ABSTRACT

Societies and smaller groups throughout history have formed organizations that provide and sustain them with security, access to resources, social rules, and means of continuity. Frequently they also devised, embodied, or sought more ephemeral objectives or qualities such as identity, glory, renown, and reputation. The institutional forms they have taken have varied greatly. Even terms we commonly use to designate polities-tribes, clans, empires, principalities, city-states, protectorates, sultanates, or duchies-would not begin to cover the actual diversity of political forms. […]

Our concern, however, is with states, the only contemporary political organizations that enjoy a unique legal status-sovereignty-and that, unlike other types of polities, have created and modified enduring public international institutions. They are thereby the foundational actors of international relations. Other types of polities may ultimately become states but until they have transformed themselves into public bodies-moral agents representing some sort of community-they do not have the legal standing of states. […]

Polities that had many but not all the features of states include the Han Empire, the Greek city-states, the Roman state, the Aztec and Inca empires, the Byzantine Empire, and the Italian city-states. We would not include in this list thousands of polities that once may have been politically and militarily formidable but otherwise lacked most of the critical attributes of statehood. The Visigoths, Lombards, Franks, Vandals, and Huns, for example, are better known for their depredations than for political continuity and the creation of international institutions. Others such as the Cimbri, Knights Templars, Samnites, Taurisci, Tigurini, Carbo, or Frisians, have disappeared into the mists of

history. They lacked the essential qualities of statehood that provide polities with both legitimacy and longevity. What are these? A non-inclusive list would contain at least the following: (1) fixed position in space (territoriality); (2) the politics of a public realm (differentiation between private and public realms); (3) institutionalized political organizations (continuity independent from specific leaders or other individuals); (4) and a multiplicity of governmental tasks and activities (multifunctionalism), based on (5) legitimizing authority structures. […]

The late seventeenth-century Westphalian state

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Europe remained dotted with hundreds of different polities, overlapping jurisdictions, a low degree of differentiation between private and public realms, and divided loyalties. No prince could predictably prevail over his feudal barons, independent towns, or even church authorities. To muster military strength he had to rely on purchasing armies or making alliances with subordinates who had their own-though seasonal-military capacities. By 1700, in contrast, most princes could effectively suppress most challenges to their authority, although the costs of doing so were often ruinous. […]

Practices: the great power grab

The struggle to establish central authority-to bring to life the various assertions of internal sovereignty-could not be conducted unilaterally by the royal figures. They faced resistance and opposition from a variety of sources, including towns and cities, the landed aristocracy, the church, and the peasantry. In order to prevail they had to make alliances, concede charters and grants of autonomy, buy off the aristocracy, purchase loyalty through the sale of offices, put down rebellions and resistance with force, and, as in the case of Peter’s Russia, physically annihilate the opposition. Power and authority during the medieval era had resided in many centers, including the church, local assemblies and councils, and in the various landed estates, towns, duchies, and principalities. In the construction of the Absolutist State, those claiming sovereignty had to curtail the ancient rights and privileges of these bodies. […]

The issue of taxation was thus critical. Until the fifteenth century, approximately, princes could pay for most of the very limited functions of government from income deriving from their own estates. By the seventeenth century, the costs of administration and war had grown dramatically and no royal household had the means to sustain them.