territories), although where each of these three components is located has varied over time. Each zone of the world-economy is characterized, Wallerstein maintains, by a particular type of economic activity, state structure, class formation and mechanism of labour control. The world capitalist economy created a new world-wide division of labour. And while in the late twentieth century colonialism in its original form has practically disappeared, the world capitalist economy creates and reproduces massive imbalances of economic and political power among different component areas. The development of the world capitalist economy initially took the form of the expansion of market relations, driven by a growing need for raw materials and other factors of production. Capitalism stimulated this drive and was stimulated by it. It is useful to make a distinction (which Wallerstein fails to do) between the expansion of capitalist market relations based on the desire to buy, sell and accumulate mobile resources or capital, and the formation of industrial capitalism involving highly distinctive class relations — based on those who own and control the means of production and those who have only their labouring capacity to sell. 'Capitalists', under the latter conditions, own factories and technology, while wage-labourers, or 'wage-workers', are without ownership in the means of production (see Chapter 4 for a further discussion of these issues). It is only with the development of capitalism in Europe after 1500, and in particular with the formation of the capitalist organization of production from the middle of the eighteenth century, that the activities of capitalists and the capitalist system hegan to converge (Tilly, 199U, pp.17. 189; Giddcns, 19R5. pp.122-47). The development of capitalism itself can be explained as partly the result of long drawn-out changes in 'European' agriculture from as early as the twelfth century: changes resulting in part from the drainage and utilization of wet soils, which increased agricultural yields and created a sustainable surplus for trade. Linked to this was the establishment of long-distance trade routes in which the northern shores of the Mediterranean were initially prominent (Mann, 1986, p.504). Economic networks created 'north-south corridors' across the European landmass. with those networks in the North-west becoming progressively more dynamic over time. It was a combination of agricultural and navigational opportunities which helped stimulate the European economic dynamic, and the continuous competition for resources, territory and trade. Accordingly, the objectives of war gradually became more economic: military endeavour and conquest became more closely connected to the pursuit of economic advantage (Mann. 1986, p.511). The success of military conquest and the successful pursuit of economic gain were more direcllv associated. The state slowly became more embroiled with the interests of civil society in part for its own sake. If state rulers and personnel wished to pursue and implement policy of their own choosing then they would require the financial wherewithall to do so; and the more successful the economic activity in their territories, the more — through customs, taxes, investments and other revenue-generating activity — they could sustain their own strategies and interests. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries absolutist and constitutional states were drawn j steadily into a coordinating role with respect to the activities of civil society. The trigger for this growing responsibility almost always emanated from militarv commitments. But beneath this lay a general and growing requirement to regulate the developing capitalist economy and the spread of competing claims to property rights, if the economic basis uf the state itself was to bo properly protected (Mann, 1986, p.512). The other side of this process was, of course, the growing enmeshment of civil society with the state; for the latter's capacity in principle to stabilize and enforce law, contracts and currencies — to provide a coordinating framework for the new emerging capitalist economy — made it a growing object of attention for the powerful groups and classes of civil society who hoped to shape state action to suit their own interests. CHAPTER ? THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 103 What was the relationship between 'states' and 'classes' in the era of formation of the modern state? Any full answer to this question is likely to be controversial, and would have to be qualified in important details from one country to another. However, having said this, a pattern, first depicted by the sociologist Max Weber, can be uncovered between political rulers and the rising capitalist classes. Weber spoke of an 'alliance' between modern capitalism and the emergent modern state (Weber, 1923). Analysing the nature of this alliance further, Poggi has usefully drawn a distinction between two autonomous forces whose interests converged for a distinctive period (Poggi. 1990, pp.95-7). The forces consisted, on the one hand, of political rulers seeking to centralize political power and fiscal arrangements by disrupting and eradicating vestiges of power held by the nobility, the Church and various estate bodies, and, on the other hand, of the rising bourgeois classes seeking to remove impediments to the expansion of market relations based upon the trading arrangements established by powerful social networks, both country (aristocratic and landed power bases) and urban (the estate and guild systems). How the 'alliance' changed and crvstallized over time into different constellations of class and state power is beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, it can be noted that the alliance appears to have endured up to the industrial revolution and aided both the expansion of commerce and the industrialization of the economy (Poggi, 1990, p.96), If there was an alliance between the interests of powerful political and economic groupings during the formative phase of the modern state it was not without conflicts. For the new capitalist classes sought to struggle not only against the remnants of feudal privilege, but also to ensure the progressive separation of the economy from the state so that the economy was free from any risk of arbitrary political interference. It is at this juncture that the emerging economic classes often became the reforming classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, seeking to conjoin the struggle for an independent economic sphere with the struggle for representative government. The chief connecting mechanism was the attempt to establish civil and political rights (Marshall, 1973; Giddens, 1981; and see Book 2 (Allen et al, 1992), Chapter 4). For what was at issue in the establishment of those rights was the attempt to uphold 'freedom of choice' in areas as diverse as personal, family, business and political affairs. The pursuit of civil and political rights over time reconstituted the nature of both the state and the economy — driving the former toward a liberal democratic polity and the latter toward the capitalist market system. But the meaning of membership in the modern state, that is, of citizenship, remained contested — by political rulers, anxious to preserve their traditional privileges, by powerful social groups and classes, hoping to inscribe their interests into the polity, and by all those who remained excluded from political participation until well into the twentieth century: the working classes, women and many minority groups (see Book 2 (Allen et al, 1992), Chapters 1 and 4 for an account of the complex development of these conflicts). Moreover, as the coordinating role of the state expanded, and it became more involved in determining the conditions of civil society, the state became more intensely contested. The risk of unwanted political interference in economic affairs, and the requirement for a regulatory framework for trade and business, gave the emerging classes of capitalist society a double incentive for involvement in setting the direction of state action. The process and outcome of the new social struggles, it should be stressed, cannot simply be understood in their own terms; for their form and dynamic were shaped and re-shaped by the states system itself. Mann has put the point sharply: ... by the time of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism was already contained within a civilization of competing geopolitical states ... Iwhile] economic interaction was largely confined within national boundaries, supported by imperial dominions. Each leading state approximated a self-contained economic network. International economic relations were authoritatively mediated by states. Class regulation and organization thus developed in each of a series of geographical areas shaped by existing geopolitical units. (Mann, 1986, p.513) Class conflicts were, in other words, framed in large measure by the nature and interrelations of states (cf. Tilly, 1981, pp.44-52, 109-44). 3.3 SUMMARY: THE STORY SO FAR_ The formation of the modern state has to be related to at leastvjvvo; overarching phenomena: the structures of political and social groups and classes, and the relations among states — 'their position relative to each other, and their overall position in the world', as Hintze put it (1975, p.183). Struggles among social collectivities at home and conflicts among states abroad have had a dramatic impact on the nature, organization and dynamics of individual states. The modern state has a dual anchorage 'in class-divided socio-economic structures and an international system of states' (Skocpol, 1979, p.32). If this is the context in which the rise of the modern state must be understood, it remains to draw together the grounds for why it was that the modern state came to be a national or nation-state. Briefly put, this chapter has argued that nation-states became supremo because they won at war, were economically successful and, subsequently, achieved a significant degree of legitimacy in the eyes of their populations and other states. They won at war because as warfare became more extended in scale and cost, it was larger national states which were best able to organize and fund military power; and as these states expanded overseas this ability increased (Tilly, 1990, pp.65-6, 190). They were economically successful because the rapid growth of their economies from the late sixteenth century, and particularly after the mid-eighteenth century, sustained the process of capital accumulation: as the economic basis of the centralized state expanded, it significantly reduced the war-making 104 105 ability of smaller states (often with fragmented power structures) and traditional empires (which depended above all on coercive power for their success). And they gained in legitimacy because as they extended their military, organizational and coordinating activities, they came to depend more and more on the active cooperation, collaboration and support of their peoples, especially well-organized civil groups. In the wake of the erosion of the authority of the Church, the legitimacy of claims to political power came to depend on the view that such claims were justified and appropriate if popular or democratic. Calls for democratic government or democratic legitimacy became irresistible in the face of the expansion of state administrative power and the growth of new political identities — nationalism, citizenship and 'public' life. However, the rise of Europe, of the European nation-state and of the modern states system is not fully explained by these factors and processes. There was, as there always is in politics, a fair degree oi 'luck', 'uncertainty' or 'contingency'. The Mongol invasions (1206-60) could have penetrated further west with significant implications for the formation of Christian Europe; the Reformation could have drawn Europe into an endless vicious circle of religious war which might have undermined future European expansion; Napoleon Bonaparte might have conquered Russia and created a more durable empire; capitalism could have taken a firm hold in the East. The point of these and dozens of other 'what-ifs' is to remind one that history doesn't unfold according to one pattern, one logic, or one evolutionary scheme. History, if the above account is useful, is rather the result of the interplay of a number of causal patterns or processes which combine to produce particular trends and developmental trajectories. Moreover, these arc never set in stone: they are always affected by and open to alteration by changing circumstances, and by the outcome of key historical events. In the case of the history of states these events have been wars, first and foremost, and the development of military power to back up negotiations on pressing issues. 4 SOVEREIGNTY AND THE MODERN NATION-STATE: COMPETING CONCEPTIONS _ The focus of the ensuing section is a number of accounts of the modern slate and the interrelated notion of sovereignty. The ideas of some of the key contributors to modem political thought arc presented, and some of their major texts are introduced. While the previous sections of this chapter have offered, in broad terms, a descriptive-explanatory account of the development of the modern state, what follows is more directly concerned with the normative problems of political theory. However, before turning to the latter, it is useful to ask: What kind of distinction is being made here between types of political inquiry? A contrast is often drawn between normative political theory or political philosophy, on the one hand, and descriptive-explanatory or analytical theories of the social sciences, on the other. The former refers to theories about the proper form of political institutions and includes accounts of such notions as sovereignty, autiiorityand liberty. The latter refers to attempts to characterize actual phenomena and events and is marked by a strong empirical element. The distinction, thus, is between theories which focus on what is desirable — what should or ought to be the case — and those that focus on what has been or is the case. But it should be borne in mind that, while this distinction is helpful as an initial point of orienLation, it is hard to use it as a precise classificatory device for theories of the modern state. For many political philosophers see what they think the state ought to be like in the state as it is. Social scientists, on the other hand, cannot escape the problem that facts do not simply 'speak for themselves'; they are, and they have to be, interpreted; and the framework we bring to the process of interpretation determines what we 'see' — what we notice and register as important. The distinction between 'empirical analysis' and 'normative theory' is further complicated if one reflects on the interaction between 'ideas' and 'reality'. The process of analysing aspects of the political world contributes to an understanding of how people can, might or should act in the world; it can be reflexively applied to the transformation of the conditions of existence. Political enquiry, in fact, has often had a practical impact in the modern era, just as political, social and economic developments have had an influence on the nature and objects of enquiry. The debate in political theory about the modern state became a constitutive component of the concepts and theories which were utilized and applied in the formation and construction of the modern state itself (see Skinner, 1978). In what follows some of the leading contributions to this interchange are set out. It is an interchange which has had, and is likely to continue to have, significant political implications. 4.1 WHAT IS THE PROPER NATURE OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY? The idea of the modern state is intimately linked to the idea of sovereignty: for its origin and history are closely connected to the origin and development of the concept of sovereignty itself. While the idea of sovereignty can be traced to the Roman Empire, it was not until the end of the sixteenth century, when the nature and limits of political authority emerged as a preoccupation of European political thought, that sovereignty became a major theme in political analysis. The theocratic concepts of authority which dominated mediaeval Europe were challenged both by the rise of centralized states, absolutist and constitutional, and by the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation did more than just challenge Papal jurisdiction and authority across Europe: it raised questions about political obligation and obedience in a stark manner. The issue of whether allegiance was FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 107 owed to the Catholic Church, a Protestant ruler, or particular religious sects did not easily' resolve itself. Very gradually it became apparent, moreover, that the powers of the state would have to be separated from the dutv of rulers to uphold any particular faith (Skinner, 1978, p.352). This conclusion alone offered a way forward through the dilemmas of rule created by competing religions, all seeking to secure for themselves the kind of privileges enjoyed by the mediaeval church. In this context sovereignty became a new way of thinking about an old problem: the nature of power and rule./When established forms of authority could no longer be taken for granted it was the idea of sovereignty which provided a fresh link between political power and rulership. In the struggle between church, state and society, sovereignty offered an alternative way of conceiving the legitimacy of claims to power. In the debate about sovereignty which ensued, there was little initial agreement about its meaning; differing accounts were offered of the proper locus of 'supreme power' in society, the source of authority for that power, limitations upon that power (if any), and the ends to which that power might or should be directed. As the theory of sovereignty developed, however, it became a theory about the possibility of, and the conditions for, the rightful exercise of political power. It became the theory of legitimate power or authority.. In examining the theory, we examine some of the most fundamental conceptions of the modern state; for the theory of sovereignty largely set down the terms of reference of political discussion. While tension between the principles of rulership and self-government, between power and society, led to discrepant conceptions of the nature of sovereign power and of the criteria of legitimate government, two poles became clearly established in the emergent debatc:,'state sovereignty and popular sovereignty. Where advocates ofThe former tended to grant the state ultimate authority to define public righL, advocates of the latter tended to see the state as a mere 'commission' for the enactment of the people's will and, therefore, as open to direct determination by 'the public' (cf. Berlin, 1969, pp.l64ff.). Traditionally, these positions are thought to have been articulated best by, respectively, Hobbes's classic statement about state sovereignty [Leviathan, 1651) and Rousseau's powerful account of the doctrine of popular sovereignty [The Social Contract, 1762). 4.2 HOBBES__ In his great work Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) provided one of the most elegant rationales for the primacy of the state, for the necessary unity of the state as the representative of the\b_ody politic^ and for the necessity of the state as the creator and maintainer oTpTJ^sTfrve law. Hobbes wrote against the background of social disorder and political instability — the English Civil War — and sought to establish the necessity of an all-powerful sovereign capable of securing the conditions of 'peaceful and commodious living'. His position was that individuals ought willingly to surrender their rights to a powerful single authority — thereafter authorized to act on their behalf — because, if all individuals were to do this simultaneously, the condition would be created for effective political rule. A unique relation of authority would be created — the relation of sovereign to subject — and a unique political power would be established: sovereign power or sovereignty_ the authorized, hence rightful, use of power by the person (or assembly) established as sovereign. The sovereign has to have sufficient power to ensure that the laws governing political and economic life are upheld. Since, in Hobbes's view, 'men's ambitions, avarice, anger and other passions' are strong, and the 'bonds of words arc too weak to bridle them ... without some fear of coercive power', he concluded that, 'covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all' (Hobbes, 1968, p.223). Beyond the sovereign state's sphere of influence there will always be the chaos of constant warfare; but within the territory controlled by the state, with 'fear of some coercive power', social order can be sustained. It is important to stress that, in Hobbes's opinion, sovereignty must be self-perpetuating, undivided and ultimately absolute (Hobbes, 1968, pp.227-8). The justification for this is 'the safety of the people'. By 'safety' is meant not merely minimum physical preservation. The sovereign must ensure the protection of all things held in property: 'Those that are dearest to a man are his own life, and limbs; and in the next degree, (in most men) those that concern-conjugal affection; and after them riches and means of living' (Hobbes, 1968, pp.376, 382-3) Alth ough Hobbes acknowledges certain limits to the legitimate range of the sovereign's actions, the state is regarded by him as pre-eminent in all spheres (see Hobbes, 1968, ch. 21). For the state is authorized to represent all individuals and, accordingly, absorbs all popular or public right. State sovereignty embraces, in principle, all elements of the body politic. ACTIVITY 3 You should mm read Reading A, -Leviathan', by Thomas I lobbcs. which you will find at the end of this chapter. As you read, note the reasons whv Hobbes thinks: 1 people require a 'common power' or state — what he calls a "mortal Cod' — in order to live securely and prosperously; 2 people must live in lour ot some "coercive power'. Additionally, consider: 3 on what basis Hobbes thinks a 'common power' can be established: and 4 what, in bis view, K the nature of the relationship Ihat ought to be i ivated between ruler anil ruled — sovereign and subject':' FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY With Hobbes, the justification of slate power received its fullest expression and became a central theme in European political thought. But his position was controversial and challenged on at least two grounds (see Hinsley, 1986, pp.l44ff.). The first objection raised the fundamental question of where sovereign authority properly lay — with the ruler, the monarch, the state or (as was increasingly to be argued! with the people? The second objection was concerned with the proper form and limits, the legitimate scope, of state action. 4.3 ROUSSEAU_____ fean-Iacques Rousseau (1712-78) did not reject the concept of sovereignty, but insisted on retaining for the people the sovcreigntv which Ilobbes had transferred to the state and its rulers. In Rousseau's view, sovereignty originates in the people and ought to stay there (Rousseau, 1968, p.141). For Rousseau, the very essence of sovereignty is the creation, authorization and enactment of law according to the standards and requirements of the common good. And the nature of the common good can only be known through public discourse and public agreement. Onlv citizens themselves can articulate 'the supreme direction of the general will' — which is the sum of their publicly generated judgements of the common good (Rousseau, 1968, pp.60-1). Moreover, Rousseau argued, citizens can only be obligated to a system of laws and regulations they have prescribed for themselves with the general good in mind (Rousseau, 1968, p.65; cf. p.82). Taking arguments about sovereignty in a new direction, Rousseau held that, ideally, individuals should be involved directly in the creation of the laws by which their lives are regulated. The sovereign authoritv is the people making the rules by which they live. All citizens should meet together to decide what is best for the community and enact the appropriate laws. The ruled should be the rulers: the affairs of the state should be integrated into the affairs of ordinary citizens (see Rousseau. 1968, pp.82, 114; and for a general account, ibid., pp.101-16). Rousseau was critical of the classical Athenian conception of direct democracy because it failed to incorporate a division between legislative and executive functions and, consequently, became prone to instability, internecine strife and indecision in crisis (Rousseau, 1968, pp.112-14, 13611.). But while he wished to defend the importance of dividing and limiting 'governmental power', the executive or government in his scheme was legitimate only lo the extent to which it fulfilled 'the instructions of the general will'. In so arguing. Rousseau undermined the distinction between the state and the community, the government and 'the people', but in the opposite direction to that proposed by Hobbes. Government was reduced to a 'commission'; public right, in principle, absorbed the slate. CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 109 a...... Hobbes and Rousseau mav be portrayed as representing opposing sides in the debate about the locus of sovereignty. However, both cast their arguments in such a wav as to face a common objection: that they projected models of political power with potentially tyrannical implications. For if Ilobbes placed the state in an all-powerful position with respect to community, Rousseau placed the community (or a majoritv thereof) in a position to wholly dominate individual citizens: the community is all-powerful and, therefore, the sovereignty of the people could easilv destroy the liberty of individuals (Berlin, 1969, p.163). The problem is that just as Ilobbes failed to articulate either the principles or institutions necessary to delimit state action. Rousseau assumed that niinoiities ought to consent to the decisions of majorities, and posited no limits to the reach of the decisions of a democratic majority, and therefore to political intervention. Such conceptions of sovereignty, which fail to.demarcate the limits or legitimate scope of political action, need to be treated with caution. An alternative to the contending theses of the sovereignty of the state and the sovereignty of the people is implicit in Locke's conception of an .independent political community, and is essential to the traditions of political analysis which neither locate sovereignty in, nor reduce it to, either state or society. This tradition — above all, of constitutional thinking — sought to provide ways of mediating, balancing and checking the relationship between state and society such that some protection existed for both public and private right. The motivation for such a position lav precisely in doubts about unaccountable state power and in the necessity to provide limits to the legitimate scope of political action. Views such as these were given lasting expression in the constitutional arguments of John Locke (1632-1 704). FORMATIONS OF MODERNITY CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 111 4.4 LOCKE Locke held that the institution of'government' can and should be conceded as an instrument for the defence of the 'life, liberty and estate' of its citizens; that is, government's raisnn d'etre is the protection of individuals' rights as laid down by God's will and as enshrined in law (see Dunn, 1969, part 3). He believed that the integrity and ultimate ends of society require a constitutional stale in which 'public power' is legally circumscribed and divided. He argued on behalf of a constitutional monarchy holding executive power and a parliamentary assembly holding the rights of legislation, although he did not think this was the only form government might take. However, in Locke's view, the formation of the state does not signal the final transfer of all subjects' rights to the state (Locke, 1963, pp.402-3, para. 11.135; pp.412-13, para. 11.149). The rights of law-making and law-enforcement (legislative and executive rights) are transferred, but the whole process is conditional upon the state adhering to its essentia] purpose: the preservation of 'life, liberty and estate'. Tt is important to emphasize that, in Locke's account, political authority is bestowed bv individuals on government for the purpose of pursuing the ends of the governed; and should these ends fail to be represented adequately, the final judges are the people — the citizens of the state — who can dispense both with their deputies and, if need be, with the existing form of government itself. According to Locke, in the face of a series of tyrannical political acts, popular rebellion to form a new government might not only be unavoidable but justified. One commentator has summarized Locke's position thus: Rulers ... hold their authority under law; and entitlement to the obedience of their subjects derives from the impartial administration of this law. Where they act against or outside this law to the harm of their subjects, they become tyrants. Wherever law ends, tyranny begins [Locke, 1963, p.448, para. 11.202]. For a ruler in authority to use force against the interests of his subjects and outside the law is to destroy his own authority. He puts himself into a state of war with his injured subjects, and each of these has the same right to resist him as they would have to resist any other unjust aggressor [Locke, 1963, p.448, para. 11.202; p.467, para. 11.232]. (Dunn, 1984, p.54) With these arguments Locke fashioned a doctrine which had an enduring impact on Western political thought. For it affirmed that :suprem£_pawer was the inalienable right of the people; that governmental supremacy was a delegated supremacy held on trust; that government enjoyed full political authority so long as this trust was sustained; and that a government's legitimacy or right to rule could be withdrawn if the people judged this necessary and appropriate; that is, if the rights of individuals and 'ends of society' were systematically flouted. -J.r 1 i>i,.:i:i. However, with these arguments Locke also ran into distinct difficulties. He did not explore systematically how possible tensions might be resolved between the sovereignty of the people — the idea of the people as an active sovereign body with the capacity to make or break governments — and the government as the trustee of the people with the right to make and enforce the law. At the root of this lies a failure to draw an effective contrast between the power of the people and the powers of the state (Skinner. 1989, p.115). As Locke put it, 'the, community perpetually retains a supreme power' over its prince or legislative (quoted in ibid.). Accordingly, what constitutes the precise autonomy or independence of state powers remains unspecified. While Locke's attempt to transcend the dualism between ruler and people, state and community, became highly influential, as did his attempt to enshrine this new political understanding in the notion of constitutional government — a legal and institutional mechanism to protect both the 'sovereign people' and 'the sovereign state' — his solution was far from complete. Modern liberal and Liberal-democratic theory has constantly sought to justify the sovereign power of the state while at the same time justifying limits upon that power. The history of this attempt is the history of arguments to balance might and right, power and law, duties and rights. 112 CHAPTER 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE 113 On the one hand, states must have a monopoly of coercive power in order to provide a secure basis upon which trade, commerce and family life can prosper. On the other hand, by granting the state a regulatory and coercive capability, political theorists were aware that they had accepted a force which could, and frequently did, deprive citizens of political and social freedoms. It was the liberal democrats/who provided the key institutional innovation to try to overcome this dilemma — representative democracy. The liberal concern with reason, law and freedom of choice could onlv be upheld properly by recognizing the political equality of all mature individuals. Such equality would ensure not only a secure social environment in which people would be free to pursue their private activities and interests, but also that the state's personnel would do what was best in the general and public interest; for example, pursue the greatest satisfaction of the greatest number. Thus, the democratic, stale, linked lo other key institutional mechanisms, above all the free market, resolved, the liberal democrats argued, the problems of ensuring bulb authority and liberty. 4.5 MILL______ A classical statement of the new position can be found in the philosophv of John Stuarl Mill (1806-73). In his hands the theorv of liberal democracy received a most important elaboration: the governors must be held accountable to the governed through political mechanisms (regular voting, competition between potential representatives, the struggle among free opinion) which alone can give citizens the satisfactory means for choosing, authorizing and controlling political decisions. And with these means, he further contended, a balance could finally be obtained between might and right, authority and liberty. But who exactly was to count as a 'citizen' or an 'individual', and what their exact role was to be. remained unfortunately either unclear or unsettled: the idea that all citizens should have equal weight in the political system remained outside Mill's actual doctrine. The idea of the modern democratic state remains complex and contested. The liberal democratic tradition itself comprises a most heterogeneous body of thought. However, the whole liberal democratic tradition stands apart from an alternative perspective — the Marxist tradition. It is worth brieflv dwelling on this, since it remains the kev counterpoint to liberal democracy. ACTIVITY 6 lieioro rrauling further you should note ilnwii some of tin- wy It-mures i,| IJbiir.i! ilt«i!H>i:r.n-\ in order tlmt I hi* u.miiisl with Marxism is brought more sharplv into view. 4.6 MARX AND ENGELS_ The struggle of liberalism against tyranny and lire struggle by liberal democrats lor political equality represented, according lo Karl Marx (1818-83) and Frederick Engeis (1820-95). a major step forward in the historv of human emancipation. Bui for them, and the Marxist tradition more broadly, the great universal ideals of 'liberty, equality and justice' could not be realized simply by the 'free' struggle for votes in tire political system and by the 'free' struggle for profit in lire market place. The advocates of the democratic stale and the market economy present them as the only institutions under which liberty can be sustained and inequalities minimized. However, by virtue of its internal dynamics the capitalist economy inevitably produces, Marxists aver, systematic inequality and massive restrictions on real freedom. While each step towards formal political equality is an advance, its liberating potential is severely curtailed by inequalities of class, wealth arrd opportunity. In class societies the state cannot hecome the vehicle for the pursuit of the common good or public interest. Far from playing the role of emancipator, protective knight, umpire or judge in the face or disorder, ihe agencies of the liberal representative state arc meshed in the struggles of civil society. Marxists conceive of the state as an extension of civil society, reinforcing the social order for the enhancement of particular interests — in capitalist society, the long-term interests of the capitalist class. Marx and Engeis' argument is that political emancipation is only a step towards human emancipation: thai is, the complete democratization of society as well as the state. In their view, liberal democratic society fails when judged by its own principles; and to take these seriously is to become a communist. Marx himself envisaged the replacement of the 'machinery' of the liberal democratic, state by a 'commune structure': the smallest communities would administer their own affairs, elect delegates to larger administrative units (districts, towns) and these would, in turn, elect candidates to still larger areas of administration (the national delegation). This arrangement is known as the 'pyramid' structure of direct democracy: all delegates are revocable, bound by the instructions of their constituency and organized into a 'pyramid' of directly elected committees. ACTIVITY 7 Nolo Marx and Engels' emphasis on the interconnections between soci power, class and state. Consider the stress the;, phice on these interconnections. How convinced am \iai In their view that the state j .in extension of < ivi] society — that is. a political apparatus structured and shaped by class relations? 114 115 4.7 WEBER One of the toughest (yet not wholly unsympathetic) critics of the Marxist tradition was the sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). Weber believed that Marxists' political ambitions were premised on a deficient understanding of the nature of the modern state and of the complexity of political life. In Weber's account, the history of the state and the history of political struggle could not in any way be reduced to class relations: the origins and tasks of the modern state suggested it was far more than a 'superstructure' on an economic 'base'. Moreover, even if class relations were transformed, institutions of direct democracy could not replace the state; for there would be a massive problem of coordination and regulation which would inevitably be 'resolved' bv bureaucracy, and by bureaucracy alone, unless other institutions were created to check its power. The problems posed by the liberal pursuit of a balance between might and right, power and law. are, Weber thought, inescapable elements of modernity. Weber developed one of the most significant definitions of the modern state, placing emphasis upon two distinctive elements of its history: territoriality and violence. The modern state, unlike its predecessors which were troubled by constantly warring factions, has the capability of monopolizing the legitimate use of violence within a given territory; it is a nation-state in embattled relations with other nation-states rather than with armed segments of its own population. 'Of course'. Weber emphasized, 'force is certainly not the normal or only means of the state — nobody says that — but force is a means specific to the state .... The state is a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence' (Weber, 1972, p.178). The state maintains compliance or order within a given territory; in individual capitalist societies this involves crucially the defence of property and the enhancement of domestic economic interests overseas, although by no means all the problems of order can be reduced to these. The state's web of agencies and institutions finds its ultimate sanction in the claim to the monopoly of coercion, and a political order is only, in the last instance, vulnerable to crises when this monopoly erodes. However, there is also a third key element in Weber's definition of the state: legitimacy. The state is based on a monopoly of physical coercion which is legitimized (that is, sustained) by a belief in the justifiability and/or legality of this monopoly. Today, Weber argued, people no longer comply with the authority claimed by the powers-that-be merely on the grounds, as was common once, of habit and tradition or the charisma and personal appeal of individual leaders. Rather, there is general obedience by 'virtue of "legality", by virtue of the belief in the validity of legal statute and functional "competence" based on rationally created rules' (Weber, 1972, p.79). The legitimacy of the modern state is founded predominantly on 'legal authority', that is, commitment to a 'code of legal regulations'. ACTIVITY 8 Foremost among the state's institutions are, Weber held, the administrative apparatuses — a vast network of organizations run by appointed officials. Weber feared that political life in West and East would be ever more ensnared by a rationalized, bureaucratic system of administration — a 'steel-hard cage', as he wrote. Against this he championed the countervailing power of private capital, the competitive party system and strong political leadership to secure national power and prestige — all of which could prevent the domination of politics by state officials. Two-hundred-and-fiftv years after Hobbcs wrote Leviathan, the conception of the state as a potentially omnipotent and all-embracing entity remained a deep concern. Botox- reading furthei. _\