Where Do States Come From?

Well, when private property rights and institutions capable of enforcing the rule of law love each other very much, they get together and...

Kidding, but only sort of.

I recently began reading Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order, and, like all good books should, it got me thinking. Our political order seems pretty taken for granted these days. Especially after the fall of communism, the ascendency of the liberal democratic order seemed all but certain. Indeed, Fukuyama is most famous for his earlier work, The End of History and the Last Man, wherein he details a global world order predicated on liberal democratic principles.

Twenty years ago, this seemed to be the case. Communism's swift and utter collapse in the Soviet Union and its satellites left seemingly little to challenge the hegemony of a Western democratic order. But fast forward to today, and this seems almost laughable. Europe stagnates while it stares over the precipice into another recession, primarily brought on by massive mismanagement in some of the weaker Euro economies, as well as the inability of the ECB, or any other supranational monetary fund, to act quickly and decisively, and most importantly, with a unified effort from all of Europe. Greece may be going up in flames as it is, but Spain and Italy are already showing signs of smoke. While Spain's banking system has been declared generally sound, economists speculate that Spanish banks may need as much as 100 billion Euro to stay afloat.

And the United States has its own economic woes. The U.S. has naturally felt the ripples from the Eurozone, and sluggish job growth in the past month has compounded those fears. Indeed, the economy is shaping up to be the issue in the coming presidential election. But partisanship has all but deadlocked American politics. The U.S. looks increasingly dysfunctional as the gap widens between rich and poor, and the economy looks increasingly structurally unsound, with a massive chasm between the skills companies want and are willing to pay for, and the skills the workforce has.

On the other side of the world, things are much different. China's rise looks inexorable. Years of double digit growth, may not be sustainable forever, but if China's quick turnaround from the 2008 financial crisis is indicative of future trends, China's economy looks extremely resilient. China's economy may seem like a perfect example of capitalism triumphant, but the real story is far more complex. China's government still exerts an enormous amount of influence on all economic matters, not least of which, their cheap currency. Further, many of China's largest companies are state-owned, or at least state- owned/ privately managed hybrids To the north, Russia has embarked on a new era of geopolitical relevance as an energy exporter. Soaring oil and gas prices have financed an era of billionaires in Moscow, and while certainly far from Soviet, the Putin/Medvedev regime has exhibited authoritarian leanings. Russia too, concentrates many of its resources in the hands of massive state-owned conglomerates, like Gazprom. This is to say nothing of both countries' questionable track records on voting procedures and civic freedoms.

Both China and Russia are major examples of a credible challenge to the liberal democratic world order that Fukuyama took for granted twenty years ago. And they have begun to throw their new weight around, not least over Iran's nuclear arms talks and UN intervention in Syria. Indeed, history has proven to be anything but static, and even less so, predictable. The world has become increasingly multi-polar, with the United States less and less willing, and more importantly, able, to meet its former role as global police-man and state builder. Indeed, it seems like we are perched on the edge of an era where we will see new types of states forming, some along the old lines of liberal democracy, but China and Russia have taken a different path, and this is to say nothing of what types of new states might emerge from the Arab Spring, especially with new unrest in Egypt flaring recent days.

But what's really striking is that within all this variation, we're really looking at different versions of the same thing. That is, they're all states, albeit organized along different lines. This got me thinking the simple question: why do human beings seem to organize themselves along the lines of a state?

Fukuyama opens The Origins of Political Order,  with a discussion of native culture in the area of the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. This area, collectively known as Melanesia, has been the site of several attempts at state building from various supranational organization, including the World Bank and Australian aid agency, AusAid. But all these attempts have come up against the seemingly impenetrable wall of traditional Melanesian culture. Each community, or wantok,  (a corruption of the English, "one talk,") resides in its own valley, and is lead by a tribal Big Man. The Big Man's status depends on his ability to disperse resources within the wantok. The title is not hereditary, and if the Big Man fails to distribute those resources, he can be replaced with someone else. So, when the various Big Men, from all the wantoks are gathered in a Western style Parliament, they do exactly as they would back home.

They try to secure as many resources as possible for their constituents, in order to preserve their own status. Sound familiar? Yes, the Big Men basically act like our own senators, adding as much pork barrel legislation as they can in order to bring back money for their states, in order to secure re-election. The problem is, that while our representatives are less than perfect, senators from New Hampshire still consider those from Massachusetts Americans. Well, sort of. In Melanesian society, the wantoks have no conception of national unity, and the wantok itself is the highest political unit. Indeed, it's very much an every Big Man for himself world. None of this, is conducive to state-building.

This got me thinking, about how and why we ever created states in the first place. The wantoks function within themselves, but why are they unable to form a cohesive state? As with any political question, the answer becomes clear when we look at power, and who controls it. The Big Men may be ostensibly in control, but their power is completely dependent on their constituents' support. They are held accountable, just like in a modern democracy. But just as our own government breaks down when every representative spends all his energy on getting re-elected rather than pursuing policy decisions, so too does the fledgling Melanesian state.

Representatives need to be held accountable, but in order for the state to function, they can't be held too accountable. In order to avoid re-election paralysis, leaders must be allowed to lead. And to do that, they need power. The Big Men are really powerless before they're constituents.

This is why they cannot form a state. Max Weber has long been one of my favorite thinkers, and I think he can help us a bit here. One of his most famous contentions was that the state is the entity that enjoys the "monopoly on the legitimate use of force." I've never encountered a more encompassing definition of what a state is, because everything a state does, or requires of us, eventually boils down to violence. Even something as mundane as taxation comes with the implicit threat of violence. Don't pay; that's fine. You'll be getting a call from the IRS. You can choose not to respond, but let it go far enough and eventually you'll hear from a police officer after you have a bench warrant issued. You can cooperate with the officer at that point or not, but society has chosen to entrust him with a firearm, and the authority open fire on you, should you resist arrest violently. You and the government's agents are fundamentally different; they have the power to perpetrate violence legally, you do not.

And so, a state is built almost completely on social stratification. One group is afforded special privileges, while the other group is not. This is the exact meaning of power. It derives from the Vulgar Latin potere,  which translates as "to be able to." Some in society are able to do things. Others are not. And so, the state is predicated on the concentration of power in the hands of a social sub-group, and this sub-group makes the decisions that allow a collection of an individuals to come together to form a state.

This may all sound rather sinister. People lording power over others is certainly not a trifling matter. But I think it's necessary if a tribal group is going to mature into a state. Of course, I do not want to suggest that this all occurs under the umbrella of some benign social contract. Many people were, and still are, forced into unequal social relations. Those with power will always force those without it into doing things. Most times, those without power had absolutely no say in whether or not they wanted to surrender decision-making to an elect few, in order to form a more efficient society. I think stratified society was definitely a prerequisite for the transformation of tribal society into state-society. Leaders had to be able to make decision that might not be politically popular in the short term, but that better served the society.

However, with such power, comes unfathomable responsibility. All of humanity's greatest crimes have been perpetuated in the name of the "greater good," or "the ends justify the means." Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Different ideologies to be sure. But chillingly similar outcomes for many of the people they ruled over. We take a risk when we entrust an elect few with power that the rest of society lacks. But I think it's a necessary risk if we want to live in an organized society. It puts a massive amount of responsibility on the backs of those elected, but even more on those who do the electing. We have to remain vigilant that it is indeed, "the greater good," that our leaders are pursuing. Not their own good. Not even our own, short-term good.

Leaders are meant to lead, and that means making tough decisions, that the public may find uncomfortable. However, it's a slippery slope from discomfort to pain, and that's where the public's civic responsibility comes in to play. We relinquish our power, but we are extremely lucky to have the ability to choose to whom  we relinquish that power, and for how long. It was your power to begin with. They are just power's stewards. Make sure those you've entrusted it with take good care of it.