What are territorial sovereign states, and why are they the dominant political formation today?

Territorial sovereign states are political structures where a centralized power has a monopoly on legitimate violence (Weber) over a well-defined territory. They are the dominant political formation in the present day.

Sovereign states’ centralized power contrasts with earlier feudal states, where lords have their own militaries and legal systems, as well as city leagues and other loose federations with similarly de-centralized power structures. City-states like those of Italy in the middle ages, on the other hand, have a centralized power structure but not clear territorial boundaries. Though the city-state wields unmitigated power over surrounding towns, border towns were only weakly affiliated with their city-states and easily defected if another state invaded.

Olson argued that territorial states form because, in an otherwise Hobbesian all-against-all state of selfish violence, it’s more profitable to be a “stationary bandit” and monopolize violent resource extraction over a single area for long periods of time than compete with other “roving bandits” who don’t make territorial claims. This is because predictable theft by one group allows those robbed to produce more over time than victims of sporadic and unpredictable theft; to further increase their gain, bandits would even be incentivized to provide public services like law enforcement and transportation infrastructure to their victims to increase their productivity. Eventually stationary bandits are legitimated as governments, and their regular theft as taxation. (In posing this theoretical foundation for statehood, Olson rejects social contract explanations as ahistorical.)

In addition to superior resource extraction ability, the centralized structure of sovereign states allows them to handle international trade and other negotiations better, Spruyt argues, creating a knock-on effect where states recognize each other (ex. at the Peace of Westphalia) and not other political formations, helping outcompete them. Due to this self-perpetuating quality, former Asian, South American, and African colonies that gained independence in the last two centuries were also forced externally to become states rather than adopt other political structures, making colonization the number one source of statehood by count.

Extracting resources from a population by force is costly, though. Fabbe points out that long-term state effectiveness requires social disciplining of the population through education, religion, and law to make government institutions mundanely legitimate. As a specific example, Fabbe argues that the success of post-Ottoman Empire states were determined by their ability to co-opt existing religious institutions, which held significant moral authority over the state’s population.

But a strong national identity and efficient resource extraction systems (taxation) are difficult to create in ordinary conditions, Herbst argues. In wartime, on the other hand, national identity converges with the state and drastic taxation changes are politically feasible. Hence Herbst argues that war between states weeds out those that would not have been successful, and strengthens those who survive, echoing Tilly’s argument that “war made the state, and the state made war.”

---

Originally written for the following assignment:

Limit: 500 words

Prompt:

1. How are territorial sovereign states different from other types of political formations?
2. Using either theory or history, explain at least one argument regarding where states come from or how they arise (anywhere in the world).
3. Briefly explain two hypotheses as to what accounts for variations in the degree or effectiveness of statehood around the world.