4
Historical-sociological concepts (Weber and Giddens)
Understanding shares
features of both mainstream IR and the Marxist approaches, but goes
beyond both?
Max
Weber
- classic sociological definition: ‘A compulsory political organization with continuous operations will be
called a "state" 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’, in a given
territory.
- modern state institutions = prime type of bureaucracy: rigid, formalistic, rule-bound,
hierarchical command-structures, the typical institutional form
of legal-rational modernity.
- Like IR theorists, emphasises territorial aspect;
'legitimacy' is similar to IR concept of 'sovereignty'.
- Like Marx, concerned with institutions (state
bureaucracies) + centrality of control of
violence within society.
Anthony Giddens: the
nation-state combines two of main
institutional clusters of modern society:
- surveillance ( collecting information, monitoring, policing): states achieve control over society and
eliminate violence within
their borders;
- warfare: states use this control
over society to mobilise violence
against other states.
The modern state = a ‘bordered power container’.
Within territory, society is pacified, including what
Marx called the ‘dull compulsion’ of capitalist relations.
Outside territory, violent relations with other states. Borders
= lines of violence demarcate the ordered world inside the nation-state,
Giddens - a more sophisticated sociological underpinning to the
conventional IR view of the state?