State

The state is a set of institutions and agencies that has the authority to define and enforce collectively binding decisions on members of a society in the name of their common interest or general will. As noted by Max Weber, the state is distinct from other political entities by its system of legitimate domination based on rational-legal authority. The state possesses distinctive capacities that include, for example, the ability to raise taxes and the right to make decisions and laws that regulate the conduct of individuals and groups in society. The state can also be characterized by its distinctive political logic or governmentality that includes the maintenance of territorial sovereignty and the promotion of social solidarity and a national identity. Hence, the state includes a system of legal rules that bind individuals to the society, civil service bureaucracy, elected representatives, and coercive institutions such as the police and armed forces. Thus, the state is not a unified entity, nor does it have fixed institutional boundaries. It is, rather, an ensemble of multifunctional institutions and organizations. The state has no unitary interest but, rather, contains many competing interests in different parts of the state. These interests develop through negotiation, bargaining, and compromise among different groups in society, among different state actors, and between state actors and societal groups.

It is difficult to specify the relationship between the state with other institutional orders and society. Early political thinkers such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Georg Hegel believed that the state was a political abstraction standing over and above society. Karl Marx believed that the state arises with the development of modern capitalism. For Marx, the appearance of the state coincides with the development of civil society, which protects private property, promotes individual pursuit of private interest, and fosters the illusion that competitive market relations can create democratic and egalitarian societies. Later Marxists, including Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, questioned the distinction between the state and civil society. Althusser maintained that civil organizations such as political parties, the church, and schools are part of the ideological state apparatus. Some aspects of civil society have a close relationship to the state and play an important role in developing public policy. The state also regulates parts of civil society by providing laws, charters, regulations, and financial support that influence the actions and decisions of organizations. Moreover, the institutional boundaries of the state are not static. They are always changing through devolution (transferring responsibilities from the national government to subnational governments), privatization (transferring responsibilities from the government to the private sector), and deregulating public policy or creating new regulatory agencies. Often, the establishment of quasi public-private organizations blurs the boundaries between the state and civil society. As the articulation of the state and civil society changes, the state becomes both a site and an object of political struggle among different groups.

The role of the state is complex and multidimensional. Five major themes are addressed: conceptualizations of the [Page 790]state and state power, which groups control the state policy, the development of middle-range state theory, the question of governance, and relationship between globalization and the state.

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