Quentin Skinner: “The State”

 

Section I [3.1]

Before Hobbes’s asserting that the duties of subjects were owed to states rather than individuals, “the concept of public power had been treated in far more personal and charismatic terms”.

Aim of the article: to trace the origin of the contemporary impersonal conception of the state.

 

Section II [3.2]

First usages of “state” refer to the quality of “stateliness” that belongs to kings above all and is intimately connected with display.  [Recall Tom DeLay’s comment:

Recently, as The Washington Post reported, DeLay and cronies lighted up cigars at Ruth's Chris Steak House in D.C., which is in a building owned by the Smithsonian and falls under a federal smoking ban.

A manager politely cited government policy and asked DeLay to snuff out his stogie.

"I AM the federal government," DeLay bellowed at him, and then stormed out.”

From: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/123561_joel26.html

 

By the end of the 14th century, state also applied to the condition of a realm (as in the state of the realm).  This was influenced by classical Roman authors, and was best served by pursuing the public good.

 

Section III [5.2]

Next phase, starting with the independent, self-governing cities of 12th century Italy: there the best way to achieve “stateliness” for a city was deemed to be under a republican government.  This gave way, with the rise of hereditary signori, to a call for wise princes.

Preconditions for stateliness (of Princes):

  1. Preserving the character of current regime (thus status and stato come to refer also to the presence of particular regimes, and not just individual rulers)
  2. Preserving the territories under one’s control (thus status and stato come to refer to area over which a ruler exercises control)
  3. Preserving control over existing institutions and power structures
    With this third precondition came the extension of stato to refer to institutions.  Machiavelli is the first great writer clearly to distinguish institutions of lo stato from those who have charge of them

 

Section IV [8.2]

That said, even Machiavelli does not “articulate a recognizable concept of the state with anything like complete self-consciousness”. 

Another source of change of concept: Renaissance republicanism

Main assumption: all power is liable to corrupt.

Corollaries:

  1. Only way to ensure that the laws promote the common good is to leave the whole body of citizens in charge of their own public affairs
  2. To ensure this, cities must maintain independence from outside powers
  3. The community as a whole must retain ultimate sovereign authority.

 

Here we have the beginnings of the idea that there is a distinct form of civil authority which is wholly autonomous and has a monopoly on legitimate force.

 

For these republicans, the administrators must be elected and are always subject to the laws and institutions of the city and must always act to promote the common good.  Rulers do not maintain “their” state, but the status or stato is the name of the apparatus of government that our rulers have a duty to maintain.

 

HOWEVER: the state, while distinguished from its rulers is not yet distinguished from the ruled.

 

Section V [13.1]

The modern conception of the state is “doubly impersonal” in that it is distinct from rulers and subjects.  The republican theorists managed the first, but not the second: for them the state was the people.  Even Locke continues this way of thinking, not distinguishing the powers of the state from the powers of the people.

The second distinction was made by the counter-revolutionary theorists, principally Hobbes, who rejected the divine right of Kings on the one hand, but on the other denied that power remained in the hands of the people.  That is, they were absolutists, without being monarchists.

 

Section VI [17.2-20]

Hegel is in Hobbes’s tradition, insisting on the distinction between civil society and the state.

Marx, on the other hand, is in the republican tradition, insisting that the state is usually just the tool of the ruling class.

 

What were some side-effects of this distinction between sovereign and state?  Conceptual revisions in other key political notions, for example:

·        Political Allegiance: originally allegiance to one’s sovereign as lord.  Replaced by the view

·        Treason: originally betraying an individual, then an offence against the king in his office as head of state

·        Sovereignty as display or majesty: now heads of state are supposed to be simple citizen-holders of office (anyone can be President)