Fundamentals of Political Science
Dr. Sujian Guo
Professor of Political Science
San Francisco State Unversity
Email: sguo@sfsu.edu
http://bss.sfsu.edu/sguo
State, Country, and Nation
• A state is an organized political community,
occupying a territory, and possessing
internal and external sovereignty which
successfully claims the legitimate use of
coercion or force over its territory and
population.
• Country is the geographical area.
• Nation designates a people
State theories
Postwar Revival of Interest in Theorizing the State
• The postwar revival of theoretical interest in the state in comparative
politics and comparative political economy is a result of the worldwide trend in the expansion of the role of the state since the Great
Depression in 1930s.
• The first major postwar revival of theoretical interest in the state began
in Western Europe during the mid-1960s. This was mainly led by
Marxists interested in the general form and functions of the capitalist
state; but a key supporting role was played by Marxist-feminists who
extended such ideas to the patriarchal capitalist state.
• A second revival during the late 1970s involved many more theoretical
approaches or currents that attempt to “bring the state back in” which
was originated in the United States. However, such theoretical
approaches invited critiques from Foucauldian theory, feminism, and
other theoretical approaches in the 1990s.
What factors have contributed to the
expansion of the role of the state?
1. In the industrialized world, the emergence of the managerial state to
combat the crisis of capitalism during the depression.
2. The widened scope of executive power during WW II and the growing
state regulative and welfare functions in the post-WW II
3. The Third World countries in search of developmental model to
promote economic independence and development, which called for
the state to play a major role in restructuring economic and social
systems.
4. However, the state was further brought back in comparative politics and
comparative political economy in the 1970s, because of the economic
success of the developmental state in the NICs.
Society-Centered vs. State-Centered Approaches
Society-centered Approaches
For the society-centered approach, the state is
largely treated as a dependent, constrained,
manipulated, and responsive entity. Policy
formation is understood as a response to the
expectations and demands of those socioeconomic
forces who control the largest armory of effective
resources. Both the constraint of the state and the
predomination of the private actors and groups are
to be understood in terms of variables outside the
parameter of the state.
Society-Centered vs. State-Centered Approaches
State-centered Approaches
For the state-centered approach, the state is largely treated
as an independent, regulative, manipulative and active
entity and an independent actor. The state is seen to be
autonomous in initiating policies and turning its own
policy preferences into authoritative actions. Taking the
state seriously as an independent variable involves more
than searching for state-centered account of high and low
autonomy, but entails the bringing together of statecentered and society-centered approaches in a meaningful
manner.
Theories of the State
1. Liberal or pluralist approaches
2. Marxist or class-analytic approaches
3. Weberian or state-centric approaches
Liberal or pluralist approaches
(1) believe that all human beings are created equal,
that they are entitled to certain unalienable human
rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and
property, and that government exists to protect
those rights and rule according to the consent of
the governed.
(2) The primary motivating force is the competition
between individuals who seek to maximize their
self-interests, satisfaction, or utility through the
free market.
Liberal or pluralist approaches
(3) Therefore, these theorists emphasize the role of the market
mechanism through which economic activity and
allocation of resources are coordinated while the state is a
“night-watch man” providing the conditions under which
markets can be allowed to operate as freely as possible.
(4) They view the state as a neutral arbitrator between the
competing forces in society. Since society comprises
individuals and interest groups in competition with one
another for economic resources and access to power, the
state acts in a neutral way to ensure equality between the
rival demands and to balance these pressure groups in
order to secure political and social stability.
Marxist or class-analytic approaches
(1)Anchor the analysis of the state in class analysis
in terms of the state’s relationship to the
ownership system as the foundation of class
relations and its capacity to promote the
fundamental, collective interests of capital.
(2)Marxism rejects the starting point of liberalpluralism (individuals) and argues that it is
impossible to discuss any individual without at the
same time discussing the total social relationships
within which individuals interact with one
another.
Marxist or class-analytic approaches
(3) The most fundamental of these relationships involves the
“mode of production” and the “social relations of
production” which condition the social, political, and
economic life process in general and the class conflict in
particular.
(4) Therefore, the state is seen as the coercive instrument of
the ruling class, rather than an entity of providing neutral
procedural guarantees for a free competition among
classes, groups, and individuals. The state is a committee
for managing the common affair of the whole ruling
class.
Weberian or state-centric approaches
(1)Reject both class- or capital-theoretical account and
individualistic based explanation and contend that the state
can exercise autonomy in its own right and in pursuit of its
own distinctive interests.
(2)In other words, they emphasize the ways in which states
constitute autonomous sources of power and operate on the
basis of institutional logics and dynamics with variable
forms of interaction with other sources of power in society
or the ways in which the actions of the state are rooted in
the interests, motivations, and strategic dilemmas of the
people who occupy positions in the state.
Weberian or state-centric approaches
(3) Therefore, the state can neither be neutral with respect to
organized interests, nor be understood simply as a class
bias, but has its own moral end and pursues the common
good for all. It rejects both liberalism and Marxism in a
sense that the state plays an independent role in policy
initiative and in the pursuit of the common good for the
society, whereas both liberalism and Marxism basically see
the state as determined and manipulated by the economic
and social forces.
(4) It is this tradition that has shaped the revival of interest in
the state or the theoretical current, named “neo-statism,” to
“bring the state back in” as a central explanatory variable
in social analysis - the state apparatus should be treated as
the independent variable in explaining political and social
events.
Some Main lines of Criticism
• 1. Neo-statism is one-sided because it focuses on state and party
politics at the expense of political forces outside and beyond the state.
In particular, it seems to substitute “politicians for social formations
(such as class or gender or race), elite for mass politics, political
conflict for social struggle” (Gordon 1990: 181).
• 2. Neo-statism implies that politically autonomous state managers can
act as effective agents of economic modernization and social reform.
But, no neo-statist case studies reveal the harmful effects of their
authoritarian or autocratic rule.
• 3. Neo-statism rests upon a fundamental theoretical fallacy. It assumes
there are clear and unambiguous boundaries between state apparatus
and society, state managers and social forces, and state power and
societal power. It implies that the state (or the political system) and
society are mutually exclusive and self-determining, each can be
studied in isolation. It rules out hybrid logics such as divisions among
state managers due to ties between state organs and other social
spheres and many other forms of overlap between state and society.