The Nature, origin and Evolution of the State

Introduction to Political Science

Week 2
Dr Abeeda Qureshi
 Brainstorming

• How can we define ‘State’?

• Where did it evolve to this present from?
• Why can’t we have some other form of political organisation?
• Polis: City Community
• Hobbes-Leviathan “A giant whose body is composed of the countless bodies of
human beings”.
• Idealist: Moral personality-An image of God on earth.
• Marxist: An Instrument of Class domination.
• Jurists: A law-making institution.
• Racialist: A symbol of race superiority.
• Imperialists or colonialist: instrument of enslavement and exploitation.
 Definitions:
• Holland: A numerous assemblage of human beings, generally occupying a
certain territory, amongst whom the will of the majority or of an
ascertainable class or persons is by the strength of such a majority or class
made to prevail against any of their number who oppose it.
• Hall: “The marks of an independent state are that the community
constituting it is permanently established for a political end, that it
possesses a defined territory, and that it is independent of external
control.”
 Definitions: (cont.)

• Burgess: Particular portion of mankind viewed as an organised unit”.

• Harold J. Laski: “A territorial society divided into government and
subjects claiming, within its allotted physical area, supremacy over all
other institutions”.
 Definitions: (Cont.)

Garner: A State is a community of persons more or less numerous,

permanently occupying a definite portion of territory, having a
government of their own to which the great body of inhabitants render
obedience, and enjoying freedom from external control.
 Elements of a State
1:People
The mass of the population living within the state.
Plato: 5040: “…the state shall neither be too small nor yet one that seems
great but has no unity.”
Aristotle: 1000 to one lakh. Neither too large nor too small.
Rousseau: 10,000
 2: Territory
• Should be permanent and large enough to be
self-sufficing.
• That rightly belongs to the population
• Demarcated areas
• Terrestrial, fluvial, maritime and aerial
• Israel, Pakistan, Luxemburg, Russia.
• 12 nautical miles, 22.2 KM from the baseline
 3:Government
• Government is the machinery or agency through which the will of the state is
formulated and expressed.
• Government administer the state..
• Keeps law and order. Organise people.
• A government to which people render
habitual obedience.
• People: Limbs
• Territory: Body
• Government: Head
 4:Sovereignty
• Supreme, original and unlimited power exercised over all persons and
association within boundaries of the state.
• Internal sovereignty
• External sovereignty
• Continuity or permanence
• Slow evolution-forcible revolution
 Origin of States

There are four competing theories that describe the origin of the state:
1. Evolutionary Theory
2. Force Theory
3. Divine Right Theory
4. Social Contract Theory
The social contract theory was replaced by the theory of divine origin and the former was
replaced by the Historical or Evolutionary Theory.
 Evolutionary Theory

• State is the product of growth, a slow and steady evolution extending over
a long period of time and ultimately shaping itself into the complex
structure of a modern state.
 Evolutionary Theory (Cont.)
• ET holds that governments grew out of the authority held by the head of the family.
• Family is the nucleus of the state. Blood relationship strongest bond of unity.
• Sonship –brotherhood. Authority of father passed to Power of chief.
• The elders of tribes and clans were sought out for their wisdom and leadership.
• Tribal chieftain combined into himself religious, administartive, judicial and
military powers.
• Eventually, these relationships evolved into early governments.
• Religion (Common belief in gods and deities, or worship of nature became
the cementing bond of affinity). Religion helped in the unification of the
communities. Command and obedience .
• Kinship and Religion acted simultaneously in welding together families and
tribes.
• The sanction of law was religion, breaking of law was followed by terrible
punishment.
 Evolutionary Theory (Cont.)
Property and Defence:
• Change in the methods of economic production led to changes in social structure.
• Economic stages: hunts man stage, the herdsman or pastoral stage, and husbandman or
agricultural stage.
• Political consciousness.
• Laski: all social relations are built upon provision for those primary material appetites
without satisfying which life cannot endure.
• The key to social behaviour must, therefore, be sought in the economic system.
• Merchants want protection to do business. They were willing to pay for their protection.
• States developed bureaucracies to collect these revenues.
• States became more ambitious and Empires emerged.
• States built more empires and raised bigger armies. Fought with Each other.
• States invested heavily in their military. They developed more and more
military weapons. For this they collected more and more revenue.
• The society shifted its focus on the individual. Sovereign state as a universal
phenomena during the last 100 year.
• The Nation States of the modern times.
• Nation- State-One state for one nation concept. Treaty of West Phalia (1648). (Thirty
Years War ..Spain, Dutch and Germany). Concept of Sovereignty. State has
sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs. Principles of non-interference.
• Rise of Nationalism
• Empires into states (Ottoman Empire into Turkey)
• Decolonization of Africa and Asia.
• USSR into 15 new states including Russia.
 Force Theory
• Force Theory: State is a child of force, that is, of aggression,
war, conquest and subjugation.
• War beget the King.
• Origin of the state in the subordination of the weak to the strong.
• Government emerged when all of the people in an area were brought under the control of
one individual or group.
• Historically it means government is the outcome of human aggression.
• Capture and enslavement of man by man, in the conquest and subjugation of feebler tribes.
 Force Theory (Cont.)

• So a clan fought against a clan and a tribe against a tribe. This process
continued till the victorious tribe secured control over a definite territory
and proclaimed himself a king.
• Might is Right. Survival of the fittest.
 Divine Right Theory:
• The state was created by God and governed by his deputy or vice-regent.
• Belief that God or other deities have chosen certain people to rule over others
by Divine Right.
• Thus, the ruler was a divinely appointed agent and he was responsible for his
actions to God alone.
• Received a new impetus with the advent of Christianity.
• His words were laws and actions always just.
• Whoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.
 Divine Right Theory (cont.)
• The Theory thus enunciated:
• 1: God deliberately created the State to save mankind from destruction.
• God sent his Deputy or vice-regent to rule over mankind. The ruler was a
divinely appointed agent and he was responsible for his actions to God
above.
• Roman Empire was a Pagan: Pope ordered Christians to accept its
authority.
 Divine Right Theory (cont.)
• In Europe: The theory of Divine Origin of the State was transformed into the doctrine
of Divine Right of Kings.
• In the 1600’s Divine Right monarchies were established in which kings and queens had
life and death power over all their subjects. For example Louis xiv of France was a
divine right monarch. advocated it in France..to support the despotism of Louise XIV.
• The Stuarts in England took refuge in the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings-James
1.
• Even today Queen of Britain is a Queen by the Grace of God.
 Divine Right Theory (cont.)
• Above the people, above the law. Nothing on earth could limit his will and
restrict his powers.
• One of the reasons this was established was to stop civil wars between nobles
over who would hold power. It established an orderly succession of leaders.
• Evaluation:
• Absolutism-despotism
• Antagonistic to democratic ideas.
 Social Contract
Theory:

When people surrender their powers to maintain order in the society.

• Social Contract Theory emerged to challenge the idea of the Divine Right monarchy.
• This was originated by Thomas Hobbes who first developed the theory of social contract.
• The theory hold that the people surrender to the state the power to keep order in society.
• In return, the government must protect the people. There lies a social contract between
two parties.
• However, he does not give any right to people to break the contract.
 Social Contract
Theories
(cont.)

• Englishman John Locke took this idea a step

further and said that when the government failed
to preserve the rights of the people, they had a
right to break the contract and create a new government.
• The writings of Locke were very influential in the American Colonies and
cited by the founders of the revolution.
 Jean Jaques Rousseau
(1712-1778)
• People were born free but corrupted by society.
• Wanted a limited and freely elected government.
• People can preserve their innocence if they chose
their own government.
• Individuals are less important than the community.
• General will.
• Opposed a strong government as it brings corruption and misery.
• Paved the way for popular democracy.
• Influenced French Revolution and American Revolution.
• No man has natural authority over his fellow men.
 State Distinguished from Nation

• A nation is a population with a certain sense of itself, a cohesiveness, a shared history, and
often (but not always) a common language.
• A state is a government structure, usually sovereign and powerful to enforce its writ.
• The State is a political concept while a nation is an ethnic concept.
• A state is not subject to external control while a nation may or may not be independent of
external control.
• A single state may consist of one or more nations or people and conversely, a single nation
may be made up of several states,”
 State Distinguished from Government
• Often used interchangeably
• King Louis xiv: I’m the state. What he meant: I am the government.
• The state is abstract(cannot perceive), the government is concrete….
• Government is a narrower term than the state.
• The state is permanent, the government is temporary.
• Sovereignty belongs to the state, not to the government.
• Territory is an essential characteristic of the state but not of the government.
• The state is an association; the government is an organisation.
“A state cannot exist without a government, but its possible to have a
government without a state.”
“ A government may change, its form may change, but the state, as long as
its essential elements are present, remains the same.”
 State Distinguished from Society
• Society is a wider term than the state
• State has territorial reference, but not society.
• State is sovereign, society is not.
• The state and the society differ in purpose.