Abstract
Contemporary societies are marked by the shrinking of the nation state. From their very beginning, nation states have seduced into the pride of nationalism. It is an undue pride, as it has led to wars and discord. Yet to understand the specific seductions of the modern state we have to consider whether the privilege of the so-called monopoly of power that the defenders of the modern states say is necessary, really is necessary.
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Notes
- 1.
Weber, Politics as a Vocation, in Weber 1958, 77f: “Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those associations which are designated as political ones: today the state, or historically, those associations which have been the predecessors of the modern state. Ultimately, one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force…” The second quote is from Weber, “Zwischenbetrachtung,” Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie I, 546 and 547, my tr.—Remarkably, Weber distinguished here between intrinsic and extrinsic goals.
- 2.
In his Zwischenbetrachtung.
- 3.
Habermas 2012, 243–7, critically comments the subjection of the political to the state.
- 4.
Hobbes, calling the modern state by the name of the biblical monster Leviathan was well aware of the dangers of the state. Russell (1932), www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html p. 1, warned: “In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers.” This was written when states had not yet shown the degree of evil they seduce into.
- 5.
See Rousseau’s two Discourses and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government §93, comparing the dangers of stateless societies with foxes and pole cats and the dangers of absolutist states with lions and bears.
- 6.
The description originates in Weber, Politics as a Vocation, in Weber 1958, 78: “Today…we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory,” and Weber 1922, §17, p. 29, defining the modern state as a “political” institution “wenn und soweit sein Verwaltungsstab erfolgreich das Monopol legitimen physischen Zwanges für die Durchführung der Ordnungen in Anspruch nimmt,” which Parsons in Weber 1978, 54, translates as: “if and insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.” Parsons translated “order” rather than “orders” for Weber’s plural form “Ordnungen.”
- 7.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, 2005, 254ff. Cp. Hardt and Negri 2004,163f; R. Hall, Th. Biersteker, eds., The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, Cambridge: CUP 2002.
- 8.
The subsidiarity principle is appealed to in the Treaty of the European Union and in Catholic social teaching.
- 9.
Berger 2010; Globalisierung und Entstaatlichung des Rechts, vol. 1, ed. Jürgen Schwarze, vol. 2, ed. Reinhard Zimmermann, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008.
- 10.
Cp. Toulmin 1990, 197f.
- 11.
Cp. Benjamin Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World, New Haven: Yale UP 2013.
- 12.
Cp. David Brooks, “Good Bye, Organization Man,” New York Times 9.16.2014, the Ebola epidemic.
- 13.
Some Western intellectuals such as Jacques 2009 endorse the claim of the present government of China that China has its own non-universal values that give special rights to the government.
- 14.
Robert Kagan 2014, Pt. II, reports that F.D. “Roosevelt planned to share global management among the ‘Four Policemen’—the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China.”
- 15.
Scahill 2013 demonstrates the moral dangers of the US role of the world policeman.
- 16.
Kennan 1993, 143, 149.
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Steinvorth, U. (2016). The Shrinking of the Nation State. In: Pride and Authenticity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-34117-0_24
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