The frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan
A state is a polity under a system of governance. There is no undisputed definition of a state. A widely used definition from the German sociologist Max Weber is that a "state" is a polity that maintains a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, although other definitions are not uncommon.
Some states are sovereign (known as sovereign states), while others are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony, wherein supreme authority lies in another state. The term "state" also applies to federated states that are members of a federation, in which sovereignty is shared between member states and a federal body.
Speakers of American English often use the terms "state" and "government" as synonyms, with both words referring to an organized political group that exercises authority over a particular territory. In British and Commonwealth English, "state" is the only term that has that meaning, while "the government" instead refers to the ministers and officials who set the political policy for the territory, something that speakers of American English refer to as "the administration".
Most of the human population has existed within a state system for millennia; however, for most of prehistory people lived in stateless societies. The first states arose about 5,500 years ago in conjunction with rapid growth of cities, invention of writing and codification of new forms of religion. Over time, a variety of different forms developed, employing a variety of justifications for their existence (such as divine right, the theory of the social contract, etc.). Today, the modern nation state is the predominant form of state to which people are subject.
Etymology
The word state and its cognates in some other European languages (stato in Italian, estado in Spanish and Portuguese, état in French, Staat in German) ultimately derive from the Latin word status, meaning "condition, circumstances".
The English noun state in the generic sense "condition, circumstances" predates the political sense. It is introduced to Middle English c. 1200 both from Old French and directly from Latin.
With the revival of the Roman law in 14th-century Europe, the term came to refer to the legal standing of persons (such as the various "estates of the realm"
– noble, common, and clerical), and in particular the special status of
the king. The highest estates, generally those with the most wealth and
social rank, were those that held power. The word also had associations
with Roman ideas (dating back to Cicero) about the "status rei publicae",
the "condition of public matters". In time, the word lost its reference
to particular social groups and became associated with the legal order
of the entire society and the apparatus of its enforcement.
The early 16th-century works of Machiavelli (especially The Prince) played a central role in popularizing the use of the word "state" in something similar to its modern sense. The contrasting of church and state still dates to the 16th century. The North American colonies were called "states" as early as the 1630s. The expression L'Etat, c'est moi ("I am the State") attributed to Louis XIV of France is probably apocryphal, recorded in the late 18th century.
Definition
There is no academic consensus on the most appropriate definition of the state.
The term "state" refers to a set of different, but interrelated and
often overlapping, theories about a certain range of political phenomena.
The act of defining the term can be seen as part of an ideological
conflict, because different definitions lead to different theories of
state function, and as a result validate different political strategies. According to Jeffrey and Painter,
"if we define the 'essence' of the state in one place or era, we are
liable to find that in another time or space something which is also
understood to be a state has different 'essential' characteristics".
Different definitions of the state often place an emphasis either
on the ‘means’ or the ‘ends’ of states. Means-related definitions
include those by Max Weber and Charles Tilly, both of whom define the
state according to its violent means. For Weber, the state "is a human
community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use
of physical force within a given territory" (Politics as a Vocation),
while Tilly characterises them as "coercion-wielding organisations"
(Coercion, Capital, and European States).
Ends-related definitions emphasis instead the teleological aims
and purposes of the state. Marxist thought regards the ends of the state
as being the perpetuation of class domination in favour of the ruling
class which, under the capitalist mode of production, is the
bourgeoisie. The state exists to defend the ruling class's claims to
private property and its capturing of surplus profits at the expense of
the proletariat. Indeed, Marx claimed that "the executive of the modern
state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the
whole bourgeoisie" (Communist Manifesto).
Liberal thought provides another possible teleology of the state.
According to John Locke, the goal of the state/commonwealth was "the
preservation of property" (Second Treatise on Government), with
'property' in Locke's work referring not only to personal possessions
but also to one's life and liberty. On this account, the state provides
the basis for social cohesion and productivity, creating incentives for
wealth creation by providing guarantees of protection for one's life,
liberty and personal property.
The most commonly used definition is Max Weber's, which describes the state as a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory. General categories of state institutions include administrative bureaucracies, legal systems, and military or religious organizations.
Another commonly accepted definition of the state is the one given at the Montevideo Convention
on Rights and Duties of States in 1933. It provides that "[t]he state
as a person of international law should possess the following
qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c)
government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other
states." And that "[t]he federal state shall constitute a sole person in the eyes of international law."
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a state is "a. an organized political community under one government; a commonwealth; a nation. b. such a community forming part of a federal republic, esp the United States of America".
Confounding the definition problem is that "state" and
"government" are often used as synonyms in common conversation and even
some academic discourse. According to this definition schema, the states
are nonphysical persons of international law, governments are organizations of people. The relationship between a government and its state is one of representation and authorized agency.
Types of states
States may be classified by political philosophers as sovereign if they are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Other states are subject to external sovereignty or hegemony where ultimate sovereignty lies in another state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union. A federated state is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation. (Compare confederacies or confederations such as Switzerland.) Such states differ from sovereign states in that they have transferred a portion of their sovereign powers to a federal government.
One can commonly and sometimes readily (but not necessarily
usefully) classify states according to their apparent make-up or focus.
The concept of the nation-state, theoretically or ideally co-terminous
with a "nation", became very popular by the 20th century in Europe, but
occurred rarely elsewhere or at other times. In contrast, some states
have sought to make a virtue of their multi-ethnic or multi-national character (Habsburg Austria-Hungary, for example, or the Soviet Union), and have emphasised unifying characteristics such as autocracy, monarchical legitimacy, or ideology. Imperial states have sometimes promoted notions of racial superiority.
Other states may bring ideas of commonality and inclusiveness to the fore: note the res publica of ancient Rome and the Rzeczpospolita of Poland-Lithuania which finds echoes in the modern-day republic. The concept of temple states centred on religious shrines occurs in some discussions of the ancient world.
Relatively small city-states, once a relatively common and often successful form of polity,
have become rarer and comparatively less prominent in modern times, although a number of them survive as federated states, like the present day German city-states, or as otherwise autonomous entities with limited sovereignty, like Hong Kong, Gibraltar and Ceuta. To some extent, urban secession,
the creation of a new city-state (sovereign or federated), continues to
be discussed in the early 21st century in cities such as London.
State and government
A state can be distinguished from a government. The state is the organization while the government is the particular group of people, the administrative bureaucracy that controls the state apparatus at a given time.
That is, governments are the means through which state power is
employed. States are served by a continuous succession of different
governments. States are immaterial and nonphysical social objects, whereas governments are groups of people with certain coercive powers.
Each successive government is composed of a specialized and
privileged body of individuals, who monopolize political
decision-making, and are separated by status and organization from the
population as a whole.
States and nation-states
States can also be distinguished from the concept of a "nation", where "nation" refers to a cultural-political community of people. A nation-state refers to a situation where a single ethnicity is associated with a specific state.
State and civil society
In the classical thought, the state was identified with both political society and civil society as a form of political community, while the modern thought distinguished the nation state as a political society from civil society as a form of economic society.
Thus in the modern thought the state is contrasted with civil society.
Antonio Gramsci
believed that civil society is the primary locus of political activity
because it is where all forms of "identity formation, ideological
struggle, the activities of intellectuals, and the construction of hegemony
take place." and that civil society was the nexus connecting the
economic and political sphere. Arising out of the collective actions of
civil society is what Gramsci calls "political society", which Gramsci
differentiates from the notion of the state as a polity. He stated that
politics was not a "one-way process of political management" but,
rather, that the activities of civil organizations conditioned the
activities of political parties and state institutions, and were
conditioned by them in turn. Louis Althusser argued that civil organizations such as church, schools, and the family
are part of an "ideological state apparatus" which complements the
"repressive state apparatus" (such as police and military) in
reproducing social relations.
Jürgen Habermas spoke of a public sphere that was distinct from both the economic and political sphere.
Given the role that many social groups have in the development of
public policy and the extensive connections between state bureaucracies
and other institutions, it has become increasingly difficult to
identify the boundaries of the state. Privatization, nationalization, and the creation of new regulatory
bodies also change the boundaries of the state in relation to society.
Often the nature of quasi-autonomous organizations is unclear,
generating debate among political scientists on whether they are part of
the state or civil society. Some political scientists thus prefer to
speak of policy networks and decentralized governance in modern
societies rather than of state bureaucracies and direct state control
over policy.
History
The earliest forms of the state emerged whenever it became possible to centralize power in a durable way. Agriculture and writing are almost everywhere associated with this process: agriculture because it allowed for the emergence of a social class
of people who did not have to spend most of their time providing for
their own subsistence, and writing (or an equivalent of writing, like Inca quipus) because it made possible the centralization of vital information.
The first known states were created in the Fertile Crescent, India, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and others, but it is only in relatively modern times that states have almost completely displaced alternative "stateless" forms of political organization of societies all over the planet. Roving bands of hunter-gatherers and even fairly sizable and complex tribal societies based on herding or agriculture
have existed without any full-time specialized state organization, and
these "stateless" forms of political organization have in fact prevailed
for all of the prehistory and much of the history of the human species and civilization.
Initially states emerged over territories built by conquest in which one culture, one set of ideals and one set of laws have been imposed by force or threat over diverse nations by a civilian and military bureaucracy. Currently, that is not always the case and there are multinational states, federated states and autonomous areas within states.
Since the late 19th century, virtually the entirety of the
world's inhabitable land has been parcelled up into areas with more or
less definite borders claimed by various states. Earlier, quite large
land areas had been either unclaimed or uninhabited, or inhabited by nomadic peoples who were not organised as states. However, even within present-day states there are vast areas of wilderness, like the Amazon rainforest, which are uninhabited or inhabited solely or mostly by indigenous people (and some of them remain uncontacted).
Also, there are states which do not hold de facto control over all of
their claimed territory or where this control is challenged. Currently
the international community comprises around 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of which are represented in the United Nations.
Pre-historic stateless societies
For most of human history, people have lived in stateless societies, characterized by a lack of concentrated authority, and the absence of large inequalities in economic and political power.
The anthropologist Tim Ingold writes:
It is not enough to observe, in a now rather dated anthropological idiom, that hunter gatherers live in 'stateless societies', as though their social lives were somehow lacking or unfinished, waiting to be completed by the evolutionary development of a state apparatus. Rather, the principal of their socialty, as Pierre Clastres has put it, is fundamentally against the state.
Neolithic period
During the Neolithic period, human societies underwent major cultural and economic changes, including the development of agriculture,
the formation of sedentary societies and fixed settlements, increasing
population densities, and the use of pottery and more complex tools.
Sedentary agriculture led to the development of property rights, domestication of plants and animals, and larger family sizes. It also provided the basis for the centralized state form by producing a large surplus of food, which created a more complex division of labor by enabling people to specialize in tasks other than food production. Early states were characterized by highly stratified societies, with a privileged and wealthy ruling class that was subordinate to a monarch.
The ruling classes began to differentiate themselves through forms of
architecture and other cultural practices that were different from those
of the subordinate laboring classes.
In the past, it was suggested that the centralized state was
developed to administer large public works systems (such as irrigation
systems) and to regulate complex economies. However, modern
archaeological and anthropological evidence does not support this
thesis, pointing to the existence of several non-stratified and
politically decentralized complex societies.
Ancient Eurasia
Mesopotamia is generally considered to be the location of the earliest civilization or complex society, meaning that it contained cities, full-time division of labor, social concentration of wealth into capital, unequal distribution of wealth, ruling classes, community ties based on residency rather than kinship, long distance trade, monumental architecture, standardized forms of art and culture, writing, and mathematics and science. It was the world's first literate civilization, and formed the first sets of written laws.
Classical antiquity
Painting of Roman Senators encircling Julius Caesar
Although state-forms existed before the rise of the Ancient Greek
empire, the Greeks were the first people known to have explicitly
formulated a political philosophy of the state, and to have rationally
analyzed political institutions. Prior to this, states were described
and justified in terms of religious myths.
Several important political innovations of classical antiquity came from the Greek city-states and the Roman Republic. The Greek city-states before the 4th century granted citizenship rights to their free population, and in Athens these rights were combined with a directly democratic form of government that was to have a long afterlife in political thought and history.
Feudal state
During Medieval times in Europe, the state was organized on the principle of feudalism, and the relationship between lord and vassal became central to social organization. Feudalism led to the development of greater social hierarchies.
The formalization of the struggles over taxation between the
monarch and other elements of society (especially the nobility and the
cities) gave rise to what is now called the Standestaat,
or the state of Estates, characterized by parliaments in which key
social groups negotiated with the king about legal and economic matters.
These estates of the realm
sometimes evolved in the direction of fully-fledged parliaments, but
sometimes lost out in their struggles with the monarch, leading to
greater centralization of lawmaking and military power in his hands.
Beginning in the 15th century, this centralizing process gives rise to
the absolutist state.
Modern state
Cultural and national homogenization figured prominently in the rise
of the modern state system. Since the absolutist period, states have
largely been organized on a national basis. The concept of a national state, however, is not synonymous with nation state. Even in the most ethnically homogeneous societies there is not always a complete correspondence between state and nation, hence the active role often taken by the state to promote nationalism through emphasis on shared symbols and national identity.
Theories of state function
Most political theories of the state can roughly be classified into
two categories. The first are known as "liberal" or "conservative"
theories, which treat capitalism
as a given, and then concentrate on the function of states in
capitalist society. These theories tend to see the state as a neutral
entity separated from society and the economy. Marxist and anarchist
theories on the other hand, see politics as intimately tied in with
economic relations, and emphasize the relation between economic power
and political power. They see the state as a partisan instrument that primarily serves the interests of the upper class.
Anarchist perspective
IWW poster "Pyramid of Capitalist System" (c. 1911), depicting an anti-capitalist perspective on statist/capitalist social structures
Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state and hierarchies to be immoral, unnecessary and harmful and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy, a self-managed, self-governed society based on voluntary, cooperative institutions.
Anarchists believe that the state is inherently an instrument of
domination and repression, no matter who is in control of it. Anarchists
note that the state possesses the monopoly on the legal use of violence.
Unlike Marxists, anarchists believe that revolutionary seizure of state
power should not be a political goal. They believe instead that the
state apparatus should be completely dismantled, and an alternative set
of social relations created, which are not based on state power at all.
Various Christian anarchists, such as Jacques Ellul, have identified the State and political power as the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
Marxist perspective
Marx and Engels were clear in that the communist goal was a classless society in which the state would have "withered away", replaced only by "administration of things". Their views are found throughout their Collected Works,
and address past or then extant state forms from an analytical and
tactical viewpoint, but not future social forms, speculation about which
is generally antithetical to groups considering themselves Marxist but
who – not having conquered the existing state power(s) – are not in the
situation of supplying the institutional form of an actual society. To
the extent that it makes sense,
there is no single "Marxist theory of state", but rather several
different purportedly "Marxist" theories have been developed by
adherents of Marxism.
Marx's early writings portrayed the bourgeois state as parasitic, built upon the superstructure of the economy, and working against the public interest. He also wrote that the state mirrors class
relations in society in general, acting as a regulator and repressor of
class struggle, and as a tool of political power and domination for the
ruling class. The Communist Manifesto claimed that the state to be nothing more than "a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie.
For Marxist theorists, the role of the modern bourgeois state is determined by its function in the global capitalist order. Ralph Miliband
argued that the ruling class uses the state as its instrument to
dominate society by virtue of the interpersonal ties between state
officials and economic elites. For Miliband, the state is dominated by
an elite that comes from the same background as the capitalist class.
State officials therefore share the same interests as owners of capital
and are linked to them through a wide array of social, economic, and political ties.
Gramsci's theories of state emphasized that the state is only one of the institutions in society that helps maintain the hegemony of the ruling class, and that state power is bolstered by the ideological domination of the institutions of civil society, such as churches, schools, and mass media.
Pluralism
Pluralists
view society as a collection of individuals and groups, who are
competing for political power. They then view the state as a neutral
body that simply enacts the will of whichever groups dominate the
electoral process. Within the pluralist tradition, Robert Dahl developed the theory of the state as a neutral arena for contending interests or its agencies as simply another set of interest groups.
With power competitively arranged in society, state policy is a product
of recurrent bargaining. Although pluralism recognizes the existence of
inequality, it asserts that all groups have an opportunity to pressure
the state. The pluralist approach suggests that the modern democratic
state's actions are the result of pressures applied by a variety of
organized interests. Dahl called this kind of state a polyarchy.
Pluralism has been challenged on the ground that it is not
supported by empirical evidence. Citing surveys showing that the large
majority of people in high leadership positions are members of the
wealthy upper class, critics of pluralism claim that the state serves
the interests of the upper class rather than equitably serving the
interests of all social groups.
Contemporary critical perspectives
Jürgen Habermas
believed that the base-superstructure framework, used by many Marxist
theorists to describe the relation between the state and the economy,
was overly simplistic. He felt that the modern state plays a large role
in structuring the economy, by regulating economic activity and being a
large-scale economic consumer/producer, and through its redistributive welfare state
activities. Because of the way these activities structure the economic
framework, Habermas felt that the state cannot be looked at as passively
responding to economic class interests.
Michel Foucault
believed that modern political theory was too state-centric, saying
"Maybe, after all, the state is no more than a composite reality and a
mythologized abstraction, whose importance is a lot more limited than
many of us think." He thought that political theory was focusing too
much on abstract institutions, and not enough on the actual practices of
government. In Foucault's opinion, the state had no essence. He
believed that instead of trying to understand the activities of
governments by analyzing the properties of the state (a reified
abstraction), political theorists should be examining changes in the
practice of government to understand changes in the nature of the state.
Foucault argues that it is technology that has created and made the
state so elusive and successful, and that instead of looking at the
state as something to be toppled we should look at the state as
technological manifestation or system with many heads; Foucault argues
instead of something to be overthrown as in the sense of the Marxist and Anarchist
understanding of the state. Every single scientific technological
advance has come to the service of the state Foucault argues and it is
with the emergence of the Mathematical sciences and essentially the
formation of Mathematical statistics
that one gets an understanding of the complex technology of producing
how the modern state was so successfully created. Foucault insists that
the Nation state
was not a historical accident but a deliberate production in which the
modern state had to now manage coincidentally with the emerging practice
of the Police (Cameral science) 'allowing' the population to now 'come in' into jus gentium and civitas (Civil society) after deliberately being excluded for several millennia. Democracy
wasn't (the newly formed voting franchise) as is always painted by both
political revolutionaries and political philosophers as a cry for
political freedom or wanting to be accepted by the 'ruling elite',
Foucault insists, but was a part of a skilled endeavour of switching
over new technology such as; Translatio imperii, Plenitudo potestatis and extra Ecclesiam nulla salus
readily available from the past Medieval period, into mass persuasion
for the future industrial 'political' population(deception over the
population) in which the political population was now asked to insist
upon itself "the president must be elected". Where these political
symbol agents, represented by the pope and the president are now
democratised. Foucault calls these new forms of technology Biopower and form part of our political inheritance which he calls Biopolitics.
Heavily influenced by Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, a Greek neo-Marxist
theorist argued that capitalist states do not always act on behalf of
the ruling class, and when they do, it is not necessarily the case
because state officials consciously strive to do so, but because the 'structural'
position of the state is configured in such a way to ensure that the
long-term interests of capital are always dominant. Poulantzas' main
contribution to the Marxist literature on the state was the concept of
'relative autonomy' of the state. While Poulantzas' work on 'state
autonomy' has served to sharpen and specify a great deal of Marxist
literature on the state, his own framework came under criticism for its 'structural functionalism'.
State autonomy within institutionalism
State autonomy theorists believe that the state is an entity that is
impervious to external social and economic influence, and has interests
of its own.
"New institutionalist" writings on the state, such as the works of Theda Skocpol,
suggest that state actors are to an important degree autonomous. In
other words, state personnel have interests of their own, which they can
and do pursue independently of (at times in conflict with) actors in
society. Since the state controls the means of coercion, and given the
dependence of many groups in civil society on the state for achieving
any goals they may espouse, state personnel can to some extent impose
their own preferences on civil society.
Theories of state legitimacy
States generally rely on a claim to some form of political legitimacy in order to maintain domination over their subjects.
Divine right of kings
The rise of the modern day state system was closely related to
changes in political thought, especially concerning the changing
understanding of legitimate state power and control. Early modern
defenders of absolutism (Absolute monarchy), such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin undermined the doctrine of the divine right of kings
by arguing that the power of kings should be justified by reference to
the people. Hobbes in particular went further to argue that political
power should be justified with reference to the individual(Hobbes wrote
in the time of the English Civil War),
not just to the people understood collectively. Both Hobbes and Bodin
thought they were defending the power of kings, not advocating for
democracy, but their arguments about the nature of sovereignty were
fiercely resisted by more traditional defenders of the power of kings,
such as Sir Robert Filmer in England, who thought that such defenses ultimately opened the way to more democratic claims.
Rational-legal authority
Max Weber identified three main sources of political legitimacy in
his works. The first, legitimacy based on traditional grounds is derived
from a belief that things should be as they have been in the past, and
that those who defend these traditions have a legitimate claim to power.
The second, legitimacy based on charismatic leadership, is devotion to a
leader or group that is viewed as exceptionally heroic or virtuous. The
third is rational-legal authority,
whereby legitimacy is derived from the belief that a certain group has
been placed in power in a legal manner, and that their actions are
justifiable according to a specific code of written laws. Weber believed
that the modern state is characterized primarily by appeals to
rational-legal authority.
State failure
Some states are often labeled as "weak" or "failed". In David Samuels's words "...a failed state occurs when sovereignty over claimed territory has collapsed or was never effectively at all". Authors like Samuels and Joel S. Migdal
have explored the emergence of weak states, how they are different from
Western "strong" states and its consequences to the economic
development of developing countries.
Early state formation
To understand the formation of weak states, Samuels
compares the formation of European states in the 1600s with the
conditions under which more recent states were formed in the twentieth
century. In this line of argument, the state allows a population to
resolve a collective action problem, in which citizens recognize the
authority of the state and this exercise the power of coercion over
them. This kind of social organization required a decline in legitimacy
of traditional forms of ruling (like religious authorities) and replaced
them with an increase in the legitimacy of depersonalized rule; an
increase in the central government's sovereignty; and an increase in the
organizational complexity of the central government (bureaucracy).
The transition to this modern state was possible in Europe around
1600 thanks to the confluence of factors like the technological
developments in warfare, which generated strong incentives to tax and
consolidate central structures of governance to respond to external
threats. This was complemented by the increasing on the production of
food (as a result of productivity improvements), which allowed to
sustain a larger population and so increased the complexity and
centralization of states. Finally, cultural changes challenged the
authority of monarchies and paved the way to the emergence of modern
states.
Late state formation
The conditions that enabled the emergence of modern states in
Europe were different for other countries that started this process
later. As a result, many of these states lack effective capabilities to
tax and extract revenue from their citizens, which derives in problems
like corruption, tax evasion and low economic growth. Unlike the
European case, late state formation occurred in a context of limited
international conflict that diminished the incentives to tax and
increase military spending. Also, many of these states emerged from
colonization in a state of poverty and with institutions designed to
extract natural resources, which have made more difficult to form
states. European colonization also defined many arbitrary borders that
mixed different cultural groups under the same national identities,
which has made difficult to build states with legitimacy among all the
population, since some states have to compete for it with other forms of
political identity.
As a complement of this argument, Migdal gives a historical account on how sudden social changes in the Third World during the Industrial Revolution
contributed to the formation of weak states. The expansion of
international trade that started around 1850, brought profound changes
in Africa, Asia and Latin America that were introduced with the
objective of assure the availability of raw materials for the European
market. These changes consisted in: i) reforms to landownership laws
with the objective of integrate more lands to the international economy,
ii) increase in the taxation of peasants and little landowners, as well
as collecting of these taxes in cash instead of in kind as was usual up
to that moment and iii) the introduction of new and less costly modes
of transportation, mainly railroads. As a result, the traditional forms
of social control became obsolete, deteriorating the existing
institutions and opening the way to the creation of new ones, that not
necessarily lead these countries to build strong states.
This fragmentation of the social order induced a political logic in
which these states were captured to some extent by "strongmen", who were
capable to take advantage of the above-mentioned changes and that
challenge the sovereignty of the state. As a result, these
decentralization of social control impedes to consolidate strong states.
