Editing State (polity) (section)

==Theories of state function==
{{see also|Corporatism|Elite theory}}

Most political theories of the state can roughly be classified into two categories:

# "liberal" or "conservative" theories 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.<ref name="flint-taylor-137"/>

===Anarchist perspective===
{{Main|Anarchism}}
[[File:Anti-capitalism color— Restored.png|thumb|[[Industrial Workers of the World|IWW]] poster "[[Pyramid of Capitalist System]]" ({{circa|1911}}), depicting an [[Criticism of capitalism|anti-capitalist]] perspective on statist/capitalist social structures]]
[[Anarchism]] as a [[political philosophy]] regards the state and hierarchies as 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 violence|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.<ref>{{cite book | author=Newman, Saul | title=The Politics of Postanarchism | publisher=Edinburgh University Press | year=2010 | isbn=978-0-7486-3495-8 | page=109 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SiqBiViUsOkC&pg=PA109 |url-status=live | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160729012355/https://books.google.com/books?id=SiqBiViUsOkC&pg=PA109 | archive-date=29 July 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | author=Roussopoulos, Dimitrios I. | title=The political economy of the state: Québec, Canada, U.S.A. | publisher=Black Rose Books | year=1973 | isbn=978-0-919618-01-5 | page=8 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jzX7mCJLl9AC&pg=PA8| url-status=live | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160513043033/https://books.google.com/books?id=jzX7mCJLl9AC&pg=PA8 |archive-date=13 May 2016}}</ref>

Various [[Christian anarchists]], such as [[Jacques Ellul]], have identified the state and [[political power]] as the [[The Beast (Revelation)|Beast]] in the Book of Revelation.<ref>{{cite book |title=Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel |last=Christoyannopoulos |first=Alexandre |author-link=Alexandre Christoyannopoulos |year=2010 |publisher=Imprint Academic |location=Exeter |pages=123–126 |quote=Revelation}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Anarchy and Christianity |last=Ellul |first=Jacques |author-link=Jacques Ellul |year=1988 |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans |location=Michigan |isbn=9780802804952 |pages=71–74 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=55_Oa12YTt0C&pg=PA72 |quote=The first beast comes up from the sea...It is given 'all authority and power over every tribe, every people, every tongue, and every nation' (13:7). All who dwell on earth worship it. Political power could hardly, I think, be more expressly described, for it is this power which has authority, which controls military force, and which compels adoration (i.e., absolute obedience). |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151102122037/https://books.google.com/books?id=55_Oa12YTt0C&pg=PA72&dq= |archive-date=2 November 2015}}</ref>

=== Anarcho-capitalist perspective ===
{{Main|Anarcho-capitalism}}
[[Anarcho-capitalism|Anarcho-capitalists]] such as [[Murray Rothbard]] come to some of the same conclusions about the state apparatus as anarchists, but for different reasons.<ref name="Rothbard-1970">{{Cite book|last=Rothbard|first=Murray|title=Power and Market|publisher=Institute for Humane Studies|year=1970|isbn=1-933550-05-8}}{{page needed|date=March 2023}}</ref> The two principles that anarcho-capitalists rely on most are consent and non-initiation.<ref name="Long-2013">{{cite journal |last1=Long |first1=Roderick T. |title=Reply to Stephen Cox |journal=The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies |date=1 December 2013 |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=210–223 |doi=10.5325/jaynrandstud.13.2.0210 }}</ref> Consent in anarcho-capitalist theory requires that individuals explicitly assent to the jurisdiction of the State excluding [[Social contract#Tacit consent|Lockean tacit consent]]. Consent may also create a right of [[secession]] which destroys any concept of government monopoly on force.<ref name="Rothbard-1970" /><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Block |first1=Walter |title=Ayn Rand and Austrian Economics: Two Peas in a Pod |journal=The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies |date=2005 |volume=6 |issue=2 |pages=259–269 |jstor=41560283 }}</ref> Coercive monopolies are excluded by the non-initiation of force principle because they must use force in order to prevent others from offering the same service that they do. Anarcho-capitalists start from the belief that replacing monopolistic states with competitive providers is necessary from a normative, justice-based scenario.<ref name="Long-2013" />

Anarcho-capitalists believe that the market values of [[Competition (economics)|competition]] and [[privatization]] can better provide the services provided by the state. Murray Rothbard argues in ''[[Power and Market]]'' that any and all government functions could better be fulfilled by private actors including: defense, infrastructure, and legal adjudication.<ref name="Rothbard-1970" />

===Marxist perspective===
{{Main|Marx's theory of the state}}
[[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Frederick Engels|Engels]] were clear in that the goal of communism was a [[classless society]] in which the state would have [[Withering away of the state|"withered away"]], replaced only by "administration of things".<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm ''Frederick Engels'' – Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. 1880] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070206061617/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm |date=6 February 2007 }} Full Text. From ''[[Historical Materialism]]'': "State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished". It dies out...Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master&nbsp;– free."</ref> Their views are found throughout their [[Marx/Engels Collected Works|Collected Works]], and address past or then-extant state forms from an analytical and tactical viewpoint, but not future social forms, speculation [[utopian socialism|about which]] is generally antithetical<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Paden |first=Roger |date=2002 |title=Marx’s Critique of the Utopian Socialists |url=https://files.libcom.org/files/marxs-critique-of-the-utopian-socialists-2002-paden.pdf |journal=Utopian Studies |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=67–91 |via=libcom.org}}</ref> 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 [[Marxism#Dispute that the Soviet Union was Marxist|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.<ref name="flint-taylor-139">Flint & Taylor, 2007: p. 139</ref><ref>Joseph, 2004: [https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA15 p. 15] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160506134017/https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA15 |date=6 May 2016 }}</ref><ref>Barrow, 1993: p. 4</ref>

Marx's early writings portrayed the bourgeois state as parasitic, [[base and superstructure|built upon the superstructure]] of the [[economy]], and working against the public interest. He also wrote that the state mirrors [[social class|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.<ref>{{cite book |author=Smith, Mark J. |title=Rethinking state theory |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-415-20892-5 |page=176 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hFCpqJwuv1QC&pg=PA176|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160503213154/https://books.google.com/books?id=hFCpqJwuv1QC&pg=PA176 |archive-date=3 May 2016}}</ref> The ''[[Communist Manifesto]]'' claims the state to be nothing more than "a committee for managing the common affairs of the ''[[bourgeoisie]]''."<ref name="flint-taylor-139" />

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 [[interlocking directorate|linked to them]] through a wide array of social, economic, and political ties.<ref name="AUTOREF8" />

[[Gramsci, Antonio|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 [[false consciousness|ideological domination]] of the institutions of civil society, such as churches, schools, and mass media.<ref>Joseph, 2004: [https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA44: p. 44] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160729054430/https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA44: |date=29 July 2016 }}</ref>

===Pluralism===
{{See also|Polyarchy}}
[[Pluralism (political theory)|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.<ref>Vincent, 1992: [https://books.google.com/books?id=_MdR_fvPxZoC&pg=PA47 pp. 47–48] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160430132703/https://books.google.com/books?id=_MdR_fvPxZoC&pg=PA47 |date=30 April 2016 }}</ref> 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 group]]s. 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]].<ref>{{cite book |author=Dahl, Robert |title=Modern Political Analysis |publisher=Prentice Hall |year=1973 |isbn=0-13-596981-6 |page={{Page needed |date=January 2011}}}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite book |author=Cunningham, Frank |title=Theories of democracy: a critical introduction |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-415-22879-4 |pages=86–87 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cOBubkTG9JMC&pg=PA86|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160512120545/https://books.google.com/books?id=cOBubkTG9JMC&pg=PA86 |archive-date=12 May 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Diversity in the power elite: how it happened, why it matters |edition=2nd |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-7425-3699-9 |page=4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0V0gO8tArK8C&pg=PA4 |author1=Zweigenhaft, Richard L. |author2=Domhoff, G. William |name-list-style=amp|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160430085807/https://books.google.com/books?id=0V0gO8tArK8C&pg=PA4 |archive-date=30 April 2016}}</ref>

===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.<ref>{{Cite book |author=Duncan, Graeme Campbell |title=Democracy and the capitalist state |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1989 |isbn=978-0-521-28062-4 |page=137 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tMk8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA137|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160425091052/https://books.google.com/books?id=tMk8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA137 |archive-date=25 April 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Edgar, Andrew |title=The philosophy of Habermas |publisher=McGill-Queen's Press |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-7735-2783-6 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=VxfeGh-RrWwC&pg=PA5 5–6]; [https://books.google.com/books?id=VxfeGh-RrWwC&pg=PA44 44]}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Cook, Deborah |title=Adorno, Habermas, and the search for a rational society |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-415-33479-2 |page=20 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lmK-RGZi5McC&pg=PA20|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160425040547/https://books.google.com/books?id=lmK-RGZi5McC&pg=PA20 |archive-date=25 April 2016}}</ref>

[[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.<ref>{{cite book |author=Melossi, Dario |chapter=Michel Foucault and the Obsolescent State |editor=Beaulieu, Alain |editor2=Gabbard, David |title=Michel Foucault and power today: international multidisciplinary studies in the history of the present |publisher=Lexington Books |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-7391-1324-0 |page=6|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nE_UBAh_cyEC&pg=PA6|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160516144400/https://books.google.com/books?id=nE_UBAh_cyEC&pg=PA6 |archive-date=16 May 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Gordon, Colin |chapter=Government rationality: an introduction |editor=Foucault, Michel|display-editors=etal |title=The Foucault effect: studies in governmentality |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-226-08045-1 |page=4|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TzSt_zYZfUsC&pg=PA4|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160503035737/https://books.googlecom/books?id=TzSt_zYZfUsC&pg=PA4 |archive-date=3 May 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Mitchell, Timothy |chapter=Society, Economy, and the State Effect |editor=Sharma, Aradhana |editor2=Gupta, Akhil |title=The anthropology of the state: a reader |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-4051-1467-7 |page=179|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ImnEMK_hKCgC&pg=PA179|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160518173206/https://books.google.com/books?id=ImnEMK_hKCgC&pg=PA179 |archive-date=18 May 2016}}</ref> Foucault developed the concept of [[governmentality]] while considering the [[Genealogy (philosophy)|genealogy]] of state, and considers the way in which an individual's understanding of governance can influence the function of the state.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Lemke |first1=Thomas |title=Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique |date=2011 |publisher=Paradigm Publishers |isbn=978-1-59451-637-5 |oclc=653123044 |page=15 }}</ref>

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 a technological manifestation or system with many heads; Foucault argues instead of something to be overthrown as in the sense of the [[Marxist]] and [[Anarchism|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|cameral science]]) 'allowing' the population to now 'come in' into ''[[jus gentium]]'' and ''[[civitas]]'' ([[civil society]]) after deliberately being excluded for several millennia.<ref name="Michel-2007">{{Cite book |title=Security,Territory,Population |last=Michel |first=Foucault |year=2007 |pages=311–332}}</ref> [[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]]<ref>{{Cite book |title=Security,Territory,Population |last=Michel |first=Foucault |year=2007 |pages=1–27}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Security,Territory,Population |last=Michel |first=Foucault |year=2007 |pages=87–115 115–135}}</ref><ref name="Michel-2007" /> and form part of our political inheritance which he calls [[biopolitics]].

Heavily influenced by Gramsci, [[Nicos Poulantzas]], a Greek [[neo-Marxism|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 '[[structuralism|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]]'.{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}

===Structural universe of the state or structural reality of the state===
It can be considered as a single structural universe: the historical reality that takes shape in societies characterized by a codified or crystallized right, with a power organized hierarchically and justified by the law that gives it authority, with a well-defined social and economic stratification, with an economic and social organization that gives the society precise organic characteristics, with one (or multiple) religious organizations, in justification of the power expressed by such a society and in support of the religious beliefs of individuals and accepted by society as a whole. Such a structural universe, evolves in a cyclical manner, presenting two different historical phases (a mercantile phase, or "open society", and a feudal phase or "closed society"), with characteristics so divergent that it can qualify as two different levels of civilization which, however, are never definitive, but that alternate cyclically, being able, each of the two different levels, to be considered progressive (in a partisan way, totally independent of the real value of well-being, degrees of freedom granted, equality realized and a concrete possibility to achieve further progress of the level of civilization), even by the most cultured fractions, educated and intellectually more equipped than the various societies, of both historical phases.<ref>Giano Rocca "The Faces of Belial – The Scientific Method Applied to Human Condition – Book V" (2020) https://independent.academia.edu/GianoRocca</ref>

===State autonomy within institutionalism===
{{Main|New institutionalism}}

State autonomy theorists believe that the state is an entity that is impervious to external social and economic influence and that it has interests of its own.<ref name="sklair-2004-139-140">{{Cite book | author=Sklair, Leslie |chapter=Globalizing class theory |editor=Sinclair, Timothy |title=Global governance: critical concepts in political science |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-415-27665-8 |pages=139–140|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1xs_MGAo3zgC&pg=PA139|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160519041724/https://books.google.com/books?id=1xs_MGAo3zgC&pg=PA139 |archive-date=19 May 2016}}</ref>

"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 (and 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.<ref name="AUTOREF10" />