The state is the political institution that governs a defined territory and population through a centralized administrative apparatus. Max Weber's classic sociological definition, from his 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation, holds that a state is a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a certain territory; the underlying idea of a sovereign monopoly on legitimate violence reaches back further, to Jean Bodin's Les Six Livres de la Republique (1576) and Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). States first arose roughly 5,500 years ago in early complex societies, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, made possible by settled agriculture, especially grain cultivation, and by writing systems; for most of human prehistory, people lived in stateless societies with no centralized authority and comparatively little economic inequality. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Institution TypeSourced to the subject's own accountPolitical institution: the organization Max Weber defined as holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. 1 Emergence PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountStates first arose roughly 5,500 years ago in early complex societies including Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes; Max Weber's monopoly-on-legitimate-force definition, the discipline's most widely cited, dates to his 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation. 1 Connections
Associated With
Source Wikipedia: Bureaucracy
The city-state is a specific historical form of the state, a sovereign political entity whose territory and population are centered on and largely coextensive with a single city.
A confederation is itself a form of composite state, a union of otherwise sovereign states that delegate limited powers to a joint central authority.
Federalism is the institutional principle by which a single state divides sovereignty constitutionally between a central government and constituent regional governments.
Government is the institutional apparatus through which the state exercises its authority, administers policy and enforces law over its territory and population.
Source Wikipedia: State (Polity)
Weber's 1919 monopoly-on-legitimate-force definition is the discipline's most widely cited definition of the state.
Source Wikipedia: State (Polity)
Poulantzas structuralist Marxism theorized the capitalist state as relatively autonomous from any single class faction while still functioning to secure capitalist reproduction.
Source Wikipedia: Social Movement
Rokkan mapped the historical cleavages, center-periphery tensions and nation-building processes that shaped the modern European state system.
Skocpol comparative-historical sociology treats the state as an autonomous organizational actor with its own interests, not merely an arena for class conflict.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: State (Polity)
WikipediaDefinition section
the state is a compulsory political organization with a centralized government that maintains a monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a certain territory
- Historical emergence section
- Associated With: Max Weber
View the Source Wikipedia: Bureaucracy
Wikipedia: Social Movement
WikipediaAssociated With: Social Movement, definitions sectionView the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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