The Origins of the Modern State Tuesday January 27 2015 2 40 PM Defining the State States i ii Two common factors A given territory The use of force or the threat of force to control inhabitants Unlike other social organizations the state is a violence producing enterprise Lane All states use the threat of force to organize public life i ii This force is never perfectly monopolized States never perfectly enforce their will Coercion may be justified in different ways may be used for different purposes but ALL STATES USE IT Nations A nation is a group of people who share some sort of common identity like a language religion an ethnicity or shared history A nation state is a state in which a single nation predominates and the legal social demographic and geographic boundaries of the state are connected in an important way to that nation Failed States States that cannot coerce and are unable to control the inhabitants of a given territory are often described as failed states Afghanistan Somalia Iraq Sierra Leone Congo 1 Two views of the state Contractarian View a Thomas Hobbes John Locke i ii A social contract is an agreement among individuals in the state of nature to create and empower the state The social contract should produce a state that is strong enough to dole out punishments to individuals who steal 1 The threat of punishment should change the payoff of the players such that they would no longer have a dominant a Thomas Hobbes John Locke b State of Nature A social contract is an agreement among individuals in the state of nature to create and empower the state The social contract should produce a state that is strong enough to dole out punishments to individuals who steal 1 The threat of punishment should change the payoff of the players such that they would no longer have a dominant strategy to steal Life in the state of nature as a war if every man against every man in which life was solitary poor nasty brutish and short In short everyone for themselves 1 People in the state of nature face a dilemma a b c d Every citizen could gain by attacking his neighbor Citizens will frequently be vulnerable Collectively everyone would be better off if they could agree not to take advantage of each other Better to be the attacker than the victim Game theory can help us understand the interaction between people in the state of nature 1 A Nash Equilibrium is a set of strategies such that no player has an incentive to unilaterally switch to another strategy Both players must be playing best replies The creation of the state may solve the conflict between citizens it creates a different conflict between citizens and the state 1 States resemble an organized crime families should be viewed as extortion or protection rackets The predatory approach sees the state as an organization that trades security for revenue 2 a Problem Solved c Predatory and Contractarian Visions of the State Contractarian neutral behind the scenes passive omniscient omni present implicit Predatory strategic rational individual political One of the central concepts objects of inquiry in comparative politics though empirical study thereof is obscure i ii i ii iii i
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