The Modern State

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“… the role of the state is as the most effective power container” (Giddens, 1985).

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On Power and Provenance of the Modern State

Three dimensions of power (Lukes, 1974 in Faulks 1999):

First dimension of power

• Concerns the capacity of an individual or group to achieve a desired end, even if it is opposed by those with contrary interests.

Second dimension of power

• Necessarily assumes hierarchical relationships between different social groups.
• Actors in positions of strength have the capacity to further their interests, not only in the direct sense expressed in the first dimension of power, but also by preventing alternative interests from even being considered.

Third dimension of power

• Insidious power; not only involves the manipulation of the political agenda but also entails persuading subordinate groups that this agenda is in their real interests.
• Essentially involves thought control.

Types of Power

Military power

• The use of organized armed force.
• Usually employed by the state, it may also be utilized by organized groups who seek to change the way in which a society is governed.

Communicative power

• Concerns the control of ideas and the capacity to shape beliefs, such as the ability of a religious leader to influence the actions of their followers.

Economic power

• Refers to the control of productive forces and wealth.

Politics or political power is not a form of power as such but broadly defined as it encompasses all three types of power.

Methods of power

• Include the use of force, manipulation, persuasion and authority.
• The most secure form of power is authority (Faulks, 1999).
  • Scenario: Where A recognizes the right of B to act on their behalf.

The Coming of the State and the Modern State

Highlights of the origin of the state

• Economic surplus production by more sophisticated agricultural methods led to economic inequality.
• Economic inequality combined with the concentration of military power, creates stratified societies.
  • This led to the state’s population being caged into particular authority relations.
• The building up of state power gathered its own momentum as its economic and military advantages became clear.
  • The first states’ influence spread because they were more easily able to organize trade and win military victories than where their stateless neighbors.
• As states’ power expanded, it increasingly fostered a sense of collective identity.
  • E.g., religious ideology and, later, nationalism
• An immense range of historical political systems or traditional states, which gave expression to the different forms and distribution of power, has shrunk dramatically by the sixteenth century.
  • One type of polity began to emerge in Europe and came to be the dominant political form of the recent and contemporary world: the modern state.

Basic Features & Characteristics of the Modern State (Ideal Type)

The temporal, spatial and social factors of a state (Weberian perspective)

First factor

• The state is a historical agent, its form changes through time.

Second factor

• The state does not stand in isolation; it exists in relation to other states, and is in this sense a geo-political phenomenon.

Third factor

• The state is locked into an interdependent relationship with civil society: that is, states are socially structured.

Because of these contexts, individual states adapt their internal structures over time, and also, there is considerable variety between states in the modern world.

Defining: Modern State

• “It is a set of ‘political apparatus, distinct from both ruler and ruled, with supreme jurisdiction over a demarcated area, backed by a claim to a monopoly of coercive power and enjoying legitimacy as a result of a minimum level of support or loyalty from their citizens” (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton, 1999).

Essential Elements: Set of Institutions Making Up the Modern State

Public institutions

• The institutions of the modern state are all “public” institutions, and include not only “the government” and legislature (of the day) but also the courts, civil service, army, and police, plus any state-owned agencies.
  • These are differentiated from other institutions (especially private and non-state institutions) and individuals, and the citizens and subjects).

Sovereignty and hegemony

• The institutions of the state and the rules and laws made by it have authority over a particular demarcated geographical area.
  • Although there may be disputes about that, as in secessionist and irredentist conflicts.

Formal monopoly of violence

• The modern state has a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, and it is, or should be, the dominant agency of rule and law whether democratic or not, in principle superordinate over all others.

Impartial bureaucracy

• The bureaucracy is (theoretically) impersonal, impartial and neutral
• In a modern state, in principle, the public service is independent and autonomous both from the elected political elites and parties and also from the public

It is a fundamental assumption of the modern state that these public offices (and associated powers) should not be used for private gain (what would normally be called corruption)

Occupancy of such offices should entail no powers of private patronage nor be used for the support of any particular private client base (clientelism), whether personal, regional, ethnic, or economic

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Environment affecting state and civil society relation

• In the context of the developing world, traditional and modern forms have been found to be complex
  • Even compared to industrialized countries
• Political systems in developing world
  • Experiencing great change; failure of some states to success of others - relationships between the state and civil society are in a flux as a result of changes
  • Traditional forms of civil society are still adapting to changed social and political environments
  • Recent construct: modern civil society
• Relationships in consolidated democracies are more stable
  • Becomes more predictable

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Relation of civil society organizations to state institutions

• Impact of states upon
• The impact of states upon civil society organizations, especially NGOs, is absolutely central in defining the role they can play in national development, for it is governments which give NGOs the space and the autonomy to organize, network and campaign (Clark, 1998)
• Generally speaking there are three different ways on how CSO relate with state institutions:
  • When the state is repressive, civil society organizations are usually antagonistic to it.
  • When the state is weak and incapable of delivering services, civil society organizations seek to ignore the state and avoid its control, rather than press for reforms
  • When the state is strong civil society organizations are well developed, relations tend to be cooperative and constructive (Ottaway, 2005)

The State in the Developing World

Provenance and forms; contemporary states in the developing world

• Unlike the development of the modern state in Europe, most contemporary states in the developing world had their borders and main institutions imposed from without
• With few exceptions, the original purpose and point of colonial rule and hence colonial institutions of state were extractive rather than developmental
• The institutions of rule of the colonial state reflected these purposes, being characterized by generally authoritarian patterns, designed to promote extraction and the control of labor
• Most colonial states were marked by the paradox of having strong ‘despotic’ (coercive) power and weak ‘infrastructural’ or transformative capacities
• Many countries in the developing world, therefore, achieved independence in circumstances where powerful economic and political forces in society exerted considerable regional and local influence and hence constrained dramatically the emergence of centralized, autonomous, and effective modern states
• Colonial rule commonly built on, extended, and institutionalized patron-client relations, from top to bottom
• In the post-colonial era, these institutions of patronage merged with the formal institutions of the modern state, commonly transforming it so that it has been unable to perform the central function of the modern state, namely the encouragement, promotion, and maintenance of economic growth
• Many of the characteristics of pre-modern politics and ‘patrimonial’ polities were entrenched within the institutions of the modern state, leading to their characterization of neo-patrimonial states (Leftwich, 2005)

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Characteristics of the State in Developing Countries

• Institutional and political legacies blur the boundaries between public institutions and private interests
• Establishing institutions to monitor and control these boundaries have been difficult where there is no political will to do so
• Many states in the developing world have found it difficult to maintain hegemony within their own territory, to protect their sovereignty and achieve a monopoly of violence
• Impartial bureaucracies, protected from political or sectional interest, are less common in the developing than in the developed world
• Patrimonialism and patronage, low levels of pay, and pervasive opportunities for discretionary behavior all contribute to varying but sometimes intense patterns of corruption, thereby subverting the central purpose of the modern state: the promotion of economic growth and welfare (Leftwich, 2005)

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Main Challenges Facing States of Developing Countries

• Most states in the developing world have experienced great difficulty in overcoming the challenges of economic growth, democratic claims, and redistributed demands
• With important exceptions, states in the developing world have been unable to establish the institutions of rule that would permit economic growth according to capitalist, socialist, or developmental state models
• In the absence of economic growth and in the presence of profound inequalities, states in the developing world have found it impossible to absorb and institutionalize democratic demands
• For the same reasons, many states in the developing world have found it impossible to deliver improved human welfare through redistributional means

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Prospects of States in Developing Countries

“Strong and effective states are inconceivable without strong economies. And strong economies are inconceivable without the institutions of state that make them possible” (Leftwich, 2005).

Current condition and prospects

• A coalition of political and social forces willing and able to establish, maintain and adapt institutions for a strong state is seldom strong enough to make these institutions running
  • These institutions have become inept, disjointed, and divided agencies of economic growth - whatever economic model is adopted
• Insofar as there is sustained economic growth in the long-run, social and political forces will also gather momentum and help build modern states.
  • Instead of being the agents and beneficiaries of patronage and corruption, these forces will become the agents of their destruction and of the creation of both the public and private institutions of rule that promote economic growth
• Despite many problems, political processes in developing countries could be moving towards the establishment of state institutions of rule that could at last provide more stability and effectiveness for economic development and greater participation for citizens in decision-making processes
  • However, the process is both very slow and very uneven.

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