The State
- Why do we have states? What are they good for? Can we do without them? What are the main competitors of states (in theory and in practice)?
- Contrast the first two sentences of Hume with the first four sections of Hobbes in chapter 13 and the paragraph you read by Aristotle. What arguments do Aristotle, Hume, and Hobbes make about state formation? On what issues do they seem to agree? To the extent that they disagree, who is right?
- Tilly’s bellicist argument has been a touchstone for research on the state. Do you agree with his argument, as it applies to Europe? Outside Europe? What other causes of state-building might there be besides war? Could war ever have a negative effect on state-building?
- Is the American path to state-building distinctive? The Latin American path? What do these cases have to say about theories of the state?
- Referencing the Shah of Iran’s modernization drive, Migdal writes: “The compulsion to extend
state social control—to build supermarkets, as it were—derives from the most Hobbesian qualities of the world system; it has been reinforced by its set of widely shared norms—especially those put forth by the UN system and others that have assumed the state’s domestic hegemony.” Discuss. - A number of historians (e.g., Harding 2002 in Recommended Readings) emphasize neither war, nor revenue extraction, nor technology but rather dispute resolution in the building of European states: the concept of the “king’s peace,” national legal uniformity, written verdicts, local demand for royal arbitration, and (eventually) the dispatching of judicial emissaries from the center. What do you suppose would be their critique of Tilly?
- Still other scholars focus on the colonial origins of states. What do you make of their arguments?
- Some scholars (e.g., Wittfogel 1957, Hinze 1975) suggested technological-determinist arguments about state formation, based on management of water systems, writing, or weaponry. What might such arguments look like if fully sketched out?
- Is there a tradeoff between democracy and a strong state? What about between democratization and state-building?
- The language in Aristotle, Hobbes, and Hume is gendered (and I have left it that way in the selections I edited). One possibility is that they simply used “man” and “men” as synonyms for “human” and “humans”, as was then the convention. Another possibility, though, is that they assumed men were the only actors in the public sphere and thus implicitly really did mean “men”. Let’s say it was the latter. Might they have come to a different conclusion about the need for and origins of the state if they had begun their inquiries by focusing on women, or family units, rather than on adult males?
