journal 3: is the state still in control?
TRANSCRIPT
Is the state still in control?
Journal entry 01/10/2010
Steven Lauwers
In this week’s readings and in the lecture, we looked at how the state changed and what
implications this has. We moved from what we define as a Westphalian state to a
modern state, but while there were clear descriptions about what the state needed to
look like in the past, do we have any idea what the state “should” look like in the future?
To very briefly summarize, the definition of a Westphalian state said that sovereignty of
the state is based on territoriality and the separation of the domestic and international
sphere. M. Weber then later defined a state as “a compulsory political organization with
continuous operations (…) insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim
to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order”. i
This would mean that social order can only be obtained through an ever-‐present threat
of coerciveness. ii As a state cannot rely only on this ‘monopoly of coerciveness’, M. Zürn
and S. Leibfried identified 4 dimensions a state has to be active in, in order to be a
successful modern state: resource, law, legitimacy and welfare. iii In the Golden Age 1,
this democratic welfare state reached its height; it was characterized by the congruence
of social and political space, which allowed an almost paternalistic state control.
After the Golden Age, important shifts took place in these different dimensions, causing
the borders of societal interactions, and other activities involving new actors, to lie well
beyond the borders of any nation-‐state, often within borders of other nation-‐states. In
these shifts, the trend of globalization is perceived as predominant, but one should keep
in mind that society is moving in different directions. Professor Dr Jachtenfuchs
therefore prefered to refer to this as denationalization, rather than only ‘globalization’,
which he sees as only one part of how the state is changing. (…)
Does this shift in dimensions, and away from what we defined as a Westphalian state,
means a loss of control? I wouldn’t say so. The modern state needed to delegate many of
its activities to new actors, which Salamon describes as third party governanceiv, to be
able to manage these shifts. Delegating powers assumes a certain dependence of the
1 The Golden Age refers to the most prosperous period for the democratic welfare-‐state’s between the 1960s and the 1970s. The term was popularized by the Eric J. Hobsbawm and Jürgen Habermas.
actors and control of the principal, the state. What we can see though is that the
international community is exercising increasing control on the state. In his lecture,
Professor Dr Jachtenfuchs said that “you are a state if the international community
accepts you as one.” Where the modern state might be one of third party governance,
the state has increasingly become an actor itself: of and in the international community.
This implies that control now is exercised on two levels, the state-‐level and the
international level.
i Weber M. (1978 (1922)): Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. p. 54 ii North D. C et al (2006). A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. p. 10 iii Zürn, M., Leibfried, S. (2005). Reconfiguring the National Constellation. p. 2. iv Salamon, L. M. (2002): The New Governance and the Tools of Public Action: An Introduction, p. 7