3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
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3.POLITICS AND THE STATE ‘The purpose of the State is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him.’ MAX STIRNER , The Ego and His Own (1845)
Transcript of 3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
‘The purpose of the State is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to
subordinate him, to subjugate him.’
MAX STIRNER , The Ego and His Own (1845)
3.POLITICS AND THE STATEThis confusion stems, inpart, from the fact thatthe state has beenunderstood in four quitedifferent ways; from anidealist perspective, afunctionalist perspective,an organizationalperspective and aninternational perspective.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATEThe idealist approach to the state is mostclearly reflected in the writings of Hegel.
• Within the family, a ‘particular altruism’operates that encourages people to setaside their own interests for the good ofothers.
• In contrast, civil society was seen as asphere of ‘universal egoism’. Each placesown interests b4 those of others.
• The state is an ethical communityunderpinned by mutual sympathy –‘universal altruism’.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE• According to functionalist
approaches, the centralfunction of the state isinvariably seen as themaintenance of social order.
• Such an approach has, forexample, been adopted byneo-Marxists, who have beeninclined to see the state as amechanism through whichclass conflict is ameliorated.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
• Organizational approach to thedefinition of the state defines the state asthe apparatus of government in itsbroadest sense; that is, as that set ofinstitutions that are recognizably ‘public’.
• The virtue of this definition is that itdistinguishes clearly between the stateand civil society. The state comprises thevarious institutions of government.
Devletin Tanımı
Devlet tanımı; Marx, Hegel, Weber… The executive of the modern state is nothing but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto. – Burjuva çıkarlarını koruyan aygıt…
Sate, for Hegel, is the highest manifestation of Reason because it emerges as a synthesis of family (thesis) and civil society (antithesis). – insan aklının en mükemmel örgütlenmesi..
The legitimate monopoly of physical coercion over a given territory and population. Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), p. 78. –zor kullanma tekeli…
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
Five key features of the state:
• The state is sovereign.
• State institutions are recognizably ‘public’.
• The decisions of the state are usuallyaccepted as binding on the members ofsociety.
• The state is an instrument of domination.
• The state is a territorial association.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
• Sovereignty, in its simplest sense,is the principle of absolute andunlimited power. Internalsovereignty is the notion ofsupreme power/authority withinthe state.
• External sovereignty relates to itscapacity to act as an independentand autonomous entity.
Jean Bodin
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
The international approach to the state views itprimarily as an actor on the world stage.According to Montevideo Convention on the Rights andDuties of the State (1933).Features of the state:• a defined territory• a permanent population• an effective government• the capacity to enter into relations with other states.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPp0G_wYyMM
Consequently, state is a political and legal institutionconstituted by a certain population in a defined terrritoryunder the same government.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
For some; statehooddepends on formalrecognition by other statesor international bodies.
In this view, the UnitedNations (UN) is widelyaccepted as the body that,by granting fullmembership, determineswhen a new state has comeinto existence.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE• Historically; it emerged in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Europe bringing anend to the competing and overlappingauthority systems.
• The Peace of Westphalia (1648) is oftentaken to have formalized the modernnotion of statehood, by establishing thestate as the principal actor in domesticand international affairs.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
• The state nevertheless continued to evolve inthe light of changing circumstances.
– the nation-state
– the welfare state
• The result of this process was a rapid growthin UN membership. From its original 51member states in 1945, the UN grew to 193members by 2011.
3.POLITICS AND THE STATE
There are various rival theories of thestate, each of which offers a differentaccount of its origins, development andimpact on society. Four contrastingTheories: Represent the interest of whose view
the pluralist state Society Liberals
the capitalist state Bourgeoisie Karl Marx
the leviathan state State(Bureaucracy)New Right
the patriarchal state Patriarcy (Man) Feminists
THE PLURALIST STATE
Liberal lineage: It stems fromthe belief that the state acts asa ‘referee’ in society.
This view has dominatedmainstream political analysisin Anglo-American thought.
John Locke
THE PLURALIST STATE
• The origins of this view of the state can betraced back to the social-contract theoriesof thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes andJohn Locke.
• They argued that the state had arisen out ofa voluntary agreement, or social contract,made by individuals who recognized thatonly the establishment of a sovereign powercould safeguard them from the insecurity,disorder and brutality of the state of nature.
THE PLURALIST STATE• As Schwarzmantel
(1994) put it, the stateis ‘the servant ofsociety and not itsmaster’.
• Modern pluralistshave come to acceptthat modernindustrialized statesare both morecomplex and lessresponsive to popularpressures thanclassical pluralismsuggested.
THE CAPITALIST STATE• Marxists have typically argued
that the state is nothing but aninstrument of classoppression.
• The state emerges out of, andin a sense reflects, the classsystem.
• Marx believed that the state ispart of a ‘superstructure’ thatis determined or conditionedby the economic ‘base’.
Karl Marx
THE CAPITALIST STATE• He argued that the state could be used
constructively during the transition fromcapitalism to communism in the form of the‘revolutionary dictatorship of theproletariat’.
• (Proletariat denotes a class that subsiststhrough the sale of its labour power)
• The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ wasseen as a means of safeguarding the gains ofthe revolution by preventing counter-revolution mounted by the dispossessedbourgeoisie.
THE CAPITALIST STATEThis was also encouraged by thewritings of Antonio Gramsci, whoemphasized the degree to whichthe domination of the ruling classis achieved by ideologicalmanipulation, rather than justopen coercion. In this view,bourgeois domination ismaintained largely through‘hegemony’: that is, intellectualleadership or cultural control,with the state playing animportant role in the process.
THE LEVIATHAN STATE
• The image of the state as a ‘leviathan’ isone associated in modern politics withthe New Right.
• In this view, the state is an overbearing‘nanny’
• The central feature of this view is thatthe state pursues interests that areseparate from those of society.
THE LEVIATHAN STATE
While Marxists argue that the state reflects broader class and other social interests, the New Right portrays the state as an independent or autonomous entity that pursues its own interests.
Thomas Hobbes
THE PATRIARCHAL STATE
• Some feminists argue that the idea that thestate exercises a monopoly of legitimateviolence is compromised by the routine useof violence and intimidation in family anddomestic life.
• State power reflects a deeper structure ofoppression in the form of patriarchy.
• Radical feminists place the state in acontext of gender inequality, and insist thatit is essentially an institution of male power.
THE ROLE OF THE STATE
There is profound disagreement about theexact role the state should play. Different stateforms;
• minimal states
• developmental states
• social-democratic states
• collectivized states
• totalitarian states
• religious states
MINIMAL STATES
• The minimal state is the ideal of classicalliberals.
• From this perspective, the state has thecapacity to constrain human behaviour.
• Its core function is to provide aframework of peace and social order.
• Its services are called upon only whenorderly existence is threatened.
MINIMAL STATES
• The institutional apparatusof a minimal state is thuslimited to a police force, acourt system and a militaryof some kind.
• Economic, social, cultural,moral and otherresponsibilities belong to theindividual.
• In Locke’s famous simile, thestate acts as a nightwatchman
DEVELOPMENTAL STATES
• A developmental state is one thatintervenes in economic life with thespecific purpose of promoting industrialgrowth and economic development.
• This is rather an attempt to construct apartnership between the state and majoreconomic interests, often underpinnedby conservative and nationalistpriorities.
DEVELOPMENTAL STATES
More recently, economic globalization has fostered the emergence of ‘competition states’, examples of which are found amongst the tiger economies of East Asia. South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC STATES
Social-democratic statesintervene with a view tobring about broadersocial restructuring,usually in accordancewith principles such asfairness, equality andsocial justice.
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC STATES
• Developmentalism and social democracydo not always go hand-in-hand.
• The key to understanding the social-democratic state is that there is a shiftfrom a ‘negative’ view of the state, whichsees it as little more than a necessaryevil, to a ‘positive’ view of the state, inwhich it is seen as a means of enlargingliberty and promoting justice.
COLLECTIVIZED STATES
• Collectivized states bring the entirety ofeconomic life under state control.
• These sought to set up centrally plannedeconomies.
• The justification for state collectivizationstems from a fundamental socialistpreference for common ownership overprivate property.
COLLECTIVIZED STATES
Statism is the belief thatstate intervention is themost appropriatemeans of resolvingpolitical problems, orbringing abouteconomic and socialdevelopment.
TOTALITARIAN STATES
• The most extreme and extensive form ofinterventionism is found in totalitarianstates.
• The essence of totalitarianism is theconstruction of an all-embracing state.
• The state brings not only the economy, butalso education, culture, religion and familylife under direct state control.
• Examples of totalitarian states are Hitler’sGermany, Stalin’s USSR and Mussolini’s Italy.
RELIGIOUS STATES
• In modern states, religion is increasingly being confined to the private sphere, through a separation between church and state.
• (Laïcité: (French) The principle of the absence of religious involvement in government affairs. State religion: A religious body that is officially endorsed by the state, giving it special privileges, but (usually) not formal political authority.)
RELIGIOUS STATES
Nevertheless, the periodsince the 1980s haswitnessed the rise of thereligious state, driven by thetendency to reject thepublic/private divide. Forinstance ‘Islamic state’ inIran as a result of the 1979revolution.
ECLIPSE OF THE STATE
• Since the late 1980s, debate about thestate has been overshadowed byassertions about it ‘retreat’ or ‘decline’.
• The once-mighty leviathan had beenundermined by the growing importanceof the global economy, the market, majorcorporations, non-state actors andinternational organisations.
ECLIPSE OF THE STATE
• Developments such as the
– rise of international migration
– the spread of culturalglobalization
– ‘borderless world’
– capital flows around the World
• Nevertheless, globalizationhas transformed the state,rather than simply reducedor increased its power.
NON-STATE ACTORS AND INTERNATIONAL BODIES
• The rise of non-state andinternational bodies reflectthe fact that, increasingly,major aspects of politics nolonger take place merely inor through the state but,rather, outside or beyondthe state.
• Amongst non-state actors,TNCs are often regarded asthe most significant.
NON-STATE ACTORS AND INTERNATIONAL BODIES
• Comparison between corporate sales andcountries’ GDP, 51 of the world’s 100 largesteconomies are corporations; only 49 ofthem are countries.
• Estimates of the total number ofinternational NGOs usually exceed 30,000,with over 1,000 groups enjoying formalconsultative status by the UN. Theirexpertise, moral authority and high publicprofiles enable NGOs to exert a level ofinfluence.
NON-STATE ACTORS AND INTERNATIONAL BODIES
Failed state: A failed state is a state that is unable to perform its key role of ensuring domestic order by monopolizing the use of force within its territory. Examples of failed states in recent years include Cambodia, Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia and Somalia.
