What is the state ?
The term ‘state’ has been used to refer to a bewildering range of things: a collection of institutions, a territorial unit, a philosophical idea, an instrument of coercion or oppression, and so on. This confusion stems, in part, from the fact that the state has been understood in three very different ways, from an idealist perspective, a functionalist perspective and an organizational perspective. The idealist approach to the state is most clearly reflected in the writings of G. W. F. Hegel. Hegel identified three ‘moments’ of social existence: the family, civil society, and the state. Within the family, he argued, a ‘particular altruism’ operates that encourages people to set aside their own interests for the good of their children or elderly relatives. In contrast, civil society was seen as a sphere of ‘universal egoism’ in which individuals place their own interests before those of others. Hegel conceived of the state as an ethical community underpinned by mutual – ‘universal altruism’. The drawback of idealism, however, is that it fosters an uncritical reverence for the state and, by defining the state in ethical terms, fails to distinguish clearly between institutions that are part of the state and those that are outside the state.
Functionalist approaches to the state focus on the role or purpose of state institutions. The central function of the state is invariably seen as the maintenance of social order (see p. 389), the state being defined as that set of institutions that uphold order and deliver social stability. Such an approach has, for example, been adopted by modern Marxists, who have been inclined to see the state as a mechanism through which class conflict is ameliorated to ensure the long-term survival of the capitalist system. The weakness of the functionalist view of the state, however, is that it tends to associate any institution that maintains order (such as the family, mass media, trade unions and the church) with the state itself. This is why, unless there is a statement to the contrary, an organizational approach to the definition of the state (see below) is adopted throughout this book.
The organizational view defines the state as the apparatus of government in its broadest sense: that it, as the set of institutions that are recognizably ‘public’ in that they are responsible for the collective organization of social existence and are funded at the public’s expense. The virtue of this definition is that it distinguishes clearly between the state and civil society (see p. 8). The state comprises the various institutions of government: the bureaucracy, the military, the police, the courts, the social-security system and so on; it can be identified with the entire ‘body politic’. This makes it possible to identify the origins of the modern state in the emergence in fifteenth-century and sixteenth-century Europe of a system of centralized rule that succeeded in subordinating all other institutions and groups, spiritual and temporal. The modern notion of sovereign statehood was, indeed, formalized in the Treaty of Westphalia 1648. Moreover, the organizational approach allows us to talk about ‘rolling forward’ or ‘rolling back’ the state, in the sense of expanding or contracting the responsibilities of the state, and enlarging or diminishing its institutional machinery.
In this light, it is possible to identify five key features of the state.
• The state is sovereign. It exercises absolute and unrestricted power in that it stands above all other associations and groups in society. Thomas Hobbes (see p. 303) conveyed this idea by portraying the state as a ‘leviathan’, a gigantic monster, usually represented as a sea creature.
• State institutions are recognizably ‘public’, in contrast to the ‘private’ institutions of civil society. Public bodies are responsible for making and enforcing collective decisions, while private bodies, such as families, private businesses and trade union, exist to satisfy individual interests.
• The state is an exercise in legitimation. The decisions of the state are usually (although not necessarily) accepted as binding on the members of society because, it is claimed, they are made in the public interest or for common good, the state supposedly reflects the permanent interest of society.
• The state is an instrument of domination. State authority is backed up by coercion; the state must have the capacity to ensure that its laws are obeyed and that transgressors are punished. A monopoly of ‘legitimate violence’ (Max Weber) is therefore the practical expression of state sovereignty.
• The state is a territorial association. The jurisdiction of the state is geographically defined, and it encompasses all those who live within the state’s borders, whether they are citizens or noncitizens. On the international stage, the state is therefore regarded (at least in theory) as an autonomous entity.
Non only is the state separate from civil society, but it is also internally differentiated, containing various branches or sections. The state apparatus thus embraces the political executive or government, in the narrow sense, possibly an assembly or parliament, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the military, the police, local and regional institutions, and so on. The most important distinction, however, is that between the ‘state’ and the ‘government’, two terms that are often used interchangeably. This distinction is not just of academic interest. It goes to the very heart of the idea of limited and constitutional government. In short, government power can be held in check only when the government of the day is prevented from encroaching upon the absolute and unlimited authority of the state.
The principal differences between government and the state are the following:
• The state is more extensive than government. The state is an inclusive association that encompasses all the institutions of the public realm and embraces all the members of the community (in their capacity as citizens). Government is part of the state.
• The state is a continuing, even permanent, entity. Government is temporary: governments come and go, and systems of government can be reformed and remodeled.
• Government is the means through which the authority of the state is brought into operation. In making and implementing state policy, government is ‘the brains’ of the state, and it perpetuates the state’s existence.
• The state exercises impersonal authority. The personnel of state bodies is recruited and trained in a bureaucratic manner and is (usually) expected to be politically neutral, enabling state bodies to resist the ideological enthusiasms of the government of the day.
• The state, in theory at least, represents the permanent interests of society: that is, the common good or general will. Government, on the other hand, represents the partisan sympathies of those who happen to be in power at a particular time.