Political Sociology: The Role of the State PDF

Political sociology The role of the state. States, nations, and government.  Introduction Defining the state State attributes and state forms Defining the nation and the nation-state Cultural and political nations Nationalism as a civic religion ...

Political sociology The role of the state. States, nations, and government.  Introduction Defining the state State attributes and state forms Defining the nation and the nation-state Cultural and political nations Nationalism as a civic religion  Defining the state „The state can assess and tax our income and wealth at source, without our consent... (which states before 1850 were never able to do); it stores and can recall immediately a massive amount of information about all of us; it can enforce its will within the day almost anywhere in its domains... The state penetrates everyday life more than did any historical state. Its infrastructural power has increased immensely. (Mann 1993: 315 in Dobratz et al 2019: 39) Despotic vs. infrastructural power of the state  legitimacy (Ibid.)  Defining the state A human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory  Max Weber in Dobratz et al. 2019: 40 Relatively centralized, differentiated organizations the officials of which more or less successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of violence within a population inhabiting a large, contiguous territory  Charles Tilly 1985 in Dobratz et al 2019: 42 A legal entity exercising political control over a strictly delimited territory and the population inhabiting that territory  Defining the state The state as a “network of coercive, extractive, administrative and judicial organizations that control territories and populations within them” (Orloff 1993:9 in Dobratz et al 2019) The state is distinct from both the civil society and the nation  The formation of modern European states The threat of war:  Need for a professional standing army + resources  Need for efficient, centralized administration to raise taxes and control populations  power consolidation by monarchs  Need for a professionally trained corps of non-hereditary officials appointed by the monarch The rise of a modern, bureaucratic state (Ertman 2005)  Sovereignty  Unfettered jurisdiction (legal control) of the country’s legal government over the country’s territory, population, and resources, as well as internal (internal s.) and external affairs (external s.)  The right of the state to pass and enact legislation pertaining to the territory under its control  Sovereignty  The right of the state to be recognized as an independent and legitimate member of the international community  membership of international organizations + bound by intl. law  Non-intervention + territorial integrity  Sovereign equality In principle, according to the norms of intl. law, all recognized sovereign states are considered to be equal in rights (regardless of their size, military and economic potential) etc  Imperialism  Colonialism  Westphalian principles spread all over the world  Democratic and undemocratic state forms Forms of the state  Totalitarian and authoritarian states  Liberal democracies  Welfare states (Dobratz et al, ch. 3)  The state vs. the nation Nation: a group of people that sees itself as being a people, an “imagined community” having a meaningful sense as a unit and its own identity, and as separate and distinct from other comparable groups (Anderson 2006 , Orend 2011)  not to be confused with the “state”! Nations can exist within and/or against states  Dobratz et al. 2019: 47 – 49) States have historically attempted to centralize and assimilate cultural difference; not all nationalisms want their own state (Guibernau 2013)  The nation – introductory remarks  Many people understand the nation in a cultural sense, where people share: - Culture (religion, language, way of life, memories and experiences...) - History - Territory BUT: we also have political nations  based on civic society, constitution, and citizenship  The nation – introductory remarks  The nation-state as the norm The fusion of a) the principle of community with the legal and b) territorial principle of the state  nation-state Nations and states need to be differentiated from governments Governments are “regimes of power at any given moment” Dobratz et al)  The nation – introductory remarks The nation-state – a human community claiming the monopoly of violence over a given territory, which would manifest in a state of its own (Max Weber) Nationalism – a political movement for the attainment of political sovereignty (ie own state) Nationalism often has quasi-religious qualities  the nation as a sacred community for which one ought to lay down one’s life if necessary – see The Alamo text box 2.1 in our chapter for this week Thank you for your attention!