THE NATURE OF STATES: Joseph Tainter

States are, to begin with, territorially organized. That is to say, membership is at least partly determined by birth or residence in a territory, rather than by real or fictive kin relations. Illustrating this, as pointed out by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, was the transformation from the Merovingian title 'King of the Franks' to the Capetian 'King of France'. The territorial basis both reflects and influences the nature of statehood.

States contrast with relatively complex tribal societies (e.g., chiefdoms) in a number of ways. In states, a ruling authority monopolizes sovereignty and delegates all power. This to be professional and is largely divorced from the bonds of kinship. This ruling class supplies the personnel for government, which is a specialized decision-making organization with a monopoly of force, and with the power to draft for war or work, levy and collect taxes, and decree and enforce laws. The government is legitimately constituted, which is to say that a common, society-wide ideology exists that serves in part to validate the political organization of society. And states, of course, are in general larger and more populous than tribal societies, so that social category are both possible and necessary.

States tend to be overwhelmingly concerned with maintaining their territorial integrity. This is, indeed, one of their primary characteristics. States are the only kind of human society that does not ordinarily undergo short-term cycles of formation and dissolution.

States are internally differentiated, as an illustration at the beginning of this chapter makes clear. Occupational specialization is a prime characteristic, and is often reflected in patterns of residence. Emile Durkheim, in a classic work, recognized that the evolution from primitive to complex societies witnessed the transformation from groups organized on the basis of what he labeled 'mechanical solidarity' (homogeneity; lack of cultural and economic differentiation among the members of a society) to those based on 'organic solidarity' (heterogeneity; cultural and economic differentiation requiring interaction and greater cohesiveness). Organic solidarity has increased throughout history, and in states is the preponderant form of organization.

By virtue of their territorial extensiveness, states are often differentiated, not only economically, but also culturally and ethnically. Both economic and cultural heterogeneity appear to be functionally related to the centralization and administration that are defining characteristics of states.

Despite an institutionalized authority structure, an ideological basis, and a monopoly of force, the rulers of states share at least one thing with chiefs and Rig Man: the need to establish and constantly reinforce legitimacy. In complex as well as simpler societies, leadership activities and societal resources must be continuously devoted to this purpose. Hierarchy and complexity, as noted, are rare in human history, and where present require constant reinforcement. No societal leader is ever far from the need to validate position and policy, and no hierarchical society can be organized without explicit provision for this need.

Legitimacy is the belief of the populace and the elites that rule is proper and valid, that the political world is as it should be. It pertains to individual rulers, to decisions, to broad policies, to parties, and to entire forms of government. The support that members are willing to extend to a political system is essential for its survival. Decline in support will not necessarily lead to the fall of a regime, for to a certain extent coercion can replace commitment to ensure compliance. Coercion, though, is a costly? ineffective strategy which can never be completely or permanently successful. Even with coercion, decline in popular support below some critical minimum leads infallibly to political failure. Establishing moral validity is a less costly and more effective approach.

Complex societies are focused on a center, which may not be located physically where it is literally implied, but which is the symbolic source of the framework of society. It is not only the location of legal and governmental institutions, but is the source of order, and the symbol of moral authority and social continuity. The center partakes of the nature of the sacred. In this sense, every complex society has an official religion. The moral authority and sacred aura of the center not only are essential in maintaining complex societies, but were crucial in their emergence. One critical impediment to the development of complexity in stateless societies was the need to integrate many localized, autonomous units, which would each have their own peculiar interests, feuds, and jealousies. A ruler drawn from any one of these units is automatically suspect by the others, who rightly fear favoritism toward his/her natal group and locality, particularly in dispute resolution. This problem has crippled many modern African nations.

The solution to this structural limitation was to explicitly link leadership in early complex societies to the supernatural. When a leader is imbued with an aura of sacred neutrality identification with natal group and territory can be superseded by ritually sanctioned authority which rises above purely local concerns. An early complex society is likely to have an avowedly sacred basis of legitimacy, in which disparate, formerly independent groups are united by an overarching level of shared ideology, symbols, and cosmology.

Supernatural sanctions are then a response to the stresses of change from a kin-based society to a highly-structured one. They may be necessitated in part by an ineffective concentration of coercive force in emerging complex societies. Sacred legitimization provides a binding framework until real vehicles of power have been consolidated. Once this has been achieved the need for religious integration declines, and indeed conflict between secular and sacred authorities may thereafter increase. Yet as noted, the sacred aura of the center never disappears, not even in contemporary secular governments. Astute politicians have always exploited this fact. It is a critical element in the maintenance of legitimacy.

Despite the undoubted power of supernatural legitimization, support for leadership must also have a genuine material basis. Easton suggests that legitimacy declines mainly under conditions of what he calls 'output failure.' Output failure occurs where authorities are unable to meet the demands of the support population, or do not take anticipatory actions to counter adversities. Outputs can be political or material. Output expectations are continuous, and impose on leadership a never-ending need to mobilize resources to maintain support. The attainment and perpetuation of legitimacy thus require more than the manipulation of ideological symbols. They require the assessment and commitment of real resources, at satisfactory levels, and are a genuine cost that any complex society must bear. Legitimacy is a recurrent factor in the modern study of the nature of complex societies, and is pertinent to understanding their collapse.