KAY274 THEORIES OF STATE AND BUREAUCRACY - 2

Prof. Dr. Doğan Nadi Leblebici

Prof. Dr. Mete Yıldız

Barrowed from J.K. Bluntschili «Theory of State»

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How did State emerged in the history?

A state can be briefly defined as an organized community living under a unified political system, the government.

The state emerged out of society as a historical construction. The state has generally been consisted of a national ruling class with the society and it was accepted by the social forces as a credible, legitimate and acceptable governing institution. Its power has to be accepted ultimately by its people or citizens. That means the state power or the power of ruling class or people must be legitimate.

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There are basically four theories about the creation or the origin of state:

1. Divine Right Theory

2. Social Contract Theory

3. Evolutionary Theory

4. Force theory

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Divine Right Theory

According to the divine right theory, the state was created by or from god and that only those of royal birth could rule that state. Each person or citizen in that state was bound to god and therefore bound the king, queen, etc who is sovereign. Disobeying the sovereign would be a mortal sin.

For a long time in the history (ancient and middle ages), the state has been believed to be divine institution. But even then the divine institution of the state was understood in very different senses.

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According to one view, the State was the immediate work of God, the direct divine inspiration upon earth of the divine government. This view lay at the basis of the Jewish theocracy, and its logical consequence is always the theocratic form of the State to which alone it is adapted. If God has founded the State directly, it is natural that He should maintain and govern it directly.

Another view claims that God founded the state indirectly. If God has founded the state indirectly, it is natural that he should maintain and govern it indirectly. This view had been shared by Greeks and Romans in ancient times. Their States were by no means theocratic but thoroughly human, yet no public business of any importance was undertaken in antiquity without prayer and sacrifice preceding, and the care of the auspices, by which the will of the gods was discovered, occupied a great place in the public law of the Romans. They united a consciousness of human freedom and self-determination with the belief in a divine direction of human affairs ; and if even in the destiny of the individual the power of the gods was felt, it appeared to them still clearer that the destiny of that great moral community, which we call the State, could not be separated from the will and working of deity 2. Were they mistaken ? According to this view, God maintain and govern the state through a ruling authority. It is not a theocratic authority. The state is governed in divine direction of human efforts. The state aims at creating a great moral community. Human will and God’s will are inseparable.

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It is self-evident that Christianity cannot regard the State as outside the divine ordering and government of the world. It is significant for the Christian conception that the apostle Paul, at a time when the Emperor Nero was torturing the Christians, addressed these famous words to the Romans: 'Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God.' Thus it is natural enough that during the whole middle ages, in all Christian States, the sovereign authority was derived from God, and the highest authority, that of the Emperor, immediately and directly.

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Erroneous Views of The Divine Nature of The State

Grand as is the view which connects the rise and fall of the divine States with the divine government of the world, and high as its moral significance is always to be accounted, we must not see that this is essentially religious, and not political; and thus this idea, if made a political and legal principle, causes and lightens errors and abuses.

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1. God has indeed made man a political being, but at the same time has made him free to realize the implanted idea of the State by his own exertions and according to his own judgment, and in the forms which seem suited to him. It is a big error to reject particular forms of the State, for instance the republican, because God rules the world as a king. So the state needs not to be monarchical to be divine in nature.2. Authority is indeed in principle and in fact dependent on God, but not in the sense that God has exalted particular privileged persons above the limitations of human nature, set them nearer to Himself and made them demigods, nor in the sense that God has named human rulers as His personal representatives, identical with Himself so far as their authority extends. Such theocratic ideas contradict the human nature of those to whom the government of the State is entrusted. The proud words of Louis XIV, ' We princes are the living images of Him who is all holy and all powerful’ are a blasphemy (curse) towards God, and an insult towards his subjects men as much as he. It is wrong to think that sovereign is the representative of God.

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3. Many understand the authority, distinct from the persons who exercise it, as superhuman and politico-divine. Stahl says, ' The authority of the State is of God, not only in the sense that all rights are of God, property, marriage, paternal authority, but in the quite specific sense, that it is the work of God which He regulates. The State rules, not merely in virtue of the rights which God has given it, as a father does over his children, but it rules in the name of God, therefore it is that the State is clothed with majesty.' But this is to come back to an objective theocracy, which would practically lead to the ruler being considered the personal representative of God a view which Stahl himself rejects and would introduce again all the assumptions and abuses bound up with it. Christ himself by his saying, ' Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's/ has clearly and decidedly pointed out the human character of the State, and rejected every identification of political authority with specifically divine rule. Therefore political science does well in considering the existence and institutions of the State from the human point of view. The authority is not divine itself.

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4. Not infrequently the fixedness of the existing constitution, and especially of the person of the ruler or of his dynasty, has been defended by the principle that the 'powers that be are appointed of God.' But that the fixedness of the external forms and of personal relations is no necessary part of the divine government of the world, is shown by the whole of history; and Paul's very advice, to obey 'the powers that be,' recognizes indirectly the fixedness of political institutions. In the seventeenth century, indeed, that rule might cause many religious Englishmen to have sincere hesitates whether it was right to resist the tyranny of James II, and to deprive him of his throne; but after William of Orange was recognized as king by the nation and the parliament, even the most cautious religious conservatives could honor in him 'the power appointed of God.’ So, there is no divine right.

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4. It is the same with the question of responsibility. That statesmen to whom much is entrusted, and that princes who have power conferred on them, are responsible to God for what they do or skip, follows from the previous principle; but that does not decide on the further question, whether and how far they are also responsible to a human judge. Irresponsibility to human judges is claimed for the highest authority in the State, not because it is specially divine, but simply because it is the highest. The statesman must not, in the belief that God determines the destiny of nations and States, and in the confidence that God will govern well, tempt God and avoid his own responsibility. Rather, he is not freed from his own responsibility, until he has conscientiously fulfilled the task entrusted to him to the best of his power. So, sovereign is not responsible to God only.

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The Theory of Force

Force theory is the easiest to understand. The state was created through some type of struggle or aggression among people. The source of such a struggle was likely to be the scarce resources. People possibly organized in primitive forms of societal life. As a result of such a struggle, one tribe or their leader conquered and assimilated others. Thus, this process was leading more complicated forms of people’s organization, ultimately the state.

Max Weber 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.

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The State is the work of violent domination, it is based on the right of the stronger. Thus we are assured by certain philosophers, but still oftener by despots. This doctrine is favorable to despotism, for it justifies every act of violence; but it may also serve the purpose of revolutionaries as soon as they are strong enough to exercise force openly. It is ordinarily invoked by the brutal force which violates right. It is a sophism attractive only for the strong, more likely to crush than to deceive the weak: it may deceive the man who holds it, but not others.

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It has been said that history proves the truth of this opinion. Certainly, force shows itself more often in the foundation of States than contract, but only very seldom has brute force alone arbitrarily produced States, and never great and lasting States. As a rule, if force, especially in the form of war, has had its share in the foundation of new States, the force was still only the servant of real claims of right.

It was not the source of right, but only broke through the obstacles which prevented it flowing in its proper channels. Force did not create right, but supported it, and compelled recognition for it. Wherever in history force appears in its nakedness, there it is not an instrument of creation, but of destruction and death.

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This doctrine is a most open contradiction of the conception of personal freedom. It recognizes only masters and slaves. By free men it understands freed men. It equally contradicts the idea of Right or Law, which manifestly has a spiritual and moral significance: mere physical force ought to serve right and, if it pretends to be right, it has risen against its proper master. However, even the errors of this doctrine contain a remainder of truth. It makes obvious one element which is indispensable to the State, namely force and has a certain justification as against the opposed theory which bases the State upon the arbitrary will of individuals, and leads logically to political impotence.

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It lays emphasis on realities and on facts, and warns us against uselessattempts at realising the dreams of mere speculation, where naturalforces resist. Without force a State can neither come into being nor continue. Force is required within, as well as without; where force has produced firm and enduring results, it seeks and commonly obtains a connection with right, that is a recognition and purification by means of right. Without right the force of the stronger is brutal, it is the wolf that eats the lamb. United with right, it becomes worthy of the moral nature of man.

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The view that war lies at the root of the state is by no means new. Twenty-five hundred years ago Heraclitus wrote that "war is the father of all things." The first careful study of the role of! warfare in the rise of the state, however, was made less than a hundred years ago, by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Sociology.

Perhaps better known than Spencer's writings on war and the state are the conquest theories of' continental writers such as Ludwig Gumplowicz, Gustav Ratzenhofer, and' Franz Oppenheimer.

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Oppenheimer, for example, argued that' the state emerged when the productive capacity of settled agriculturists was combined with the energy of pastoral nomads through the conquest of the former by the latter. This theory, however, may have two serious defects. First, it fails to explain for the rise of states in aboriginal (Indian) America, where pastoral nomadism was unknown. Second, it is now well established that pastoral nomadism did not arise in, the Old World until after the earliest states had emerged.

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Regardless of deficiencies in particular coercive theories, however, there is little question that, in one way or another, war played a; decisive role in the rise of the state. Historical or archeological evidence of war is found in the early stages of state formation in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, northern Europe, central Africa, Polynesia, Middle America, Peru, and Colombia, to name only the most prominent examples.

Thus, with the Germanic kingdoms of northern Europe especially in mind, Edward Jenks observed that, "historically speaking, there is not «the slightest» difficulty in proving that all political communities of' the modern type [that' is, states] owe their existence to successful warfare". And in reading Jan Vansina's Kingdoms of the Savanna, a book with no theoretical ax to grind; one finds that state after state in central Africa arose in the same manner.

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But is it really true that there is no exception to this rule? Might there not be, somewhere in the world, an example of a state which arose without the agency of war?

Until a few years ago, anthropologists generally believed that the Classic Maya provided such an instance. The archeological evidence then available gave no hint, of warfare among the early Maya and led scholars to regard them as a peace-loving theocratic state which had arisen entirely without war. However, this view is no longer tenable. Recent archeological discoveries have placed the Classic Maya in a very different light. First came the discovery of the Bonampak murals (Wall pictures), showing the early Maya at war and reveling in the torture of war captives .

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Then; excavations around Tikal revealed large earthworks partly surrounding that Classic Maya city, pointing clearly to a military rivalty with the neighboring city of Uaxactun. Summarizing present thinking on the subject, Michael D. Coe has observed that "the ancient Maya were just as warlike as the . . . bloodthirsty states of the Post-Classic".

Yet, though warfare is surely a prime mover in the origin of the state, it can not be the only factor. After all, wars have been fought (war) in many parts of the world where the state never emerged. Thus, while warfare may be a necessary condition for the rise of the state, it is not a sufficient one. Or, to put it another way, while we can identify war as the mechanism of state formation; we need also to specify the conditions under which it gave rise to the state.

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