week 3 - state formation and fragility

Question 1

What is the state? Weber (most common and influential definition)

Answer 1

• The state cannot be defined in terms of its ends, but only in terms of its means

Question 2

Weberian Definition of the State

Answer 2

A human community that’s successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory

• sovereign
• The state is a compulsory organization with a territorial basis (created by the pursuit of defensible boundaries and defined by the territory it can effectively control)

Question 3

What does State formation require?

Answer 3

• establishing offensible territorial boundaries and effectively securing and administering the territory
• May involve overcoming internal challenges to the monopoly of coercion
•  if unsuccessful, there may be external challenges, which lead to territorial changes

Question 4

Weberian implications

Answer 4

• State is akin to a protection racket, but also the foundation for successfully implement rules and policies which may create a lawful and ordered society to promote human freedom equality
• all made possible by coercive monopoly

Question 5

History of state formation

Answer 5

• older forms of political organization, including tribes, city states and empires go back thousands of years
• some recognizable for runners of the modern state (e.g. China 3rd century BC)

Question 6

The modern state

Answer 6

• Born in Europe in the late mediaeval and early modern periods (12th to 19th C.)
• Followed European influence throughout the globe (17th to 20th C.)
• and then remained after direct European influence

Question 7

Judicial states - joseph strayer

Answer 7

• State provides order of builds revenues by settling cases

Question 8

Economic states - Douglass north

Answer 8

• State support growth by defending contracts, property, the rule of law

Question 9

Military states - Charles tilly

Answer 9

• war makes the state and the state makes war
• leaders build fighting and taxing capacity
• external threat inspires peoples acquiescence and even solidarity

Question 10

Why did the modern Weberian state develop in Europe?

Answer 10

• collapse of the Roman Empire (5th C.)
• weakness of subsequent imperial construction
• organized crime without effective overarching authority
• European rivals fought each other in a highly competitive military environment
• size of state increases due to war
• elimination of weaker states

Question 11

Variation in European states

Answer 11

Variation is influenced by:

• Quantity and costs of war
• access to capital (rich commercial cities or poor peasants, extraction consensual or coercive, IR realism: war at common level, “war, state apparatus, taxation and borrowing advanced in tight cadence” (tily)
• States: coercive authoritarian (Russia) or negotiated democratic (England)

Question 12

The Chinese case

Answer 12

War makes states:

• Spring and autumn and warring states periods, 770-221 BC: intense, nearly constant fighting
• leading to modern state formation, centuries ahead of Europe
• featuring centralized authority and bureaucratic administration, clear territoriality, a monopoly of coercion, strong state wide taxation and general laws
• during most of Chinese history, the state was able to establish and maintain order, it stabilized rules, enabling people to make long-term plans to invest, to trade and to socialize (Liu)

Question 13

Why did China not come to rule the world instead of Europe?

Answer 13

• The centralization of the Chinese empire, which facilitated by the absence of significant international geographic boundaries, the related ethnic and cultural homogenization of the population and the absence of major neighbouring political rivals
• this led to an early an highly developed state - though its lack of major competitors eventually limited its organizational evolution
• in contrast, Europe‘s weaknesses, ethnic and linguistic fragmentation, numerous rival actors and geographical boundaries, hindered the creation of a single European state

Question 14

Francis Fukuyama (China)

Answer 14

• A successful modern political order requires a state, the rule of law and mechanisms of accountability and the Chinese coercive universal empire was an unbalanced modern state, unrestrained by these additional components

Question 15

State weakness (Herbst)

Answer 15

If war explains the European State, then it should also explain the weakness of African states

• war is the missing factor
• absence of war affects taxation and nationalism as contributors to state formation
• there is no substitute for war in state formation for Herbst

Question 16

Problem of durably weak states

Answer 16

• swept away in European history
• now supported by Post World War II international in regional norms: recognition for post-colonial states, regardless of state capacity
• Old states prepared by war to govern themselves, new states propped up in peace and lack strength

Question 17

Failed states don’t:

Answer 17

• establish a monopoly a physical force
• establish and defend territorial borders
• provide basic public services
• effectively regulate the national economy
• generate legitimacy for existing institutions
• prevent corruption, crime and Civil War
• respond effectively to natural catastrophes

Question 18

The failure of failed states: sources of concern

Answer 18

• diverse group of countries facing different challenges
• The call for more order may be counterproductive
• avoid Western bias
• don’t lose sight of western responsibility