Evolution of State in

UNIT 8 EVOLUTION OF STATE IN WESTERN Western Europe

EUROPE
Structure
8.0 Objectives
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Features of the State
8.3 Fragmentary Political System in Medieval Europe
8.4 Early Foundations of Modern Nation States
8.5 Rise of the Modern State and Sovereignty
8.5.1 State Sovereignty
8.5.2 Popular Sovereignty
8.6 The Formalisation of Modern Nation States and the Rise of Democracy
8.7 Let Us Sum Up
8.8 References
8.9 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercise

8.0 OBJECTIVES
The aim of the unit is to introduce the evolution of the modern nation state
system in Western Europe. After studying this unit, you should be able to:
 Identify the features of the modern-state
 Contextualize the formation of the state in Europe
 Describe the foundations of the modern-state
 Describe the importance of Sovereignty
 Explain the evolution of the state from an absolutist state to a liberal
democracy

 Dr. Gazala Fareedi, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Southfield College,
Darjeeling, West Bengal.

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State in
Contemporary 8.1 INTRODUCTION
Perspective
Different types of socio-political communities have emerged in different times
and places throughout history. These range from tribal groups, agricultural
communities, nomadic groups, empires, kingdoms, vassal cities and others. Some
of these organisations have been centralised and powerful while others have been
loosely organised or decentralised. The modern nation state as a political
community is one of the most recent forms of human institutions. After a long
drawn out and uneven process of formation, the state system was finally
entrenched in Europe by the Seventeenth century. The states themselves evolved
from being absolutist under monarchical forms to that of liberal representative
democracy. From Europe, this state system spread to the rest of the world mainly
through the process of colonialism. The decolonization process in Africa and
Asia in the Twentieth century further increased the number of modern states in
the world. This is reflected in the dramatic rise of the membership of the United
Nations- from the initial 51 member states in 1945 to 193 in the year 2020.
We begin this unit by identifying the core features of the modern state and then
proceed to delineate the evolution of the modern state in Western Europe.

8.2 FEATURES OF THE STATE

“The state- or apparatus of ‘government’- appears to be everywhere, regulating
the conditions of our lives from birth registration to death certification.” (Held
1989:28). In between birth and death, we are bound with the processes of the
state on multiple occasions. For a lot of people, education is given through
government schools and colleges, health services provided at government
hospitals when ill and if required, and essential food supplies are met through
public distribution system. Once one is a citizen of any country, s/he is bound by
the rules and regulations of that state. This is true for both our conduct in public
sphere, as well as our conduct in some aspects of our personal sphere. To travel
to another state, one has to be granted a passport and visa. Our fundamental and
human rights are guaranteed by the Constitution of the state and ought to be
implemented by its institutions. These examples go on to show the pervasiveness
and omnipresence of the state in our lives (Das 2008:171).
A state has to possess four features: first, a permanent population; second, a
defined territory; third, government and fourth, capacity to enter into relations
with the other states (sovereignty). These features were set out in the
‘Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States’ signed in 1933.
Although this convention was specifically signed among countries belonging to
North and South America, the convention is considered to be part of ‘customary
international law’. This means that the norms and principles set out in this
convention apply not only to signatories but to all other similar subjects of
international law.

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 Evolution of State in
8.3 FRAGMENTARY POLITICAL SYSTEM IN Western Europe
MEDIEVAL EUROPE
The beginnings of the modern state system lie in the geographical territory that
we know as Europe. According to David Held (1989:31), “the story of the
formation of the modern state is in part the story of the formation of the Europe,
and vice versa.” From Europe, this system spread to the rest of the world through
colonialism. According to Hay and Lister (2006:5), “it is to Western Europe that
we must turn if we are to establish the origins of the modern state”. Similarly,
Thomas Ertman (2005:367) also writes that “though the first examples of state
building in the widest sense may have occurred more than four thousand years
ago in the ancient Near East and China, it was post-Roman state building in
Western Europe, lasting from about the Fifth century until the end of the
Napoleonic period, that brought forth the modern state with a modern
bureaucratic infrastructure at its heart.”
What needs to be underlined is that Europe itself was created through a
combination of multiple factors. “A thousand years ago Europe as such did not
exist. A decade before the Millennium, [990 A.D] the roughly thirty million
people who lived at the western end of the Eurasian land mass had no compelling
reason to think of themselves as a single set of people, connected by history and
fate” (Tilly, 1990:38). There was neither any common identity nor any unified
authority. Sovereignty as such was fragmented and divided. “The [various]
emperors, kings, prices, dukes, caliphs, sultans, and other potentates of AD 990
prevailed as conquerors, tribute-takers, and rentiers, not as heads of state that
durably and densely regulated life within their realms” (Tilly 1990:39). Hence
there were multiple principalities and city states. There was a constant struggle
for power among them as there were overlapping jurisdictions. There was
frequent use of violence by the private armies. There was no centralized national
state anywhere in Europe (Tilly 1990: 40). Although most of the Italian peninsula
was claimed by the Byzantine emperor and the Holy Roman emperor, every city
inside the Italian peninsula was in reality ruled by their own local political
agents. Hence in AD 1200, the Italian peninsula alone hosted two or three
hundred distinct city-states (Tilly 1990:40).
In between the Eighth and Fourteenth centuries, the landmass of Europe was
dominated by divided/fragmentary authority and this era is referred to as
‘feudalism’ (Held 1989: 32). The economy at this time was based on agriculture.
Since there was no centralised political power, there used to be a constant battle
to take or own whatever surplus that would be generated through agriculture
(Held 1989:33). This era also saw the emergence of many urban centres which
gave rise to greater manufacturing and trade. Examples of such urban centres
were Florence, Venice and Siena. Even though hundreds of such smaller urban
cities developed throughout Europe, the political power still remained
fragmented and more focused on the local power centres spread throughout the
rural countryside (Held 1989:33). Some amount of unity began to be provided by
the Papacy (the office and jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, the pope) and the
Holy Roman Empire with its overarching call for unity on the basis of religion.
“The Holy Roman Empire existed in some form from the Eight until the early 117
State in Nineteenth century. At its height, it represented an attempt, under the patronage
Contemporary
Perspective of the Catholic Church, to unite and centralize the fragmented power centres of
Western Christendom into a politically unified Christian empire” (Held 1989:33).
The areas under this domain would be now located from Germany to Spain and
from northern France to Italy. Such an order has been termed by Hedley Bull
(1977) and Paul Kennedy (1988) as the ‘international Christian society’ (Held
1989:33). However, throughout the Middle Ages there was a constant struggle
for power between the Catholic Church and the local level feudal powers centres
in the rural hinterland and numerous city states (Held 1989:33).

Check Your Progress Exercise 1

Note: i) Use the space given below for your answer.
ii) See the end of the unit for tips for your answer.

1) What are the four features of the modern state?

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2) Why is medieval Europe known as a fragmentary?

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8.4 EARLY FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN NATION

STATES
The challenge to this ‘international Christian society’ that was trying to provide
an overarching unity to the fragmentary nature of political authority in Europe
came in the form of Reformation in the beginning of the Sixteenth century. Also
known as the Protestant Reformation, this movement challenged the religious
power of the Pope and the Catholic Church. One of its main leaders was Martin
Luther who with the publication of a list titled Ninety-five Theses in the year
1517 exposed what he regarded as the abusive practices of the Church. These
discriminatory practices included the selling or commercialising indulgences to
people promising them to rid them of their sins and guilt. Due to the challenge
posed by Reformation, the religious power and political hold of the papacy was
greatly reduced. This directly led to the development of space for new forms of
political power to rise. With this, “ground was created for the development of a
new form of political identity- national identity” (Held 1989:34). This can be
called the first stage in the rise of the modern nation state.
Two different forms of political regimes started developing from the Fifteenth to
the Eighteenth century in Europe. These were “the ‘absolute’ monarchies in
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France, Prussia, Austria, Spain and Russia, among other places, and the Evolution of State in
Western Europe
‘constitutional’ monarchies and republics found in England and Holland” (Held
1989:34). Absolutism basically meant the development of an all-powerful bigger
state created by engulfing or absorbing the smaller and weaker territories into its
larger structural ambit. This ensured that there was a bigger unified territory with
a common system of law and order. This was to be led by a single unitary
sovereign head which came to be known as the absolutist monarch (Held
1989:35). Political authority hence became completely centralised in the monarch
based on the theory of the ‘divine right of the king’. This means that the
absolutist powers of the monarch/king were justified on the ground that he
derived his power directly from God and therefore could not be questioned.
The increased power of the monarch led to the development of a new centralised
administrative system involving a permanent bureaucracy and an army. Hence
absolutism of the monarch led to a process of uniformity in terms of
administration, law and order, economy and society/culture across the territory.
Therefore, within these territories, such variations were decreasing but at the
same time, these variations/differences were increasing among the territories
controlled by different monarchs. David Held (1989:36) writes that “six ensuing
developments were of great significance in the history of the states system:
(1) The growing coincidence of territorial boundaries with a uniform system
of rule;
(2) The creation of new mechanism of law making and enforcement;
(3) The centralization of administrative power;
(4) The alteration and extension of fiscal management;
(5) The formalization of relations among states through the development of
diplomacy and diplomatic institutions; and
(6) The introduction of a standing army”.
Hence, the formation of absolute monarchies became the basis for the further
development of the state system in Western Europe. The countless wars that were
fought to consolidate the power of the monarch in his territory ultimately led to
the re-drawing of the map of Europe several times. However, this ensured that
the territorial consolidation became a prime motive, thereby establishing the
principle of sovereignty among the various monarchs. Hence “absolutism and the
inter-state system it initiated were the proximate sources of the modern state”
(Held 1989:36).

8.5 RISE OF THE MODERN STATE AND

SOVEREIGNTY
Before the formation of the modern state in Europe, common people owed their
political allegiance either to the local ruler, the church, the monarch or to other
religious/political head. Depending on the shift of power among these parties due
to constant strife, the political allegiance of the people also shifted accordingly.
This intricate relationship between common people and the religious/political
ruler had to break for the notion of the modern state to arise. This is because the
foundation of the modern state is based on the concept of an impersonal political
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State in authority/order. Impersonal meaning not related/connected to any particular
Contemporary
Perspective person. In terms of authority, an impersonal order is deemed to be fairer than a
personalised order where favouritism or nepotism is likely to be more rampant.
“Similarly, it was only when human beings were no longer thought of as merely
dutiful subjects of God, an emperor or a monarch that the notion could begin to
take hold that they, as ‘individuals’, ‘persons’ or ‘a people’, were capable of
being active citizens of a new political order- citizens of their state” (Held
1989:37).
The modern state is deeply linked to the concept of sovereignty. Sovereignty
basically means supreme legitimate power/authority over a polity. The concept of
sovereignty mainly developed in the Sixteenth century as a major theme of
political thought (Held 1989:38). The major philosophers associated with this
concept are Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke
and others.

8.5.1. State Sovereignty

Jean Bodin is said to have provided the “first statement of the modern theory of
sovereignty: that there must be within every political community or state a
determinate sovereign body whose powers are recognized by the community as
the rightful or legitimate basis of authority” (Held 1989:39). Bodin published his
treatise titled Six Books of the Republic in 1576 within the backdrop of the
religious and civil wars in France. He argued for the establishment of a supreme
power/central authority in the form of an absolute monarch for bringing about
order and stability. More importantly, Bodin outlined that the sovereign has
undivided power to impose laws over its subjects regardless of their consent. For
Bodin, law was “nothing else than the command of the sovereign in the exercise
of his sovereign power” (Held 1989:40). Hence his theory of sovereignty clearly
gave absolute powers to the sovereign over and above the consent of the subjects.
However, he also emphasized that this power of the sovereign had to be
exercised keeping in account certain rules based on divine law and fundamental
customary laws of the political community. Sovereignty may be unlimited, but
the sovereign is bound in morals and religion to respect the laws of God, nature
and custom (Held 1989: 40). Essentially, he was of the view that “while the
sovereign is the rightful head of the state, he is so by virtue of his office not his
person.” Bodin outlined that sovereignty is a constitutive characteristic of the
state and his clear preference was for a monarchical form of government.
Thomas Hobbes further strengthened the notion of state sovereignty in his book
titled Leviathan (16510. He did so by using the mechanism of the ‘social
contract’ theory which posits that people have consented (either explicitly or
implicitly) to giving up some of their powers to a ruler in return for provision of
security and stability. Hobbes argued his case by providing a hypothetical
situation of the ‘state of nature’ which is a state of people before the existence of
a state/government. According to Hobbes, such a condition resulted in a ‘war of
every one against every one’ and hence life of every person became ‘solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and short’. In order to avoid such a state of war, Hobbes
posited that “individuals ought willingly to surrender their rights of self-
120 government to a powerful single authority--thereafter authorized to act on their
behalf—because, if all individuals do this simultaneously, the condition would be Evolution of State in
Western Europe
created for effective political rule, and for security and peace in the long term”
(Held 1989:41). This powerful single authority would be the state which would
possess absolute and undivided sovereignty. Most importantly, Hobbes outlined
that the sovereign was not a party to this contract among individuals and hence
an agent in its own right. It was an “ ‘Artificial Man’, defined by permanence and
sovereignty, ‘giving life and motion’ to society and body politics’ ” (Held
1989:40). Only such a framework would be able to guarantee the life of life and
security of the citizens inside the state. Hobbes has provided one of the most
comprehensive justification for the absolute power conferred on the state.

8.5.2. Popular Sovereignty

The arguments advanced by Bodin and Hobbes for absolute sovereignty has
given rise to a number of questions. The most fundamental of which was where
sovereignty should reside, with the state, the ruler, the monarch or …the people?
There were also questions related to the legitimate scope of state action, that is,
what ought to be the form and scope of sovereign power? This brought to the
forefront the discourse on popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty posits that
consent of the people is one of fundamental basis by which the authority of the
state can be justified. The main pioneers of this concept were John Locke and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. John Locke, an English philosopher who lived from
1632 to 1704, published Two Treatises of Government in 1689, where he put
forward his version of the social contract theory. According to Locke,
sovereignty in reality lies with the people. It is the people who transfer this power
to the state so that it can protect its life, liberty and property. David Held
(1989:43) writes, “It is important to emphasize that, in Locke’s account, political
authority is bestowed by individuals on government for the purpose of pursuing
the ends of the governed; and should these ends fail to be represented adequately,
the final judges are the people—the citizens—who can dispense both their
deputies and, if need be, with the existing form of government itself” (1989:43).
Corollary, Locke supported the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that ended with the
English crown accepting constitutional limits on his authority. Locke’s theory
rested on his theory of natural rights where he asserted that human beings are
born with the natural rights of life, liberty and property. Natural rights are those
rights that apply to everyone irrespective of which place they belonged to and no
institution/state/government can take away these rights. Hence “the government
rules, and its legitimacy is sustained, by the ‘consent’ of individuals” (Held
1989:43). Locke’s theory propounded that supreme power/sovereignty originates
with the people and it is transferred by the people to the state for the objective of
protecting their natural rights. This became the foundation for the concept of
popular sovereignty.
Jean-Jacques Rosseau (1712-1778) took this concept further by advancing that “a
coherent account of political power requires an explicit and formal
acknowledgement that sovereignty originates in the people and ought to stay
there” (Held 1989:44). He postulated that this could only take place through the
model of the “general will” where individual citizens themselves will enact laws
towards the fulfilment of common good after a process of deliberation and 121
State in discussion. “All citizens should meet together to decide what is best for the
Contemporary
Perspective community and enact the appropriate laws. The ruled should be the rulers…”
(Held 1989:45).

Check Your Progress Exercise 2

Note: i) Use the space given below for your answer.
ii) See the end of the unit for tips for your answer.
1). What role did the rise of absolute monarchies play in the development of
modern states?
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2). What is Sovereignty? How did it set the modern nation state apart from other
political entities?
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8.6 THE FORMALISATION OF MODERN-NATION

STATES AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY
“It took a long time for national states-- relatively centralized, differentiated, and
autonomous organizations successfully claiming priority in the use of force with
large, contiguous, and clearly bounded territories –to dominate the European
map” (Tilly 1990:43). In 990 A D, the European landmass was politically
fragmented with divided and overlapping authority. However, by “…1490 the
future remained open; despite the frequent use of the word “kingdom,” empires
of one sort or another claimed most of the European landscape, and federations
remained viable in some parts of the continent. Sometime after 1490, Europeans
foreclosed those alternative opportunities, and set off decisively toward the
creation of a system consisting almost entirely of relatively autonomous national
states” (Tilly 1990:44). There was increasing centralisation of power in Europe
under the rule of the absolutist rulers. Such moves in the practical life of politics
were backed in the ideational domain by the theories of sovereignty, especially
state sovereignty at this point of time. In due course, with the rise of the notion of
popular sovereignty, there was a push for accountability from the rulers and
democratic governance. Importantly, the concept of sovereignty underlined the
foundation of the modern nation state which was an impersonal structure of
governance.
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 The Peace of Westphalia is a collection of settlement treaties signed Evolution of State in
Western Europe
in 1648 in the cities of Osnabrück and Münster located in present day
Germany. It “brought to an end the Eighty Years’ War [1568-1648]
between Spain and the Dutch and the German phase of the Thirty Years’
War [1618-1648]” (Encyclopedia Britannica). The Peace of Westphalia has
been characterized as a watershed moment in the history of international
relations as it propounded that these treaties finally heralded the inter-state
system that the world is contemporarily divided into. Hence the conception
of the international order based on this inter-state system is often referred to
as the ‘Westphalian’ system (Held 1989:77). It entrenched the principle of
sovereignty in inter-state affairs for the first time. The model of Westphalia
established that “the world consists of, and if divided by, sovereign states
which recognize no superior authority” (Held 1989:78). Sovereignty meant
that the state had the sole power of jurisdiction in its own territory, which
came to be known as ‘internal sovereignty’. It also meant that in relations
to other states, there existed formal equality which became the foundation
on which to establish independent diplomatic relations among states. The
latter came to be known as ‘external sovereignty’.

David Held (1989:48-49) has outlined the most “prominent innovations” of the
modern state: -
 “Territoriality - While all states have made claims to territories, it is only
with the modern state system that exact borders have been fixed.
 Control of the means of violence - The claim to hold a monopoly on force
and the means of coercion (sustained by a standing army and the police)
became possible only with the ‘pacification’ of people- the breaking
down of rival centres of power and authority- in the nation state. This
element of the modern state was not attained until the nineteenth century,
and remained a fragile achievement in many countries.
 Impersonal structure of power - The idea of an impersonal and sovereign
political order- that is, a legally circumscribed structure of power with
supreme jurisdiction over a territory---could not prevail while political
rights, obligations and duties were conceived as closely tied to religion
and the claims of traditional privileged groups….
 Legitimacy - It was only when claims to ‘divine right’ or ‘state right’ were
challenged and eroded that it became possible for human beings as
‘individuals’ and as ‘peoples’ to win a place as ‘active citizens’ in the
political order. The loyalty of citizens became something that had to be
won by modern states: invariably this involved a claim by the state to be
legitimate because it reflected and/or represented the views and interests
of its citizens.” (Held 1989: 48-49).
It is argued that the development modern state and its evolution into a
representative liberal democracy in Western Europe was a result of many factors
and processes. David Held (1989:52) has outlined three “‘macro patterns’: [1]
war and militarism, [2] the emergence of capitalism, and [3] the struggle for 123
State in citizenship”. Held posits that the nation states went on to become the dominant
Contemporary
Perspective form of political existence on an international level because of these three
temporally long drawn out and complex processes. First, with regard to the role
of war and militarism, Gianfranco Poggi (2001:99) has asserted that the modern
state was initially intended for purposes of “war making” in order to establish and
maintain its might. This “war making” in return played a role in further
strengthening the structures and processes of the modern state itself. Charles
Tilly (1985:181) has written that the agents of the state carry on four different
activities of first, “war making: eliminating or neutralizing their own rivals
outside the territories in which they have clear and continuous priority as
wielders of force”; second, “state making: eliminating or neutralizing their rivals
inside those territories”; third, “protection: eliminating or neutralizing the
enemies of their clients”; and fourth, “extraction: acquiring the means to carry
out the first three activities -war making, state making, and protection” (Tilly
1985:181). Hence, many “state makers were locked into an open-ended and
ruthless competition in which as Tilly put it, ‘most contenders lost’ (1975, p.15).
The successful cases of state-making such as Britain, France and Spain were the
‘survivors’” (Held 1989:54).
Secondly, with regard to relationship between capitalism and the formation of the
modern state, David Held (1989:71) has posited that modern states “were
economically successful because of the rapid growth of their markets from the
late Sixteenth century, and particularly after the mid-Eighteenth century…” The
sustained process of capital accumulation led to the economic basis of the
centralized state to expand. This in turn reduced the war making capacities of
other smaller states with fragmented political structures or ones that relied on
more traditional forms of coercive power (Held 1989:71-72). Held (1989:60) also
underlined that after the decline of the Muslim world which had dominated
world-wide trade relations around AD 1000, it was Europe that burst forth
outward towards the world. “The growth of interconnections between states and
societies—that is, of globalization--became progressively shaped by the
expansion of Europe. Globalization initially meant ‘European globalization’
(Held 1989:60). The states of Europe were helped in the endeavour by their
military and strong naval forces. These developments furthered the process of
colonising the rest of the world. The Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British and
French scrambled for colonies in Asia and Africa. The increases in the resources
of Europe by draining the wealth of the colonies further strengthen its own
system. “In particular, European expansion became a major source of
development of state activity and efficiency” (Held 1989:61).
Third, concerning the struggle for citizenship and the rise of liberal democracy,
Held (1989:69) highlights three reasons as to why “citizenship crystallize in
many Western polities in the form of civil and political rights” ultimately leading
to the rise of the liberal democratic modern nation state. These are, first, the
“reciprocity of power” where national governments came to be dependent on the
cooperation of the population especially in times of emergency like wars.
Second, the weakening of the traditional forms of legitimacy based particularly
on religion and property rights. This led to alternative notions of legitimacy of
the political authority which was based on a reciprocal relationship between the
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governors and the governed. Third, the liberal representative democracy did not Evolution of State in
Western Europe
threaten the growing autonomy of the civil and economic society. These three
reasons collaborated to the ultimate development of the liberal democratic state.
However, the path was long drawn and many battles had to be won by different
groups of people. Women have had to struggle in a major way for their basic
rights in almost all parts of the world, be it in the east or the west. Women were
granted voting rights in France in 1944 and in Britain in 1928. “From the pursuit
of ‘no taxation without representation’ in the Seventeenth-century England to the
diverse struggles to achieve a genuinely universal franchise in the Nineteenth and
Twentieth centuries, advocates of greater accountability in government have
sought to establish satisfactory means of choosing, authorizing and controlling
political decisions” (Held 1989:70).

Check Your Progress Exercise 3

Note: i) Use the space given below for your answer.
ii) See the end of the unit for tips for your answer.
1). Identify the three macro patterns outlined by David Held that led to the
development of liberal representative democratic state.
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8.7 LET US SUM UP

The rise and evolution of the modern nation state needs to be understood as a
long drawn out and uneven process situated in Western Europe. It needs to be
understood against the backdrop of the break-up of the medieval world which
was a place of divided and overlapping authority and religious conflicts. Certain
developments led to a change in this context. These developments included the
Reformation, the rise of international capital, trade and European expansion
through colonialism, the rise of absolutist monarchies and the theoretical
discourse of sovereignty. These became the foundational backdrop that led to the
development of modern nation states. These states have themselves evolved from
monarchical forms to that of liberal representative democracies.

8.8 REFERENCES
Das, Swaha (2008). ‘The State’ in Rajeev Bhargava and Ashok Acharya (eds)
Political Theory. New Delhi: Pearson Longman.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, [Link]
Westphalia

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State in Ertman, Thomas. (2005). ‘State Formation and State Building in Europe’, in
Contemporary
Perspective Thomas Janoski, Robert Alford, Alexander Hicks and Mildred A. Schwartz (eds),
The Handbook of Political Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hay, Colin and Michael Lister. (2006). ‘Introduction: Theories of the State’ in
Colin Hay, Michael Lister and David Marsh (eds). The State Theories and Issues.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Held, David. (1989). Political Theory and the Modern State. London: Polity
Press.
Poggi, Gianfranco. (2001). ‘Formation and Form-Theories of State Formation’ in
Kate Nash and Alan Scot. (eds). The Blackwell Companion to Political
Sociology. London: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Tilly, Charles. (1985). ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’ in
Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol. (eds). Bringing the State Back In.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tilly, Charles. (1990). ‘Europe Cities and States’ in Coercion, Capital and
European States, AD 990-1990. Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell.

8.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress Exercise 1
1) Your answer should highlight following points: i) Montevideo Convention on
the Rights and Duties of States, and ii) Permanent population; Defined territory;
Government; Sovereignty
2) Your answer should highlight following points: Divided authority, overlapping
jurisdiction, religious conflict, instability and constant war

Check Your Progress Exercise 2

1) Your answer should highlight their role in bringing uniformity in law-and
order, administration, economy, society and culture within the territory
2) It is supreme legitimate power; Modern sovereign states are characterised by
impersonal structure of authority internally; formal equality among states and
acceptance of the principle of non-interference in others internal matters.

Check Your Progress Exercise 3

1) Your answer should elaborate the following points: i) War and militarism; ii)
The emergence of capitalism; and, iii) The struggle for citizenship.

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