PO101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Nationstates, Laissez-Faire
Document Summary
Regular patterns of behaviour that give stability and predictability to social life. Informal: no clear written rules, such as the family, social class, or ethnic group. Formal: codified rules, such as governments, political parties, bureaucracies, legislatures, constitutions, law courts. Structure of rule and authority within a particular geographical area. State capacity: the ability of a government to administer its territory effectively. Four basic forms of state capacity: extractive capacity, steering capacity, legitimation capacity, coercive capacity. War making: elimination of external rivals, produces armies, navies and supporting services. State making/reinforcing/control: elimination of internal enemies, produces instruments of surveillance and control (police) Protection of clients (citizens: in addition to armies and police, state produce courts and representative assemblies. Extraction (taxes: acquiring the means of carrying other state functions, produces fiscal and accounting structures for the modern state. Popular resistnace to war and state making through violence makes a difference between various nation-states: examples of england, france and germany.
