A sovereign state is a political association with effective sovereignty Sovereignty is the right to exercise, within a specific territory of a kingdom or a nation-state, the highest authority by the law. It is an important part of the three main political perspectives of realism, rationalism, and internationalism, as these three theories differ most in their views on sovereignty. Sovereignty has existed throughout over a geographic area and representing a population. A state usually includes the set of institutions Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior. The term "institution& that claim the authority In government, authority is often used interchangeably with the term "power". However, their meanings differ: while "power" is defined as 'the ability to influence somebody to do something that he could not have done' , "authority" refers to a claim of legitimacy, the justification and right to exercise that power to make the rules that govern the people of the society in that territory, though its status as a state often depends in part on being recognized by a number of other states as having internal and external sovereignty over it.

In sociology Sociology is a branch of the social sciences that uses systematic methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, sometimes with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Its subject matter ranges from the micro level of face-, the state is normally identified with these institutions: in Max Weber Weber's major works deal with rationalization in sociology of religion, government, organizational theory, and behavior. His most famous work is his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which began his work in the sociology of religion. In this work, Weber argued that religion was one of the non-exclusive reasons for the's influential definition, it is that organization that "(successfully) claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force The monopoly on violence is the definition of the state expounded by Max Weber in Politics as a Vocation, which has been predominant in philosophy of law and political philosophy in the twentieth century within a given territory," which may include the armed forces The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their governing body, and to defend that body and the nation it represents from external and internal aggressors. In some countries paramilitary forces are included in a nation's armed, civil service A civil servant or public servant is a civilian public sector employee working for a government department or agency. The term explicitly excludes the armed services, although civilian officials will work at "Defence Ministry" headquarters. The term always includes the state's employees; whether regional, or sub-state, or even municipal or state bureaucracy Bureaucracy is the collective organizational structure, procedures, protocols and set of regulations in place to manage activity, usually in large organizations and government. As opposed to adhocracy, it is represented by standardized procedure that dictates the execution of most or all processes within the body, formal division of powers,, courts A court is a body, often a governmental institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes and dispense civil, criminal, or administrative justice in accordance with rules of law. In common law and civil law states, courts are the central means for dispute resolution, and it is generally understood that all persons have an ability to, and police A police service is a public force empowered to enforce the law and to ensure public and social order through the legitimized use of force.

Definition

Although the term often includes broadly all institutions of government A government is the body within an organization that has the authority to make and enforce rules, laws and regulations, control and direct the actions or behavior of the individuals within the organization and deal with everyday administrative issues or rule—ancient and modern—the modern state system bears a number of characteristics that were first consolidated beginning in earnest in the 15th century, when the term "state" also acquired its current meaning. Thus the word is often used in a strict sense to refer only to modern political systems.

In casual usage, the terms "country", "nation", and "state" are often used as if they were synonymous Synonyms are different words with identical or very similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn (σύν) ("with") and onoma (ὄνομα) ("name"). The words car and automobile are synonyms. Similarly, if we talk; but in a more strict usage they can be distinguished:

• Nation Though "nation" is also commonly used in informal discourse as a synonym for state or country, a nation is not identical to a state. Countries where the social concept of "nation" coincides with the political concept of "state" are called nation states denotes a people who are believed to or deemed to share common customs, origins, and history. However, the adjectives national and international also refer to matters pertaining to what are strictly states, as in national capital, international law.
• State refers to the set of governing and supportive institutions that have sovereignty Sovereignty is the right to exercise, within a specific territory of a kingdom or a nation-state, the highest authority by the law. It is an important part of the three main political perspectives of realism, rationalism, and internationalism, as these three theories differ most in their views on sovereignty. Sovereignty has existed throughout over a definite territory and population In biology, a population is the collection of inter-breeding organisms of a particular species; in sociology, a collection of human beings. Individuals within a population share a factor may be reduced by statistical means, but such a generalization may be too vague to imply anything. Demography is used extensively in marketing, which relates to.

Modern criteria

Constitutive theory of statehood

In 1815 at the Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from November, 1814 to June, 1815. Its objective was to redraw the continent's political map and settle the many other issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Final Act The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from November, 1814 to June, 1815. Its objective was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire only recognised 39 sovereign states in the European diplomatic system, and as a result it was firmly that in future new states would have to be recognised by other states, and that meant in practice recognition by one or more of the great powers A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause other, smaller nations to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have.^[1]

The constitutive theory was developed in the 19th century to define what is and is not a state. With this theory, the obligation to obey international law International law is the term commonly used for referring to the system of implicit and explicit agreements that bind together nation-states in adherence to recognized values and standards. It differs from other legal systems in that it primarily concerns states rather than private citizens. However, the term "international law" can depends on a entity's recognition by other countries. Because of this, new states could not immediately become part of the international community or be bound by international law, and recognized nations did not have to respect international law in their dealings with them.^[2]

One of the major criticisms of this law is the confusion caused when some states recognize a new entity, but other states do not, a situation the theory does not deal with. Hersch Lauterpacht Sir Hersch Lauterpacht was a member of the United Nations' International Law Commission from 1952 to 1954 and a Judge of the International Court of Justice from 1955 to 1960. In the words of former ICJ President Stephen M. Schwebel, Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht's "attainments are unsurpassed by any international lawyer of this century [...], one of the theory's main proponents, suggested that it is a state's duty to grant recognition as a possible solution. However, a state may use any criteria when judging if they should give recognition and they have no obligation to use such criteria. Many countries may only recognize a state if it is to their advantage.^[2]

Montevideo Convention

One of the criteria most commonly cited by micronations Micronations — sometimes also referred to as model countries and new country projects — are entities that resemble independent nations or states but which are unrecognized by world governments or major international organisations. These nations usually exist only on paper, on the Internet, or in the minds of their creators. Micronations differ with regard to difficulty getting international recognition is the Montevideo Convention The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States was a treaty signed at Montevideo, Uruguay, on December 26, 1933, during the Seventh International Conference of American States. At the conference, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull declared the so-called Good Neighbor Policy, which. The Montevideo Convention was signed on December 26 1933 by the United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the, Honduras Honduras is a democratic republic in Central America. It was formerly known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras (now Belize). The country is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the, El Salvador El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America. It borders the Pacific Ocean between Guatemala and Honduras. It lies on the Gulf of Fonseca, as does Nicaragua further south. It has a population of approximately 6.8 million people (July 2008 Census) on 21,000 km2. The capital city of San Salvador is the most, Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are occupied by two countries, Saint Martin being the other. Both by area and population, the, Haiti Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti (République d'Haïti ; Repiblik Ayiti), is a Creole- and French-speaking Caribbean country. Along with the Dominican Republic, it occupies the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago. Ayiti (Land on high) was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the mountainous western side of, Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic , is a country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the second largest country in South America and eighth in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico, Colombia and Spain are more populous, Venezuela Venezuela , officially titled Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America. It is a continental mainland with numerous islands located off its coastline in the Caribbean Sea. Venezuela possesses recognized borders with Guyana to the east of the Essequibo river,, Uruguay Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay , is a country located in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to 3.46 million people, of whom 1.7 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area. An estimated 94.6% of the population are of mostly European descent, Paraguay Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay , is one of the only two landlocked countries in South America (along with Bolivia). It lies on both banks of the Paraguay River and is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Because of its central location in South America, the, Mexico The United Mexican States (Spanish: Estados Unidos Mexicanos ), commonly known as Mexico (English: /ˈmɛksɪkoʊ/) (Spanish: México (help·info) [ˈmexiko]), is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize,, Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of both Central America and, in turn, North America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The capital is Panama, Bolivia Bolivia, officially Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay and Argentina to the south, and Chile and Peru to the west, Guatemala Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize and the Caribbean to the northeast, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast, Brazil Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil) listen (help·info), is a country in South America. It is the fifth largest country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the fifth most populous country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the, Ecuador Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador (Spanish: República del Ecuador, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðel ekwaˈðoɾ]), literally, "Republic of the equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, by Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of, Nicaragua Nicaragua officially the Republic of Nicaragua (Spanish: República de Nicaragua, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðe nikaˈɾaɣwa] ( listen)), is a representative democratic republic. It is the largest country in Central America with an area of 130,000 km2, and the second poorest in the Western Hemisphere. The country is bordered by Honduras to the, Colombia Colombia , officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish: República de Colombia, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðe koˈlombja] ( listen)), is a country in northwestern South America. Colombia is bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the northwest by Panama; and to the west, Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long and narrow coastal strip wedged between the Andes mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage at the country's southernmost tip. It is one of the only two countries in, Peru Peru , officially the Republic of Peru (Spanish: República del Perú, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðel peˈɾu] ( listen)), is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean and Cuba The Republic of Cuba (pronounced /ˈkjuːbə/ ; Spanish: República de Cuba, pronounced [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkuβa] ( listen)) is an island country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos but it never received international International or internationally most often describes interaction between nations, or encompassing two or more nations, constituting a group or association having members in two or more nations, or generally reaching beyond national boundaries. In American English, "International" is also commonly used as a euphemism for "foreign& consensus A close equivalent phrase might be the "collective agreement" of a group, keeping in mind that a high degree of variation is still possible among individuals, and certainly if there must be individual commitment to follow up the decision with action, this variation remains important. There is considerable debate and research into both.^[3] The Montevideo Convention has four conditions that an entity must meet to become a country:

• a permanent population In biology, a population is the collection of inter-breeding organisms of a particular species; in sociology, a collection of human beings. Individuals within a population share a factor may be reduced by statistical means, but such a generalization may be too vague to imply anything. Demography is used extensively in marketing, which relates to
• defined territory
• Government
• capacity to enter into relations with other states

Etymology

The word state and its cognates in other European Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast. Europe is washed upon to the north by the Arctic Ocean and languages A language is a system for encoding information. In its most common use, the term refers to so-called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. In linguistics the term is extended to refer to the human cognitive facility of creating and using language. Essential to both meanings is the (stato in Italian, état in French, Staat in German, stát in Czech and Estado in Spanish and Portuguese) ultimately derive from the Latin status, literally "standing" but meaning "condition" or "status".^[4] With the revival of the Roman law in the 14th century in Europe, this Latin term was used to refer to the legal standing of persons (such as the various "estates of the realm" - noble, common, and clerical), and in particular the special status of the king. The word was also associated with Roman ideas (dating back to Cicero) about the status rei publicae, the "condition of the republic." In time, the word lost its reference to particular social groups and became associated with the legal order of the entire society and the apparatus of its enforcement.^[5]

Empirical and juridical senses of the word state

The word state has both an empirical and a juridical sense; that is, entities can be states either de facto or de jure or both.^[6]

Empirically (or de facto), an entity is a state if, as in Max Weber's influential definition, it is that organization that has a 'monopoly on legitimate violence' over a specific territory.^[7] Such an entity imposes its own legal order over a territory, even if it is not legally recognized as a state by other states (e.g., Taiwan).

Juridically (or de jure), an entity is a state in international law if it is recognized as such by other states, even if it does not actually have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a territory. Only an entity juridically recognized as a state can enter into many kinds of international agreements and be represented in a variety of legal forums, such as the United Nations.

States, government types, and political systems

The concept of the state can be distinguished from two related concepts with which it is sometimes confused: the concept of a form of government or regime, such as democracy or dictatorship, and the concept of a political system. The form of government identifies only one aspect of the state, namely, the way in which the highest political offices are filled and their relationship to each other and to society. It does not include other aspects of the state that may be very important in its everyday functioning, such as the quality of its bureaucracy. For example, two democratic states may be quite different if one has a capable, well-trained bureaucracy or civil service while the other does not. Thus generally speaking the term "state" refers to the instruments of political power, while the terms regime or form of government refers more to the way in which such instruments can be accessed and employed.^[8]

Some scholars have suggested that the term "state" is too imprecise and loaded to be used productively in sociology and political science, and ought to be replaced by the more comprehensive term "political system." The "political system" refers to the ensemble of all social structures that function to produce collectively binding decisions in a society. In modern times, these would include the political regime, political parties, and various sorts of organizations. The term "political system" thus denotes a broader concept than the state.^[9]

The historical development of the state

The earliest forms of the state emerged whenever it became possible to centralize power in a durable way. Agriculture and writing are almost everywhere associated with this process. Agriculture allowed for the production and storing of a surplus. This in turn allowed and encouraged the emergence of a class of people who controlled and protected the agricultural stores and thus did not have to spend most of their time providing for their own subsistence. In addition, writing (or the equivalent of writing, like Inca quipus) because it made possible the centralization of vital information.^[10]

Some political philosophers believe the origins of the state lie ultimately in the tribal culture which developed with human sentience, the template for which was the alleged primal "alpha-male" microsocieties of our earlier ancestors, which were based on the coercion of the weak by the strong.^{[citation needed]} However anthropologists point out that extant band- and tribe-level societies are notable for their lack of centralized authority, and that highly stratified societies--i.e., states--constitute a relatively recent break with the course of human history.^[11]

The state in classical antiquity

The history of the state in the West usually begins with classical antiquity. During that period, the state took a variety of forms, none of them very much like the modern state. There were monarchies whose power (like that of the Egyptian Pharaoh) was based on the religious function of the king and his control of a centralized army. There were also large, quasi-bureaucratized empires, like the Roman empire, which depended less on the religious function of the ruler and more on effective military and legal organizations and the cohesion of an aristocracy.

Perhaps the most important political innovations of classical antiquity came from the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. The Greek city-states before the 4th century granted citizenship rights to their free population, and in Athens these rights were combined with a directly democratic form of government that was to have a long afterlife in political thought and history.

In contrast, Rome developed from a monarchy into a republic, governed by a senate dominated by the Roman aristocracy. The Roman political system contributed to the development of law, constitutionalism and to the distinction between the private and the public spheres.

From the feudal state to the modern state in the West

The story of the development of the specifically modern state in the West typically begins with the dissolution of the western Roman empire. This led to the fragmentation of the imperial state into the hands of private and decentralized lords whose political, judicial, and military roles corresponded to the organization of economic production. In these conditions, according to Marxists, the economic unit of society corresponded exactly to the state on the local level.

The state-system of feudal Europe was an unstable configuration of suzerains and anointed kings. A monarch, formally at the head of a hierarchy of sovereigns, was not an absolute power who could rule at will; instead, relations between lords and monarchs were mediated by varying degrees of mutual dependence, which was ensured by the absence of a centralized system of taxation. This reality ensured that each ruler needed to obtain the 'consent' of each estate in the realm. This was not quite a 'state' in the Weberian sense of the term, since the king did not monopolize either the power of lawmaking (which was shared with the church) or the means of violence (which were shared with the nobles).

The formalization of the struggles over taxation between the monarch and other elements of society (especially the nobility and the cities) gave rise to what is now called the Standestaat, or the state of Estates, characterized by parliaments in which key social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic matters. These estates of the realm sometimes evolved in the direction of fully-fledged parliaments, but sometimes lost out in their struggles with the monarch, leading to greater centralization of lawmaking and coercive (chiefly military) power in his hands. Beginning in the 15th century, this centralizing process gave rise to the absolutist state.^[12]

The modern state

The rise of the "modern state" as a public power constituting the supreme political authority within a defined territory is associated with western Europe's gradual institutional development beginning in earnest in the late 15th century, culminating in the rise of absolutism and capitalism.

As Europe's dynastic states—England under the Tudors, Spain under the Habsburgs, and France under the Bourbons—embarked on a variety of programs designed to increase centralized political and economic control, they increasingly exhibited many of the institutional features that characterize the "modern state". This centralization of power involved the delineation of political boundaries, as European monarchs gradually defeated or co-opted other sources of power, such as the Church and lesser nobility. In place of the fragmented system of feudal rule, with its often indistinct territorial claims, large, unitary states with extensive control over definite territories emerged. This process gave rise to the highly centralized and increasingly bureaucratic forms of absolute monarchical rule of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the principal features of the contemporary state system took form, including the introduction of a standing army, a central taxation system, diplomatic relations with permanent embassies, and the development of state economic policy—mercantilism.

Cultural and national homogenization figured prominently in the rise of the modern state system. Since the absolutist period, states have largely been organized on a national basis. The concept of a national state, however, is not synonymous with nation-state. Even in the most ethnically homogeneous societies there is not always a complete correspondence between state and nation, hence the active role often taken by the state to promote nationalism through emphasis on shared symbols and national identity.^[13]

It is in this period that the term "the state" is first introduced into political discourse in more or less its current meaning. Although Niccolò Machiavelli is often credited with first using the term to refer to a territorial sovereign government in the modern sense in The Prince, published in 1532, it is not until the time of the British thinkers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and the French thinker Jean Bodin that the concept in its current meaning is fully developed.^[5]

Today, most Western states more or less fit the influential definition of the state in Max Weber's Politics as a Vocation.^[7] According to Weber, the modern state monopolizes the means of legitimate physical violence over a well-defined territory. Moreover, the legitimacy of this monopoly itself is of a very special kind, "rational-legal" legitimacy, based on impersonal rules that constrain the power of state elites.

However, in some other parts of the world states do not fit Weber's definition as well.^[6] They may not have a complete monopoly over the means of legitimate physical violence over a definite territory, or their legitimacy may not be adequately described as rational-legal. But they are still recognizably distinct from feudal and [absolutist states in the extent of their bureaucratization and their reliance on nationalism as a principle of legitimation.

Since Weber, an extensive literature on the processes by which the "modern state" emerged from the feudal state has been generated. Marxist scholars, for example, assert that the formation of modern states can be explained primarily in terms of the interests and struggles of social classes.^[14]

Scholars working in the broad Weberian tradition, by contrast, have often emphasized the institution-building effects of war. For example, Charles Tilly has argued that the revenue-gathering imperatives forced on nascent states by geopolitical competition and constant warfare were mostly responsible for the development of the centralized, territorial bureaucracies that characterize modern states in Europe. States that were able to develop centralized tax-gathering bureaucracies and to field mass armies survived into the modern era; states that were not able to do so did not.^[15]

State and civil society

The modern state is both separate from and connected to civil society. The nature of this connection has been the subject of considerable attention in both analyses of state development and normative theories of the state. Classical thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes, J. J. Rousseau, Immanuel Kant emphasized the identity of the state and society, while modern thinkers, by contrast, beginning with G. W. F. Hegel and Alexis de Tocqueville, started to emphasize the relations between them as independent entities^[16]. Following Karl Marx, Jürgen Habermas, has argued that civil society may form an economic base for a public sphere, as a placed in political superstructure domain of extra-institutional engagement with matters of public interest trying to influence the state and yet necessarily connected with it.

Some Marxist theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci, have questioned the distinction between the state and civil society altogether, arguing that the former is integrated into many parts of the latter. Others, such as Louis Althusser, maintain that civil organizations such as churches, schools, and even trade unions are part of an 'ideological state apparatus.' In this sense, the state can fund a number of groups within society that, while autonomous in principle, are dependent on state support.

Given the role that many social groups have in the development of public policy and the extensive connections between state bureaucracies and other institutions, it has become increasingly difficult to identify the boundaries of the state. Privatization, nationalization, and the creation of new regulatory bodies also change the boundaries of the state in relation to society. Often the nature of quasi-autonomous organizations is unclear, generating debate among political scientists on whether they are part of the state or civil society. Some political scientists thus prefer to speak of policy networks and decentralized governance in modern societies rather than of state bureaucracies and direct state control over policy.^[17] Alfred Stepan also introduced the idea of `political society' those organisations that move periodically between the state and non-state sectors (such as Political Parties). Whaites has argued that in developing countries there are dangers inherent in promoting strong civil society where states are weak, risks that should be considered and mitigated by those funding civil society or advocating its role as an alternative source of service provision^[18].

The state and the international system

Since the late 19th century the entirety of the world's inhabitable land has been parceled up into states with more or less definite borders claimed by various states. Earlier, quite large land areas had been either unclaimed or uninhabited, or inhabited by nomadic peoples who were not organized as states. Currently more than 200 states comprise the international community, with the vast majority of them represented in the United Nations.

These states form what International relations theorists call a system, where each state takes into account the behavior of other states when making their own calculations. From this point of view, states embedded in an international system face internal and external security and legitimation dilemmas. Recently the notion of an "international community" has been developed to refer to a group of states who have established rules, procedures, and institutions for the conduct of their relations. In this way the foundation has been laid for international law, diplomacy, formal regimes, and organizations.

The state and supranationalism

In the late 20th century, the globalization of the world economy, the mobility of people and capital, and the rise of many international institutions all combined to circumscribe the freedom of action of states. These constraints on the state's freedom of action are accompanied in some areas, notably Western Europe, with projects for interstate integration such as the European Union. However, the state remains the basic political unit of the world, as it has been since the 16th century. The state is therefore considered the most central concept in the study of politics, and its definition is the subject of intense scholarly debate.

The state and international law

By modern practice and the law of international relations, a state's sovereignty is conditional upon the diplomatic recognition of the state's claim to statehood. Degrees of recognition and sovereignty may vary. However, any degree of recognition, even recognition by a majority of the states in the international system, is not binding on third-party states.

The legal criteria for statehood are not obvious. Often, the laws are surpassed by political circumstances. However, one of the documents often quoted on the matter is the Montevideo Convention from 1933, the first article of which states:

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Contemporary approaches to the study of the state

There are three main traditions within political science and sociology that shape 'theories of the state': the pluralist, the Marxist, and the institutionalist. In addition, anarchists present a tradition which is similar to, but different from, the Marxian one.

Each of these theories has been employed to gain understanding on the state, while recognizing its complexity. Several issues underlie this complexity. First, the boundaries of the state sector are not clearly defined, while they change constantly. Second, the state is not only the site of conflict between different organizations, but also internal conflict and conflict within organizations. Some scholars speak of the 'state's interest,' but there are often various interests within different parts of the state that are neither solely state-centered nor solely society-centered, but develop between different groups in civil society and different state actors.

Pluralism

Pluralism has been very popular in the United States. In fact, it might be seen as the dominant vision of politics in that country.

Within this tradition, Robert Dahl sees the state as either (1) a neutral arena for settling disputes among contending interests or (2) a collection of agencies which themselves act as simply another set of interest groups. With power diffused across society among many competing groups, state policy is a product of recurrent bargaining. Although pluralism recognizes the existence of inequality, it asserts that all groups have an opportunity to pressure the state. The pluralist approach suggests that the modern democratic state's actions are the result of pressures applied by a variety of organized interests. Dahl called this kind of state a polyarchy.^[19]

In some ways, the development of the pluralist school is a response to the "power elite" theory presented in 1956 by the sociologist C. Wright Mills concerning the U.S. and furthered by research by G. William Domhoff, among others. In that theory, the most powerful elements of the political, military, and economic parts of U.S. society are united at the top of the political system, acting to serve their common interests. The "masses" were left out of the political process. In context, it might said that Mills saw the U.S. elite as in part being very similar to that of the Soviet Union, then the major geopolitical rival of the U.S. One response was the sociologist Arnold M. Rose's publication of The Power Structure: Political Process in American Society in 1967. He argued that the distribution of power in the U.S. was more diffuse and pluralistic in nature.

The importance of democratic elections of political leaders in the U.S. (and not the Soviet Union) provides evidence in favor of the pluralist perspective for that country. We might reconcile power elite theory with pluralism in terms of Joseph Schumpeter's theory of democracy. To him, "democracy" involved the (non-elite) masses choosing which elite would have the power.

The absence of democratic elections do not rule out pluralism, however. The old Soviet Union is sometimes described as being ruled by an elite, which ran society via a bureaucracy which united the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the military, and Gosplan, the economic planning apparatus. However, bureaucratic rule from above is never perfect. This meant that, so to some extent, Soviet policies reflected a pluralistic competition of interest groups within the Party, the military, and Gosplan, including factory managers.

Marxism

Marxist theories of the state were relatively influential in continental Europe in the 1960s and 1970s. But it is hard to summarize the theory developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. After all, the effort by Hal Draper to distill their political thinking in his Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution (Monthly Review Press) took several thick volumes. But many have tried.

For Marxist theorists, the role of modern states is determined or related to their role in capitalist societies. They would agree with Weber on the crucial role of coercion in defining the state. (In fact, Weber himself starts his analysis with a quotation from Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik leader.) But Marxists reject the mainstream liberal view that the state is an institution established in the collective interest of society as a whole (perhaps by a social contract) to reconcile competing interests in the name of the common good. Contrary to the pluralist vision, the state is not a mere "neutral arena for settling disputes among contending interests" because it leans heavily to support one interest group (the capitalists) alone. Nor does the state usually act as merely a "collection of agencies which themselves act as simply another set of interest groups," again because of the state's systematic bias toward serving capitalist interests.

In contrast to liberal or pluralist views, the American economist Paul Sweezy and other Marxian thinkers have pointed out that the main job of the state is to protect capitalist property rights in the means of production. At first, this seems hardly controversial. After all, many economics and politics textbooks refer to the state's crucial role in defending property rights and in enforcing contracts. But the capitalists own a share of the means of production that is far out of proportion to the capitalists' role in the total population. More importantly, in Marxian theory, ownership of the means of production gives that minority social power over those who do not own the means of production (the workers). Because of that power, i.e., the power to exploit and dominate the working class, the state's defense of them is nothing but the use of coercion to defend capitalism as a class society.^[20] Instead of serving the interests of society as a whole, in this view the state serves those of a small minority of the population.

Among Marxists, as with other topics, there are many debates about the nature and role of the capitalist state. One division is between the "instrumentalists" and the "structuralists."

On the first, some contemporary Marxists apply a literal interpretation of the comment by Marx and Frederich Engels in The Communist Manifesto that "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." In this tradition, Ralph Miliband argued that the ruling class uses the state as its instrument (tool) to dominate society in a straightforward way. For Miliband, the state is dominated by an elite that comes from the same background as the capitalist class and therefore shares many of the same goals. State officials therefore share the same interests as owners of capital and are linked to them through a wide array of interpersonal and political ties.^[21] In many ways, this theory is similar to the "power elite" theory of C. Wright Mills.

Miliband's research is specific to the United Kingdom, where the class system has traditionally been integrated strongly into the educational system (Eton, Oxbridge, etc.) and social networks. In the United States, the educational system and social networks are more heterogeneous and seem less class-dominated to many. But a social connection between state managers and the capitalist class can be seen in the dependence of the major politicians and their parties on campaign contributions from the rich, on approval from the capitalist-owned media, on advice from corporate-endowed "think tanks," and the like.

In the second view, other Marxist theorists argue that the exact names, biographies, and social roles of those who control the state are irrelevant. Instead, they emphasize the structural role of the state's activities. Heavily influenced by the French philosopher Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, a Greek neo-Marxist theorist argued that capitalist states do not always act on behalf of the ruling class, and when they do, it is not necessarily the case because state officials consciously strive to do so, but because the structural position of the state is configured in such a way to ensure that the interests of capital are always dominant.

Poulantzas' main contribution to the Marxian literature on the state was the concept of relative autonomy of the state: state policies do not correspond exactly to the collective or long-term interests of the capitalist class, but help maintain and preserve capitalism over the long haul. The "power elite," if one exists, may act in ways that go against the wishes of capitalists. While Poulantzas' work on 'state autonomy' has served to sharpen and specify a great deal of Marxist literature on the state, his own framework came under criticism for its "structural functionalism."

But this kind of criticism can be answered by considering what happens if state managers do not work to favor the operations of capitalism as a class society.^[22] They find that the economy are punished by a capital strike or capital flight, encouraging higher unemployment, a decline in tax receipts, and international financial problems. The decline in tax revenues makes it more necessary to borrow from the bourgeoisie. Because the latter will charge high interest rates (especially to a government seen as hostile), the state's financial problems deepen. Such events might be seen in Chile in 1973, under Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular government. Added to the relatively "automatic" workings of the economy (under the spur of profit-seeking businesses) are the ways in which an anti-capitalist government provokes anti-government conspiracies, including those by the Central Intelligence Agency and local political forces, as actually happened in 1973.

Unless they are ready to actually mobilize the working population to revolutionize society and move beyond capitalism, "sober" state managers will pull back from anti-capitalist policies. In any event, they would likely never go so far as to "rock the boat" because of their acceptance of the dominant ideology encouraged by the prevailing educational system.

Despite the debates among Marxist theorists of the state, there are also many agreements. It is possible that both "instrumental" and "structural" forces encourage political unity of the state managers with the capitalist class. That is, both the personal influence of capitalists and the societal constraints on state activity play a role.

Of course, no matter how strong this link, the Marx-Engels dictum that "The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" does not say that the executive will always do a good job in such management. (As Poulantzas pointed out, the state maintains some autonomy.) First, there is the problem of reconciling the particular interests of individual capitalist organizations with each other. For example, different parts of the media may disagree on the nature of needed government regulations. Further, it is often unclear what the long-run class interests of capitalists are, beyond the simple defense of capitalist property rights. It may be impossible to discover class interests until after the fact, i.e., after a policy has been implemented. Third, state managers may use their administrative power to serve their own interests and even to facilitate their entrance into the capitalist class.

Finally, pressure from working-class organizations (labor unions, social-democratic parties, etc.) or other non-capitalist forces (environmentalists, etc.) may push the state from toeing the capitalist "line" exactly. In the end, these problems imply that the state will always have some autonomy from obeying the exact wishes of the capitalist class.

In this view, the Marxian theory of the state does not really contradict the pluralist vision of the state as an arena for the contention of many interest groups, including those based in the state itself. Rather, the Marxian proposition is that this multi-sided competition and its results are strongly biased in the direction of reproducing the capitalist system over time.

It should be emphasized that all of the Marxist theories of the state discussed above refer only to the capitalist state in normal times (without civil war and the like). During a period of economic and social crisis, the absolute need to maintain order may raise the power of the military -- and military goals -- in governmental affairs, sometimes even leading to the violation of capitalist property rights.

In a non-capitalist system such as feudalism, Marxian historians have said that the state did not really exist in the sense that it does today (using Weber's definition). That is, the central state did not monopolize force in a specific geographic area. The feudal king typically had to depend on the military power of his "lieges." This meant that the country was more of an alliance than a unified whole. Further, the difference between the state and civil society was weak: the feudal lords were not simply involved in "economic" activity (production, sale, etc.) but also "political" activity: they used force against their serfs (to extract rents), while acting as judge, jury, and police.

Getting further beyond capitalism, Marxist theory says that since the state is central to protecting class inequality, it will "wither away" once class inequality of power is abolished. In practice, no self-styled Marxist leader or government has ever made attempts to move toward a society without a state. Of course, that is to be expected. After all, no society has ever completely abolished classes. In addition, no self-described "socialist" country has been able to do without a military defense against capitalist invasion or destabilization. Third, in Marxian theory, impetus for the abolition of the state would not come from the leaders or the government themselves as much as from the working people that they are supposed to represent.

Anarchism

The anarchists share many of the Marxian propositions about the state. But in contrast, anarchists argue that a country's collective interests can be served without having a centralized organization. The maintenance of law and order does not require that there be a sector of society that monopolizes the legitimate use of force. It is possible for society to prosper without a state, even without a long period of classes "withering away." In fact, anarchists see the state as a parasite that can and should be abolished.

Thus, they oppose the state as a matter of principle or preference and reject the Marxian view that it may be needed temporarily as part of a transition to socialism or communism. They propose different strategies for the elimination of the state. There is a dichotomy of views regarding its replacement. Anarcho-capitalists envision a free market guided by the invisible hand offering critical or valuable functions traditionally provided by to replace the state; other anarchists (such as Bakunin and Kropotkin in the 19th century) see the abolition of the state as occurring alongside the abolition of capitalism, arguing for anarcho-collectivism or anarcho-communism. Such societies would require worker self-management of the means of production and the federation of worker organizations in communes which will then federate into larger units.

Anarchists consider the state to be the institutionalization of domination and privilege. According to key theorists^{[citation needed]}, the state emerged to ratify and deepen the dominance of the victors of history. Unlike Marxists, anarchists believe that the state, while reflecting social interests, is not a mere executive committee of the ruling class. In itself, without class rule, it is a position of power over the whole society that can dominate and exploit society. Naturally enough, many fractions of the ruling classes and even the oppressed classes strive to control the state, forming different and ever-changing alliances.^{[citation needed]} They also reject the need for a state to serve the collective needs of the people. Hence, they reject not only the current state, but the Marxian idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat). Instead, they see the state as an inherently oppressive force which takes away the ability of people to make decisions about the things that affect their lives.

Institutionalism

Both the Marxist and pluralist approaches view the state as reacting to the activities of groups within society, such as classes or interest groups. In this sense, they have both come under criticism for their 'society-centered' understanding of the state by scholars who emphasize the autonomy of the state with respect to social forces.

In particular, the "new institutionalism," an approach to politics that holds that behavior is fundamentally molded by the institutions in which it is embedded, asserts that the state is not an 'instrument' or an 'arena' and does not 'function' in the interests of a single class. Scholars working within this approach stress the importance of interposing civil society between the economy and the state to explain variation in state forms.

"New institutionalist" writings on the state, such as the works of Theda Skocpol, suggest that state actors are to an important degree autonomous. In other words, state personnel have interests of their own, which they can and do pursue independently (at times in conflict with) actors in society. Since the state controls the means of coercion, and given the dependence of many groups in civil society on the state for achieving any goals they may espouse, state personnel can to some extent impose their own preferences on civil society.^[23]

'New institutionalist' writers, claiming allegiance to Weber, often utilize the distinction between 'strong states' and 'weak states,' claiming that the degree of 'relative autonomy' of the state from pressures in society determines the power of the state—a position that has found favor in the field of international political economy.

The state in modern political thought

The rise of the modern state system was closely related to changes in political thought, especially concerning the changing understanding of legitimate state power. Early modern defenders of absolutism such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin undermined the doctrine of the divine right of kings by arguing that the power of kings should be justified by reference to the people. Hobbes in particular went further and argued that political power should be justified with reference to the individual, not just to the people understood collectively. Both Hobbes and Bodin thought they were defending the power of kings, not advocating democracy, but their arguments about the nature of sovereignty were fiercely resisted by more traditional defenders of the power of kings, like Sir Robert Filmer in England, who thought that such defenses ultimately opened the way to more democratic claims.

These and other early thinkers introduced two important concepts in order to justify sovereign power: the idea of a state of nature and the idea of a social contract. The first concept describes an imagined situation in which the state - understood as a centralized, coercive power - does not exist, and human beings have all their natural rights and powers; the second describes the conditions under which a voluntary agreement could take human beings out of the state of nature and into a state of civil society. Depending on what they understood human nature to be and the natural rights they thought human beings had in that state, various writers were able to justify more or less extensive forms of the state as a remedy for the problems of the state of nature. Thus, for example, Hobbes, who described the state of nature as a "war of every man, against every man,"^[24] argued that sovereign power should be almost absolute since almost all sovereign power would be better than such a war, whereas John Locke, who understood the state of nature in more positive terms, thought that state power should be strictly limited.^[25] Both of them nevertheless understood the powers of the state to be limited by what rational individuals would agree to in a hypothetical or actual social contract.

The idea of the social contract lent itself to more democratic interpretations than Hobbes or Locke would have wanted. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, argued that the only valid social contract would be one were individuals would be subject to laws that only themselves had made and assented to, as in a small direct democracy. Today the tradition of social contract reasoning is alive in the work of John Rawls and his intellectual heirs, though in a very abstract form. Rawls argued that rational individuals would only agree to social institutions specifying a set of inviolable basic liberties and a certain amount of redistribution to alleviate inequalities for the benefit of the worst off. Lockean state of nature reasoning, by contrast, is more common in the libertarian tradition of political thought represented by the work of Robert Nozick. Nozick argued that given the natural rights that human beings would have in a state of nature, the only state that could be justified would be a minimal state whose sole functions would be to provide protection and enforce agreements.

Some contemporary thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, have argued that political theory needs to get away from the notion of the state: "We need to cut off the king's head. In political theory that has still to be done."^[26] By this he meant that power in the modern world is much more decentralized and uses different instruments than power in the early modern era, so that the notion of a sovereign, centralized state is increasingly out of date.

Others have advocated the consideration of the state within the context of complex underlying elite relationships, themselves shaped by factors that include outside pressures. This work has been prominent in the thinking of State-building theorists such as Alan Whaites, who focuses on dynamics shaping the nature and capability of states. Whaites' model of state-building offers a conceptualization of why some states work well and others become characterized by patronage, corruption and conflict.^[27]

See also

• Country
• Elite theory
• Failed state
• International relations
• List of sovereign states (by formation date)
• Montevideo Convention
• Nation
• Nation-building
• Police state
• Political power
• Political settlement
• Province
• Regional state
• Social contract
• State-building
• State country
• Statism
• Justification for the state
• Unitary state
• U.S. state

References

1. ^ Kalevi Jaakko Holsti Taming the Sovereigns p. 128
2. ^ ^{a b} Hillier, Tim (1998). Sourcebook on Public International Law. Routledge. pp. 201–2. ISBN 1859410502. http://books.google.com/books?id=Kr0sOuIx8q8C.
3. ^ "Convention on Rights and Duties of States (inter-American); December 26, 1933". The Avalon Project. Yale University. 2008-11-17. Archived from the original on 2008-02-15. http://web.archive.org/web/20080215090153/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/intdip/interam/intam03.htm. Retrieved on 2008-11-20.
4. ^ "state." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 26 February 2007. [Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/state].
5. ^ ^{a b} Skinner, Quentin. 1989. The State. In Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, edited by T. Ball, J. Farr and R. L. Hanson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521359783
6. ^ ^{a b} Jackson, Robert H., and Carl G. Rosberg. 1982. Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and The Juridical in Statehood. World Politics 35 (1):1-24.[1]
7. ^ ^{a b} Weber, Max. 1994. The Profession and Vocation of Politics. In Political Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521397197.
8. ^ Bobbio, Norberto. 1989. Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816618135.
9. ^ Easton, David. 1990. The Analysis of Political Structure. New York: Routledge.
10. ^ Giddens, Anthony. 1987. Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. 3 vols. Vol. II: The Nation-State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0520060393. See chapter 2.
11. ^ Boehm, Christopher. 1999. in the Forest. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 0674006917.
12. ^ Poggi, G. 1978. The Development of the Modern State: A Sociological Introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
13. ^ Breuilly, John. 1993. Nationalism and the State. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0719038006.
14. ^ Anderson, Perry. 1979. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso. ISBN 086091710X.
15. ^ Tilly, Charles. 1992. Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. Cambridge, Massachusetts: B. Blackwell. ISBN 1557863687.
16. ^ Zaleski, Pawel (2008). "Tocqueville on Civilian Society. A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality". Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte (Felix Meiner Verlag) 50.
17. ^ Kjaer, Anne Mette. 2004. Governance. London: Verso. ISBN 0745629792
18. ^ Alan Whaites. 1998. Viewpoint NGOs, civil society and the state: avoiding theoretical extremes in real world issues Development in Practice
19. ^ Robert Dahl. 1973. Modern Political Analysis. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0135969816
20. ^ Sweezy, Paul. 1942. The Theory of Capitalist Development. New York: Monthly Review, ch. 13.
21. ^ Miliband, Ralph. 1983. Class power and state power. London: Verso.
22. ^ Fred Block. 1977 "The Ruling Class Does Not Rule." Socialist Revolution May-June.
23. ^ Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Theda Skocpol, and Peter B. Evans, eds. 1985. Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0521313139.
24. ^ Hobbes, Thomas. 1651. Leviathan. Part I, chapter 13.
25. ^ Locke, John. 1689. Two Treatises of Government. Second Treatise, chapter 2.
26. ^ Foucault, Michel. 2000 [1976]. Truth and Power. In Power, edited by J. D. Fearon. New York: The New Press, p. 123. ISBN 1565847091
27. ^ Whaites, Alan, States in Development: Understanding State-building, [2]

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