The statists and the governing elite

By the mid-1980s virtually every significant current of theoretical work in political science was united in a renewed interest in the state itself as the fundamental unit of analysis.

Skocpol advances what she terms an organizational realist approach, which rejects the dominant assumption of both Liberal and Marxist vari­ants of social theory that political structures and struggles can be reduced (at least ‘in the last instance’) to socio-economic forces and conflicts. In this view, the state is nothing more than an arena in which social and economic conflict takes place - the crucial difference between these theories rests on whether the arena is legitimate and consensually constructed or a vehicle for coercive domination. For Skocpol, in contrast, the state as a system of organized coercion needs to be treated as an autonomous structure and actor. Skocpol (1979: 26) argues that ‘within the terms of these theories, it is consequently virtually impossible even to raise the possibility that funda­mental conflicts of interest might arise between the existing dominant class or set of groups, on the one hand, and the state rulers on the other.’ However, she does concede that developments in the Marxist theory of the state are cognizant with this problem and, through the debate on the rela­tive autonomy of the state (Miliband 1970, 1973), have identified the potential for independent agency by the state from direct control by the dominant class.

Within this literature much attention has been devoted to the range of structural constraints, which an existing regime of accumulation places upon the options for state structure and agency.

Skocpol develops six key propositions which characterize the statist position:

1. the class upheavals and socio-economic transformations which have characterized social revolutions have been closely intertwined with the collapse of the state organizations of the old regimes and with the consolidation and functioning of the state organizations of the new regimes, hence, we can make sense of socio-revolutionary transfor­mations only if we take the state seriously as a macro-structure;

2. the administrative and coercive organizations are the basis of state power;

3. these state organizations are potentially autonomous from direct- dominant class control;

4. state organizations necessarily compete to some extent with the domi­nant class(es) in appropriating resources from economy and society;

5. although a state usually functions to preserve existing economic and class structures it nonetheless has its own distinct interests vis-à-vis the dominant class(es); and

6. states exist in determinant geopolitical environments in interaction with other actual or potential states/ geopolitical environments as well as economic and class structures condition and influence a state structure and the activities of its elite.

This formulation is significant in the sense that it stresses both the role of a powerful governing elite and the importance of treating the question of the legitimacy of governing elites as a key explanatory concept.

Mann’s (1988: 4) principal interest lies in what he terms, ‘the centralized institutional ensembles called states and the powers of the personnel who staff them’; hence, the ‘governing or state elite’. His work confronts the question: what is the nature of the power possessed by states and state elites? He contrasts the power of state elites with power groupings in civil society such as: ideological movements; economic classes; and military elites. Mann emphasizes two meanings of state power, which correspond to the rise in the size, and complexity of the state and the decision­making process in advanced industrial societies. He recognizes these two meanings as analytically distinct and autonomous dimensions of power. The first, ‘despotic power’, relates to the range of actions which the elite is empowered to take without traditional negotiation with civil society and the second, ‘infrastructural power’, refers to the capacity of the state to actually penetrate civil society and to implement political decisions. Mann (1988: 5) observes that, ‘[t]he state penetrates everyday life more than did any historical state. Its infrastructural power has increased enormously.’

However, he also argues that although the capitalist state has a strong infrastructure it is also despotically weak. Capitalist states with strong infrastructures are powerful in relation to individuals and to the weaker groups in civil society, but feeble in relation to dominant groups, at least in comparison to most historical states. From these two independent dimensions of state power Mann derives the four ideal types of state formation: feudal, bureaucratic, imperial, and authoritarian. The first two he characterizes as low in despotic power but high in infrastructural co-ordination, the latter two as high in despotic power but low in infrastructural co-ordination.

Such state power resources, and the autonomy to which they lead, may not amount to much. If, however, the state’s use of the conferred resources generates further power resources - as was, indeed, intended by the civil society groups themselves - these will normally flow through the state’s hands, and thus lead to a significant degree of power autonomy. Therefore, autonomous state power is the product of the usefulness of enhanced territorial centralization to social life in general.

In Mann’s view this has varied considerably through the history of societies, as has the power of states and governing elites.