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The State as a Conceptual Variable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

J. P. Nettl
J. P. Nettl
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

The concept of state is not much in vogue in the social sciences right now. Yet it retains a skeletal, ghostly existence largely because, for all the changes in emphasis and interest of research, the thing exists and no amount of conceptual restructuring can dissolve it. The present article develops a conceptual approach in which no violence is done to historical or empirical fact, but which offers a means of integrating the concept of state into the current primacy of social science concerns and analytical methods. It is hoped that this approach not only will provide a convenient conceptualization, but will contribute to attacking a substantive problem of some consequence. Since the relevant area is potentially huge, no more than a brushstroke configuration can be attempted.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , July 1968 , pp. 559 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 For a sensitive and suggestive analysis of the state as a unibonded system, contrasted with language and territorial or neighborhood groups all forming a multibonded nation, see Sorokin, Pitirim A., Society, Culture, and Personality (New York 1962), 197–211Google Scholar.

2 See, for instance, a recent definition that emerges in the context of a general discussion of social systems and revolution: “The state is the institutionalization of authority … a special form of power” (Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change [Boston 1966], 30Google Scholar).

3 The concept of state is, for instance, one of those that Talcott Parsons has neither specifically “appropriated” nor tried to integrate into his systems analysis in any meaningful way. In general, he simply identifies the state with maximal control of resources and coercive machinery—a sort of maximization of coercive power that presumably is present in every organization, but is maximized in the political organization par excellence. See most recently “The Political Aspect of Social Structure and Process,” in Easton, David, ed., Varieties of Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs 1966), 83Google Scholar.

The concept of state lends itself only with difficulty to any anaylsis of structural differentiation—hence Parsons prefers to concentrate on generic problems of the “political” which facilitate such an approach. The essentially undifferentiated nature of the state concept is further discussed below in Section II.

4 Watkins, Frederick Mundell, The State as a Concept of Political Science (New York and London 1934)Google Scholar.

5 See recently Hinsley, F. H., Sovereignty (London 1965)Google Scholar.

6 See the erudite but wholly inconclusive discussion in Friedrich, Carl J., Man and His Government: An Empirical Theory of Politics (New York 1963), 547–66Google Scholar and passim. It is probably an integral part of the difference between the epistemological structures of sociological and political theory that state and nation are empirical dimensions in the former, standing in no a priori relationship to each other, while for the latter they are closely interdependent, positively correlated, and fundamental conceptual givens.

7 E.g., Eckstein, Alexander, “Individualism and the Role of the State in Economic Growth”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, VI (January 1958), 81–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; von Vorys, Karl, ed., “New Nations: The Problem of Political Development”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCLVIII (March 1965), 1–169Google Scholar. Among economists writing on problems of growth in poor lands today, references bearing this emphasis are legion.

8 Two studies that do use the new terminology also de-emphasize the state: Moore, C.H., Tunisia Since Independence: The Dynamics of One-Party Government (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1965)Google Scholar; and particularly strongly marked in this direction, Grossholtz, Jean, Politics in the Philippines (Boston 1964)Google Scholar.

9 Lipset, Seymour M., The First New Nation (New York 1963)Google Scholar; Mitchell, William C., The American Polity: A Social and Cultural Interpretation (New York 1962)Google Scholar.

10 Laski, H. J., The State in Theory and Practice (London 1935)Google Scholar; MacIver, R. M., The Modern State (London 1926)Google Scholar. The beginnings of interest in the conceptual problem in England may perhaps be attributed to Dowdell, H.C., The Word “State” (London 1923)Google Scholar.

11 Lubasz, Heinz, The Development of the Modern State (New York and London 1964), Introduction, 6Google Scholar.

12 For the difficulty for political science of the sovereignty emphasis on the state, see Watkins, 42–84.

13 The statement was made by Schmitt, Carl, in Politische Theologie (Leipzig 1934), 11Google Scholar. In general see Neumann, Franz, The Democratic and the Authoritarian State (New York 1957), 3–21, 59–66Google Scholar.

14 In addition, the phrase “national actor” exhibits an overtone of popular participation—a piece of conceptual clothing very suitable to a democratic age.

15 A recent article arguing for the reinstatement of the conceptual sovereignty of states in international relations is Hammond, Paul Y., “The Political Order and the Burden of External Relations”, World Politics, XIX (April 1967), 443–64, esp. 462–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 For the notion of arena, see Lowi's, Theodore J. review article “American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory”, World Politics, XVI (July 1964), 677–715CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 The uneasy conceptual relationship between sovereignty and autonomy is argued at some length by Watkins. For a relevant model of political unification, see Etzioni, Amitai, “A Paradigm for the Study of Political Unification”, World Politics, XV (October 1962), 44–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Friedrich, 551. In fact, Friedrich has elsewhere offered quite a different definition and conceptualization of the state; see below fn. 23.

19 For a discussion of the comparative effects of this integrative revolution, see Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, Stein, “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction,” in Lipset, and Rokkan, , eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York 1968)Google Scholar. The notion of modernity models and the consequent structuring of leader and follower nations in the European context is discussed by Reinhard Bendix, in “Towards a Definition of Modernity,” a paper presented at the Sixth World Congress of Sociology, Evian, France, September 1966 (a preview of a lengthy forthcoming book on this subject). See also Nettl, J. P. and Robertson, Roland, International Systems and the Modernization of Societies: The Formation of National Goals and Attitudes (London and New York 1968)Google Scholar.

20 For the transfer of ideological as well as processual primacy from the center to the regions since 1949 in Germany, see in general Mason, John Brown, “Federalism—The Bonn Model,” in Zurcher, Arnold J., ed., Constitutions and Constitutional Trends Since World War II (New York 1955) 134–54Google Scholar; Kirchheimer, Otto, 'The Political Scene in West Germany”, World Politics, IX (April 1957) 433–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heidenheimer, A. J., “Federalism and the Party System—The Case of West Germany”, American Political Science Review, LII (September 1958), 809–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nyman, Olle, Der westdeutsche Föderalismus: Studien zum Banner Grundgesetz (Stockholm 1960)Google Scholar; Eschenburg, Theodor, Staat und Gesellschaft in Deutschland, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart 1957)Google Scholar.

21 Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York 1960), 33Google Scholar.

22 Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Modernization: America vs. Europe”, World Politics, XVII (April 1966), 393Google Scholar. The contrast between functions and power, although attractive, is inaccurate, since Huntington uses functions in the Montesquieu sense of executive, legislative, and judicial only—a definition that modern systems analysis no longer finds meaningful. Nonetheless, the contrast between Europe and America in this context is striking if taken along the two dimensions of sovereignty (power) and autonomy (function). By dividing power, institutional autonomy is created automatically.

23 Thus, for instance, Friedrich writes, “The subject and method of political science cannot easily be characterized. Its subject is naturally the ‘state,’ but we must not read more into this than what is meant by the English ‘government.’ We are here concerned with the forms of rule (Herrschaft). Every metaphysical attempt to absolutize the concept of state is in conflict with this approach…. A metaphysical absolute cannot be the object of critical empirical investigation” (Friedrich, Carl Joachim, Der Verfassungsstaat der Neuzeit [Berlin 1953], Introduction, 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See the similar characterization in Friedrich, , Demokratie ah Herrschafts- und Lebensform (Heidelberg 1959), 12Google Scholar. Here the problem is “solved” by attributing to the state the “steering and leading of the business of the community. The state is necessary, since otherwise no community can conduct its business adequately.” According to the analysis put forward in the present article, however, the administration of society is precisely the type of universalization applicable to the concept of the European state; government in Britain makes far fewer claims. Even the Parsonian formulation of politics as goal-attainment is more modest than any claim to “manage the business” of society.

24 This suggests the query as to whether Neil Smelser's very American Theory of Collective Behavior (New York 1963)Google Scholar, with its carefully tended “levels” of action replicating the different levels of social analysis, would be meaningful at all in a society with a strong state, whose “politicization” of action is structured quite differently and polarizes to extremes much more rapidly.

25 Marx, Karl, The Paris Commune (New York 1920), 70–71Google Scholar; Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, first pub. 1884 (Chicago 1902), 115–16Google Scholar.

28 For an analysis of this shift in orientation, see particularly Kamenka, Eugene, The Ethical Foundations of Marxism (New York 1962), 38–47, 57–59, 62–69Google Scholar.

27 Rieff, Philip, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (London 1966), 153Google Scholar.

28 Some of these themes are highlighted in the various contributions to Lubasz, Development of the Modern State.

29 The history of this view of partisan political parties in Germany and elsewhere in relation to the totality of the state is well documented in Faul, Erwin, “Verfemung, Duldung und Anerkennung des Parteiwesens in der Geschichte des politischen Denkens”, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, V, No. 1 (1964), 60–80Google Scholar. The cutting-off of ruling groups from their political roots through the leftover demands of antipolitical universality, coupled with the decline in the meaningfulness of the traditional German concept of state since 1945, helps to explain the sense of loss and fearful isolation of the ruling elites in West Germany. For this see Dahrendorf, Ralf, Geselhchaft und Democratic in Deutschland (Munich 1965)Google Scholar; and Zapf, Wolfgang, Wandlungen der deutschen Elite: Ein Zirkulationstnodell deutscher Führungsgruppen 1919–1961 (Munich 1965)Google Scholar.

30 For Italy, see, inter alia, Gentile, Giovanni, Che cosa è il fascismo (Rome 1925)Google Scholar; Germino, Dante L., The Italian Fascist Party in Power: A Study in Totalitarian Rule (New York 1959)Google Scholar. Some very illuminating comments on the institutional Darwinism and irrelevance of formal state structures in Nazi Germany are made by Schoenbaum, David, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939, (New York 1966)Google Scholar. For the vicissitudes of the concept of totalitarianism in American political science, see Spiro, Herbert J., “Totalitarianism: Critique of a Concept,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York 1968)Google Scholar.

31 See Weber, , Staatssoziologie (Berlin 1956)Google Scholar.

32 An example of a very precise cultural internalization of the notion of state is found in Israel. Because of the intervening and unique concept of country (aretz) in common usage, the state (medinat) becomes merely the active institutionalized principle of autonomous authority, while government (memshalah) is the temporary, party-based incumbent.

33 It is interesting that this problem is touched upon, but never made explicit, in the cultural analysis of Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See Nettl, J. P., Political Mobilization (New York 1967), esp. chap. 3Google Scholar.

35 For some of these differences, see the discussion in Marx, F. Morstein, The Administrative State: An Introduction to Bureaucracy (Chicago 1957)Google Scholar.

36 For an extension of this argument see Nettl, chaps. 5 and 6. See also Lipset and Rokkan.

37 See Huntington, 411, for the contrary identification of statelessness with democracy.

38 For these negotiations, see Self, Peter and Storing, H., The State and the Farmer (London 1962)Google Scholar.

39 For the dominant social model of the civil service for other institutionalized interests such as the business community, see Nettl, J. P., “Consensus or Elite Domination: The Case of Business”, Political Studies, XIII (February 1965), 22–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Precisely these secondary influences, together with the ultimate threat of legislative sovereignty overriding all claims of sectoral autonomy, are typical of a no-state society like Britain.

40 Huntington, 405. In general, much of the preceding argument is similar to that so forcefully put forward in Huntington's article. But he treats the problem of consensus and dissensus along the dimensions of egalitarian versus religiously, socially, and sectorally divided societies. In his view, England, too, qualifies as a divided society requiring the imposition of sovereign authority, while the United States is the only instance of a consensual society. This is an unwarranted inversion of cause and effect, since sociologically a case can certainly be made for regarding England as vastly more consensual than the United States. The argument in this present article suggests not that stateness is a consequence of dissensus but that in many of the early instances of strong states stateness induces dissensus. The later imposition of a state on dissensual societies has eroded the development of die classical form of stateness—as in Italy, Belgium, and many of the post-1918 successor states.

41 However, the social context of law-making (as opposed to law-interpretation) is much more clearly accepted in most continental countries. The differences might be schematized as follows:

42 The breaking up of a received continental European tradition of law in an unsuitable American environment, to which reference has already been made, can also be shown in this context. Law is taught separately—even contradictorily—in the United States by law schools in the autonomous, indigenous tradition and by political science departments in a vestigial form of the imported European, mainly German, tradition—much disliked by the lawyers. An illuminating discussion of ideologically conditioned approaches to the study of law outside law schools is Schubert, Glendon, “Ideologies and Attitudes, Academic and Judicial”, Journal of Politics, XXIX (February 1967), 3–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Academic Ideology and the Study of Adjudication”, American Political Science Review, LXI (March 1967), 106–29Google Scholar. The division is into three types of approach: conventional (law, history, philosophy); traditional (economics, political science, sociology); behavioral (psychology, anthropology).

43 For this see the envious discussion of possible foreign models, particularly England, in Tempi Moderni (published by Centro Italiano di Ricerche e Documentazione), VIII (October-December 1965), special issue on democracy and industrialization.

44 It could be argued in this context that a distinction should be made between the notion of an industrial society, which is perfectly capable of development under the aegis of state-dominated social goal-attainment for nationalistic purposes, and a consumer-oriented society where industrialization is primarily related to, and concerned with, the satisfaction of individual consumption wants. Both are forms of industrialization, but the former is capable of being dominated by the state—indeed, the Soviet model provides die preeminent case of state guidance for industrialization without dominant consumer perspectives, and similar orientations can be deduced from the industrializing philosophy of late nineteenth-century Japan, Germany, and even Russia. But a mass consumption society—and particularly its cultural structuring right through society to the working classes—may not be a suitable or successful context for a dominant state. In societies with such goals, the state may be confined to regulating conflicting interests and possibly to the provision of the complementary infrastructure of education, road-building, nature conservation, public utilities, and so on. It is in many ways easier for a nonstate government, as in England and the United States, to intervene than it is for a strongly articulated state—especially if and when a shift in social goals toward a redistribution of resources toward the poorer classes takes place.

45 The cross-cutting problem of morality in the articulation of values and norms based on different demographic, economic, and structural factors in society is well pointed up in the work of Maria Ossowska, the widow of Stanislaw Ossowski and herself a distinguished philosopher-sociologist. See particularly Podstawa nauki moralnośći [The basis of moral norms] (Warsaw 1946)Google Scholar and 1Socjologia moralnośći [The sociology of morals] (Warsaw 1964)Google Scholar. In a sense, similar problems are raised by Crick, Bernard, In Defence of Politics (London 1962)Google Scholar. Crick pleads for a normative rather than an interest-based politics, and implicit in his definition is the need to contend for the right to supply high-level normative articulation through and in the political process.

46 The evidence for this is surveyed in Nettl, Political Mobilization.

47 For this, see LeSaire, Aimée, Discours sur le colonialisme (Paris 1955)Google Scholar; d'Arboussier, Gabriel, L'Afrique vers l'unité (Paris 1961)Google Scholar. The journal Présence Africaine in the 1950's specialized in this kind of topic. A general discussion is found in Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter, Political Parties in French-speaking West Africa (Oxford 1964)Google Scholar.

48 For this see Nettl, Political Mobilization, and Part II, “The Inheritance Situation,” in Nettl and Robertson.

49 “Political science starts with a state and examines how it affects society, while political sociology starts with a society and examines how it affects the state, i.e., the formal institutions for the distribution and exercise of power” (Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, “Political Sociology: An Essay and Bibliography”, Current Sociology, VI [1957], 87)Google Scholar.