The genealogy of the concept of the state
Having considered the institutional origins and development of the state, we are now better placed to consider and contextualize the development of the concept of the state. Etymologically, the notion of the state is derived from the Latin status, meaning literally social status, stature or standing, specifically of an individual within a community.
By the fourteenth century the use of the term to refer to the standing or status (indeed to the ‘stateliness’) of rulers, distinguishing and setting them apart from those subject to their rule, was commonplace. In the idea that the state resides in the body of the ruler, indeed that the state and the ‘sovereign’ are synonymous, this was a characteristically pre-modern formulation (Shennan 1974; Skinner 1989).The development of a distinctively modern conception of the state would take a further three centuries - and its development would parallel the emergence of the institutional complex described above as the absolutist state. A first step was taken by the authors of the so-called ‘mirror-for-princes’ writings, most famously Machiavelli in his Il Principe (The Prince; 1532). In this literature, the state (lo stato) now became synonymous not only with the prince himself, but with the character of the political regime, the geographical area over which sovereign authority was claimed and maintained, and the very institutions of government required to preserve such authority.
A second development came with the republican political theory of the Renaissance (see Skinner 1978; Viroli 1992). This movement championed the cause of a self-governing republican regime that might inaugurate a ‘state’ or condition of civic liberty - in Dante’s terms lo stato franco. Here, at last, we see the emergence of a conception of an autonomous civil and political authority regulating the public affairs of an independent community or ‘commonwealth’.
The state is here presented as claiming and enjoying a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, and as deriving the authority for this claim not from the power or stature of its ruler(s), but from the people themselves. The state is referred to for the first time as a distinct apparatus of government which rulers have a duty to maintain and which will outlast their rule, as opposed to an extension of the latter’s innate authority.The final step came with the rise of the absolutist state in Europe in the seventeenth century. Here, in particular in the writings of Bodin and Hobbes, the state is eventually conceptualized as truly separate from the powers of the ruler and the ruled. Three aspects of this formulation set it apart as a distinctively modern conception of the state: (i) individuals within society are presented as subjects of the state, owing duties and their allegiance not to a ruler but to the state itself; (ii) the authority of the state is singular and absolute; and (iii) the state is regarded as the highest form of authority in all matters of civil government (Skinner 1989: 90). Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651 [1968]), and the rise of the absolutist state which this work reflects, marks the end of the pre-modern concept of the state in which political power is understood in personal and charismatic terms. The state now comes to be seen as a distinct form of authority independent of those who give effect to its power.
More on the topic The genealogy of the concept of the state:
- A genealogy of the state in Marxist theory
- The concept of the state
- As previous chapters have demonstrated, ‘the state’ is an elusive and contested concept.
- No concept is more central to political discourse and political analysis than that of the state.
- A concept of legal validity that leaves out the elements of social efficacy and correctness of content was classified above as a concept of legal validity in a narrower sense.
- The Ethical Concept of Validity
- The Sociological Concept of Validity
- THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL
- The concept of humanitas Romana
- II The Concept of La
- The so-called ‘new institutionalism’ is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of theories of the state and, like some of the other perspectives considered in this volume, it is by no means only a theory of the state
- Like Henry Higgins who, through his work changed the object of his studies into something other than what it was, the purpose of the Marxist theory of the state is not just to understand the capitalist state but to aid in its destruction. (Wolfe 1974: 131)
- Corresponding to the three elements of the concept of law the elements of social efficacy, correctness of content, and authoritative issuance—are three concepts of validity: the sociological, the ethical, and the juridical.
- The state as institutional contextualization
- The state and problems of legitimacy