Poggi+1978+Development+of+Modern+State

This is my summary of Poggi's The Development of Modern State

Definition - the modern state: “a complex set of institutional arrangements for rule, operating through the continuous and regulated activities of individuals acting as occupants of offices”. The modern state rules over a “territorially bounded society” and monopolizes “all faculties and facilities pertaining to that business”.

Two definitions of politics: Economistic (politics as Allocation, Easton) vs. Security-focused (Friend/Foe, Schmitt). Synthesis : state formation as an instance of “institutional differentiation” (Weberian). - esp. the institutoinalization of private-social/public-political divide (and within spheres).

Empirical case: transitions feudalism-(12-14 cent)-Standestaat-(16-17 cent)-absolutism in continental Western Europe (mainly Germany and France).

Feudal system of rule made a network of interpersonal relations into the chief carrying structure of rule (35). Weakness: because the Feudal state shifts effective power downward toward the lower links in the chain it eventually undermines itself, making unified rule over large areas increasingly difficult. [power personified in the lord].

- transition due to: the rise of towns (as centers of solidary action but which don’t wish to gain independence from the general rule) - into:

Standestaat (polity of estates): Dualism as a structural principle of rule: territorial ruler and the Stande make up the polity, but as separate and mutually acknowledged political centers. An ongoing process of absorbing small weak territories, formation of small no. of mutually independent states, in an ongoing power struggle among them. “power” as a collection of rights and pregoratives.


 * transition due to: a new set of political demands and opportunities. Need to make internal rule more organized, continuous, calculable and effective.

Absolutis t: development of bureaucracy (Prussia), rule of law ("from a framework of into an instrument for rule") and development of civil society (through mercantilism): bourgeoisie self-defined as a ‘class’, a ‘public’, not an ‘estate’. “Power” more unitary and abstract - detached from the physical person of the ruler, it stood for a project, an entity. Absolutismsurvived thanks to interstate competition and the economic support extracted from expanding mercantile interests.

- Transition due to: political ‘break’ (revolution), ideas of nationalism. but there’s also continuity

19th century constitutional state: "most mature embodiment of 'the modern state' "(xii), for its "advanced and sophisticated process of social differentiation (95). Characteristics: unified sovereignty within a system of competing states, functional specificity; formal, complex organization, legal-rational legitimacy, rule of law and depersonalized power, constitutional guarantees for rights of citizens, internal civility; centrality of representative institutions.

**Critique** Skocpol, Journal of Modern History (52:2), June 1980: History is missing: concrete social and political conflicts are not analyzed; transitions from type to type are not grounded in times and places; and cross-national variations are not systematically explored. Those exist in Anderson’s //Passages from Anitiquity to Feudalism and Linteages of the Absolutist State// (1974) and Tilly’s //The Formation of National States in Western Europe// (1975) (ed.).