Chapter 4: The Origins of the Modern State Flashcards
What is a state?
An entity that relies on coercion and the threat of force to rule in a given territory.
Max Weber’s definition of the state
“A human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”.
What is a nation?
A nation is a group of people who share some sort of common identity.
Charles Tilly’s definition of the state
“States are relatively contralised, differentiated organisations, the officials of which, more or less, successfully claim control over the chief concentrated means of violence within a population inhabiting a large contigous territory.”
Douglass North’s definition of the state
“A state is an organisation with a comparative advantage in violence, extending over a geographic area whose boundaries are determined by its power to tax constituents.”
What is a failed state?
States that cannot coerce and are unable to use force to successfully control the inhabitants of a given territory
The Fragile States Index’s four categories
Altert, Warning, Stable, and Sustainable
What is the contractarian view of the state?
The creation of a state results from a social contract between individuals in the state of nature in which the state provides security in exchange for obedience from the citizens
Thomas Hobbes’ description of life in the state of nature
“War of every man against every man [in which life was] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”
What is ordinal payoffs?
They tell us about how a player ranks the possible outcomes in game theory; but not how much more a player prefers one outcome to another
