\n\n<\/span>Nation, State, Citizenship, Democracy, Civil society, Ideology<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n \n <\/span>State and Nation:<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nAristotle<\/strong>\u00a0defined state as\u00a0a union of families and villages having, for its end, a perfect and self-sufficing life, which means happy and honourable life<\/strong>.\u00a0According to MacIver<\/strong>\u00a0the state is an association, which acting through law as promulgated by government, endowed to this end with coercive power, maintains within a community territorially demarcated universal external conditions of social order. It can otherwise be said that\u00a0when a group of people are permanently settled on a definite territory and have government of their own, free from any kind of external control, they constitute a state and it has sovereign power upon its people.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nAccording to\u00a0Maciver\u2019s definition<\/strong>, the following elements can be considered as the important ones for state:<\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n- A specific region and its inhabitants(ii) The region free from outer control<\/span><\/li>\n
- Requirement of a sovereign Goventernmt.<\/span><\/li>\n
- The state applies power to control and unify the people and the means are: legislature, judiciary and executive and armed forces.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Normally, four elements are universally accepted:<\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n- Territory<\/span><\/li>\n
- Population<\/span><\/li>\n
- Government<\/span><\/li>\n
- Sovereignty<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
State uses power as a mechanism to keep the society bound together. The state uses power as legislative, judicial, military and planning function.\u00a0<\/strong>Through legislative function it enforces the norms of the society, judicial function uses power to exert physical force for the protection of citizen\u2019s lives and property military function uses power to establish relations with other societies and planning function is<\/span>
\nrelated to the allocation of scarce goods and resources.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/span>Concept of state as elaborated in different theoretical models:<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nKarl Marx on state:<\/span><\/h3>\nAlthough Marx had no fully developed theory of state, he did discuss it in various ways throughout his writings.\u00a0Marx traces the development of the state of the division of labour in the society. Primitive societies are simple and less complex. So state is non-existent in primitive Societies. With change in forces of production, surplus wealth and private propert appears in society. And there arises some central organizing agency to control.\u00a0<\/strong>This ultimately leads to the formation of state. His views on state are closely related to his classification of society.<\/span><\/p>\n\n- For Marx the state is force and state exercises power and authority for promoting the interests of the dominant class and suppressing and exploiting the weaker classes who are collectively called as proletariat in the context of capitalist society.<\/strong>\u00a0He views state as a manmade institution rather than a natural institution. The Marxists look at the state as a product of class struggle and as an instrument of class rule. Thus, for Marx, the state is essentially as class structure, an organization of one class dominating over other classes. He views that state as originated at a certain stage of economic development in the history of humanity, when society was broken into two classes, namely \u2018haves\u2019 and have-nots\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n
- In Marxist theory the most important activity of human beings is economic activity. According to him understanding the way a society organizes its production is the key to understand the whole of its social structure.<\/strong>\u00a0His view is that the production of the means of subsistence forms the foundation upon which various institutions; the legal conception, art and even the ideas on religion of the people concerned have been evolved. Marx stresses economic production as they key structural feature of any society and he called the way it organizes it production as its\u00a0Infrastructure<\/strong>. The rest of its social organization \u2013 its noneconomic activities such as ideas, beliefs and philosophies, legal system, the state etc. \u2013 he called Superstructure<\/strong>. The super structure of any form of society is affected by its infrastructure i.e., the economic activities of the society. State according to Marx is a noneconomic institution and hence a part of superstructure. The formation and functioning of the state is therefore depend on the way the society organizes its economic production. (Marx called the different ways of production of goods in the society as Modes of production<\/strong>.\u00a0And based on the modes of production Marx distinguished five historical epochs in the development of humanity. These in chronological order are primitive communist, ancient, feudal, capitalist and communist, each depicting its own characteristic state and government.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- Apart from the first and last modes of production i.e. the primitive communist and communist mode, each mode of production has one crucial characteristic in common.\u00a0<\/strong>Each of them produces goods based on class. In each of the historical epochs there are two classes; one is the minority dominant class, the one which owns the modes of production and the other majority subordinate class, the class that does not own means of production or the exploited class which do the productive work.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Those who own means of production control the state. Whenever there is change in the mode of production in a society, the government (the physical form of state) also undergoes simultaneous change.\u00a0<\/strong>And irrespective of the form of the society (ancient, feudal or capitalist) the state invariably is, according to Marx, an instrument for exploitation in the hands of dominant class.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Marx\u2019s deliberation of state as an institution is mainly based on the capitalist form of society.\u00a0<\/strong>For him state is a centralized organizing agency, which was necessarily involved in the domination of one class over the others. The prominent classes Marx talks about in relation to capitalist society are bourgeoisie and proletariat. According to Marx, capitalism is an inherently expanding system and the social class at its helm (bourgeoisie) is carried into political power not because of any deliberate or conscious action but because that is the way the society develops.<\/span><\/li>\n
- It is argued that Marx believed the state to be a sort of conspiracy against the working class, or that the wealth of the bourgeoisie could be used to ensure that whoever is in power pursues its interests (Miller 1991).<\/strong>\u00a0For Marx, the concern of the state of individual liberty could be seen as an attempt to enforce the right of the individual property owner (bourgeoisie) against those without property (Proletariat) whose only power lay in their banding together to take collective action. The political struggle for trade union rights represents the collective action of proletariat.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Max weber on state:<\/span><\/h3>\nMarx Weber suggested in Politics as a Vocation that the state is a human\u2019s community or a special kind of institution that claims the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. By this he meant not only that the state had the ability to ensure the obedience of its citizens but also the acknowledged right to do so. A monopoly of legitimate violence is therefore the practical expression of the state sovereignty. He saw the state as the most powerful institution in modern society it has gained the legitimate monopoly of force over a given territory.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nCharacteristics of modern state:<\/span><\/h4>\n\n- First,<\/strong>\u00a0it has\u00a0a legal and administrative order<\/strong>, which is subject to change by legislation only. It has an administration which works in accordance with legislation. This means that civil servants and judiciary do not make up their own rules but implement those formed by the legislature.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Secondly\u00a0<\/strong>the state has\u00a0binding authority on all its members and over the acts<\/strong>\u00a0carried out in its territory.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Third\u00a0<\/strong>the\u00a0membership<\/strong>\u00a0is usually given by birth.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Finally\u00a0<\/strong>state can use\u00a0force<\/strong>\u00a0if that is legally prescribed and permitted.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n- For Weber the \u2018political society\u2019 is one whose existence and order is continuously safe-guarded within a given territorial area by the threat and application of physical force on the part of the administrative staff. And a \u2018political Society\u2019 becomes a \u2018state\u2019 where it is able to exercise successfully a legitimate monopoly over the organized use of force within a given territory.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- Weber opposed to Marx\u2019s economic determinism<\/strong>. According to Weber legal, religious and political institutions and their inter relationship has decisive significance to economic structures and economic development not vice-versa as seen by Marx. He took\u00a0concentration of the means of administration<\/strong>\u00a0as most important factor in the state. This in turn has close association with his typology of domination. Weber talks about three types of domination: charismatic, traditional and legal-rational. According to him these three types of domination coexist in any situation but it is likely that one or other will be domination. Weber says-rational domination is more predominant in modern state.<\/span><\/li>\n
- According to Weber the modern state is legitimate if people believe in its legitimacy.<\/strong>\u00a0Any three kind of domination can exist in modern state. We cannot choose between the three on any rational ground, each can be justified on its own ground. Each system justifies on itself; traditional domination justified by tradition, charismatic domination by charisma and in rational legal domination laws are legitimate if they are enacted according to the law. There is no overall or superior set of values by means of which we choose better or worse system.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Weber<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0believed that in modern state any norm could be enacted as law with the expectation that it would be obeyed; government and government apparatus are bound by the abstract system that these laws comprise and justice is the application of this laws. In such a system of governance people hold authority, doing so by virtue of being temporary office bearers rather than possessing personal authority and people obey laws not the office bearers who enforced them. The state with a rational legal authority could not interfere with individual rights without the consent of the people through the duly elected representatives.<\/span><\/li>\n
- For Weber bureaucracy is the organizational apparatus of the modern state<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>and the modern capitalist state is completely dependent upon bureaucratic organization for its continued existence. Weber describes the state as gaining its power in modernity by concentrating the means of administration in the hands of an absolute monarch. Bureaucratic set up developed, for example in ancient Egypt, when the monarch needed a permanent army, to ensure supplies of arms and military equipment.<\/span><\/li>\n
- According to Weber these developments were the most important factors promoting the emergence of the modern state in which the expert officialdom, specialization based division of labour is wholly separated from ownership of its means of administration<\/strong>. Officials in modern, rational bureaucracies have little or no control over what they do since the rules and procedures of bureaucracies take on a life of their own, restricting the activities and decisions of those who work in them to the functions of the offices they fill. The bureaucracy become the \u2018steel-hard housing\u2019 in modern state.<\/span><\/li>\n
- This growth of\u00a0modern-rational state<\/strong>, which has its corpus of bureaucratic officials,\u00a0is not wholly derivative of economic rationalization<\/strong>, but to some extent\u00a0preceded the development of capitalism as well as created condition, which promoted its rise.<\/strong>\u00a0The head of the system of the legal authority or bureaucracy is the head of the state. And it can hold a position through appropriation, election or designated by succession. But even then his or her power is legally limited.<\/span><\/li>\n
- According to weber, though rationalization is evident in economic life, cultural life etc. Of a society it is fundamentally evident in the modern institution of administration, more especially bureaucracy.<\/strong>\u00a0He says neither capitalism with its connection with liberalism nor state socialism with its formal commitment to social justice, can avoid the use of bureaucratic means of administrative domination. The impersonality and calculability characters of the bureaucracy are seen not only as constraining but also as extremely efficient in securing the popular compliance with the structures of domination. They are for Weber a key instance of the typical modern form of legitimate domination that is replacing the appeal of tradition as society\u2019s predominant legitimating principle.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Emile Durkheim on state:<\/span><\/h3>\nDurkheim discusses\u00a0the nature and features of the state<\/strong>\u00a0in his work Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. According to him the opposition of governing and the governed is central in political life. His\u00a0views on state are very much associated to his explanation of division of labour and types of solidarity. Durkheim traced the development of the state to the division of labour in the society, as societies became more complex there occurred the distinction between governing and governed, which in turn resulted in the formation of state.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nFor Durkheim the function of state was to mediate between different interests and in particular to protect the individual against the power of smaller groups. That is how state protects individual and balance group interests.<\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n- Mechanical solidarity\u00a0<\/strong>is the trademark of less developed or primitive society where division of labour is very little. Whereas societies with highly developed division of labour are held together by organic solidarity.\u00a0For Durkheim there was no politics or state existed in primitive societies because there was no or little division of labour and hence no grouping into government and governed.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- At the same time he argues that the division of a social group into governing and governed to not only exist in states; there is a similar division in the patriarchal household as well.<\/strong>\u00a0Durkheim tries to make a distinction between state and such organization. The size and control of a determinate territory will distinguish state from such organization.<\/span><\/li>\n
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