10.1 Introduction
The concept of state occupies a central place in Political Science. The state touches every aspect of human life and has captured the attention of political philosophers since Plato. Understanding the state merely as an administrative machinery is to know only one aspect of it. Its full meaning emerges when understood in relation to civil society — the domain in which it operates.
Central questions: What is the state? What is civil society? What is the relationship between the two?
10.2 State and Civil Society: Meaning and Characteristics
Common usage equates society = civil society = political society = state. These are analytically distinct:
- Society: a generic term — the totality of social relationships, conscious or unconscious, deliberate or otherwise.
- Civil society: concerns matters relating to the public; extends to areas beyond the reach of political society (e.g., the family is part of civil society but political society does better to stay away from it).
- Political society: covers a wide range of directly or indirectly political activities — wider than the state when the latter is treated merely as a matter of governance.
- State: narrower — the system of governance and coercive institutions.
10.2.1 Meaning of State
The word stato appeared in Italy in the early 16th century in the writings of Machiavelli (1469–1527). It became common in England and France in the later 16th century. Staatskunst became the German equivalent of ragione di stato in the 17th century; Staatsrecht acquired the meaning of jus publicum (see Sabine, The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. XIV).
The state refers to: a land and a people + a unity of legal and political authority regulating the outstanding external relationships of men in society. It creates a system of order and control, vested with the legal power of using compulsion and coercion.
The state is found in its institutions:
- Legislature, executive, judiciary (create and enforce laws).
- Bureaucratic institutions attached to every executive branch.
- Military and police (called into operation when state will is challenged).
Ralph Miliband (The State in Capitalist Society): “These are the institutions — the government, the administration, the military and the police, the judicial branch, sub-central government and parliamentary assemblies — which make up the state.”
The state as governance also interacts with political parties, pressure groups, opposition, large industrial houses, religious and caste institutions, and trade unions — institutions existing outside the state system that influence, dominate, or collaborate with it.
Skocpol (States and Social Revolution) — the statist perspective: the state is “a set of administrative, policing and military organizations headed, and more or less well coordinated by, an executive authority.” It “first and fundamentally extracts resources from society and deploys these to create and support coercive and administrative organizations.”
Foucault (‘Truth and Power’): the state is built on power relations already existing in society — “the state can only operate on the basis of existing relations of domination and oppression in society.”
Neera Chandhoke (State and Civil Society): rejects both perspectives — “The statists concentrate on the state at the expense of society, and the theorists in the Foucauldian mode concentrate on social interaction at the expense of the state.” Her conclusion: the state “is a social relation because it is the codified power of the social formation.”
10.2.2 Meaning of Civil Society
Civil society embraces an entire range of assumptions, values, and institutions — political, social, and civil rights, the rule of law, representative institutions, a public sphere, and above all a plurality of associations.
David Held (Models of Democracy): civil society “is made up of areas of social life — the domestic world, the economic sphere, cultural activities and political interaction — which are organised by private or voluntary arrangements between individuals and groups outside the direct control of the state.”
Jürgen Habermas: civil society constitutes “the public sphere.”
John Dunn (Western Political Theory): civil society includes “the modern representative democratic republic.”
Chandhoke: civil society = “the public sphere where individuals come together for various purposes both for their self-interest and for the reproduction of an entity called society.” It is public because it is formally accessible to all, and in principle all are allowed entry as bearers of rights.
Historically, the concept came into existence when classical political economists sought to control the power of the Mercantilist State, and became a central plank of democratic movements in the 18th century.
10.2.3 Characteristics of State and Civil Society
State exists within society — this makes them analytically distinct.
Characteristics of the state:
- The state is organised power — it legitimises social relations through formal codes and institutions; this gives it a distinct, autonomous status from classes and contending factions.
- The state emerges as specifically political practices — defines binding decisions and enforces them, intervening in every aspect of social life.
- The state monopolises all means of coercion — no other organisation in society has this power.
- The state gives fixity to social relations and stability to society. As Chandhoke says, “the social order is constituted through the state and exists within the parameters laid down by the state.”
- The state exists within the framework of a given society — as society changes, the state responds; it always reflects changing social relations.
Liberal vs. Marxist views of civil society:
- Liberals: civil society presupposes democratic states, accountability, limits on state power, and responsiveness to the spontaneous life and interactions of civil society.
- Marxists: civil society is the arena of class conflicts, selfish competition, and exploitation; the state acts to protect the interests of the owning classes.
A comprehensive definition of civil society must include:
- State power must be controlled and made responsive through democratic practices of an independent civil society.
- Political accountability must reside in constitutions, laws, and also in Habermas’s “political public”: (i) people come together in free debate and discussion without state interference; (ii) discourse is accessible to all; (iii) there is a space for public discussion.
- Democratic norms and processes must be imbibed in the social order.
- Civil society is the public sphere — mediating the dialectic between private and public; it is a site where “the state is forbidden to shape public opinion and perceptions” (Bayart).
10.3 Concept of the State: An Overview
10.3.1 The Pre-Modern Tradition
Plato (428/7–348/7 BC): built a case for omnipotent rule. The state’s job is to help people live a complete life — not just any government, but a just and perfect government capable of delivering happiness for all. “A state is a system of relationships in which everyone does his own business.”
Aristotle (384–322 BC): defined the polis as “an association of households and villages sharing in a life of virtue, and aiming at an end which exists in perfect and self-complete existence.” The state exists for the supreme good.
For both Plato and Aristotle — and all Greeks — the polis was more than an administrative machinery: it was also a school, a church, and a guide to a way of life. No distinction was made between the state and society — the state was submerged in society. Barker: “It (the polis) is more than a legal structure: it is also a moral spirit.” A Greek would never imagine himself without the polis — he was only a part of the whole.
Cicero: gave the notion of the state as a commonwealth — “the people’s affairs.” The state is differentiated from people’s gatherings (society); people enter the state after agreeing on certain rules, giving them a legal status, and forming a legal community. Cicero made a distinction between state and society — his theory of the state is simultaneously a theory of government and a theory of political community.
Medieval period: social life was religious life regulated by the Roman Catholic Church headed by the Pope. The temporal power was regarded inferior to the ecclesiastical. The state was a means for reaching the City of God (St. Augustine); human law worked under divine law, natural law, and ultimately eternal law (St. Thomas). The state was controlled by the Pope, Church priests, monarchs, and feudal lords.
10.3.2 The Liberal-Individualist Tradition
With the modern age (15th–16th centuries), a definite theory of state emerged. Liberal-individualist philosophers from Hobbes onward made a clear distinction between state and society by making the state a matter of mere governance.
- Machiavelli: the state (he introduced this word to Political Science) is a power state — it exists for power, to maintain, enhance, and enlarge its own authority.
- Bodin: the state is “a lawful government, with sovereign powers, of different households, and their common affairs.”
- Hobbes: “The final cause, end, or design of men is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life.” The state requires a strong sovereign.
- Locke (1632–1704): the state comes to protect property and promote a better economic life — liberalism as the political philosophy of the capitalist class. The early liberal-democratic theory restricted state role to the minimal (protecting life, liberty, and property; providing justice and public works — no welfare role).
- J.S. Mill (1806–1873) and T.H. Green (1836–1882): expanded the positive role of the state in creating conditions for a better way of life; introduced democratic elements in state organisation, though both retained capitalistic limitations.
Summary of liberal progression:
- Machiavelli and Bodin: omnipotent state.
- Hobbes: strong state necessary for society to exist.
- Early liberals (Locke, Smith, Bentham): society can reproduce itself; state power should be minimal.
- Later liberals (Mill, Green, Tocqueville): numerous social associations can limit state power; liberal pluralists built a strong case for associations to control state omnipotence.
10.3.3 The Marxian Tradition
Marxist theory of state emerged as a reaction against liberalism. For Marxists, state and society are distinct — but the state is not independent of society. Society provides the base on which stands the superstructure (state). The state is a class institution — protecting the possessing class, oppressing the non-possessing class; an engine of class rule.
Chandhoke identifies three theoretical moments in Marxist state theory:
- First moment — Marx and Engels (Communist Manifesto, 1848): “the executive of the modern state is a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Marx (Towards a Critique of Political Economy, 1859): “the totality of relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure.” This base-superstructure model was a reaction against both the liberal disembodied state and the Hegelian all-powerful state.
- Second moment — around the 1960s, with Ralph Miliband and Hamza Alavi: questioned the nature of the state and its relationship with society. The state emerged as a distinct theoretical object — state-centric theory became the dominant stream.
- Third moment — Nicos Poulantzas and Claus Offe: following Gramsci (who conceptualised the state as the political constitution of civil society), Marxist theorists turned to civil society as the sphere where meaningful practices — both hegemonic and subversive — are generalised.
10.4 Concept of Civil Society: An Overview
Civil society is associated with the Western intellectual tradition. Factors shaping it: emergence of secular authority, development of property institutions, decline of the absolutist state, growth of urban culture, rise of nationalist and democratic movements, rule of law, and capitalist economic development.
10.4.1 The Pre-Modern Tradition
The pre-modern period was largely opposed to civil society:
- Plato: rulers alone administered; the “producing class” had no role in public affairs.
- Aristotle’s zoon politikon (man as political animal): elitist — the political animal was male, a citizen, and a property-holder. Women and slaves constituted Oikos (the private world) — not public, not political, no citizenship rights. No “notion of inalienable rights of man to individual freedom” existed in Greek society (Chandhoke).
- Ancient Rome: developed the notion of legally ordained rights — especially relating to individual property — which helped the idea of civil society emerge. But ancient Roman thought could not rise above making the public/private distinction.
- Medieval period: the idea of civil society was almost unknown. “Public” and “political” was limited to a very few — feudal lords, barons, dukes, and counts.
10.4.2 The Liberal-Individualist Tradition
The concept of civil society rose with individuals possessing rights, related to the state and to each other in society.
- Hobbes and Locke: made a distinction between the state of nature and civil society (or political society) after the social contract. Both talked about rights-bearing individuals and sought the state to protect these rights. However, their formulations on civil society remain in embryonic form (Chandhoke).
- Classical political economy (especially Adam Smith): echoing individual rights, laissez-faire, freedom, and equality — made the state irrelevant and civil society “the theatre of history” (Marx). Civil society became “a historically evolved area of individual rights and freedoms, where individuals in competition with each other pursued their respective private concerns” (Chandhoke).
- J.S. Mill and De Tocqueville: recognising the state had become too powerful, sought to limit state power through an expanding civil society. Chandhoke: “the expansion of the state would contribute to the shrinkage of the civil arena. State power could be limited only with the expansion of civil society.”
The process of democratisation in the West expanded civil society, restricting the arena of the state. Elsewhere, the state gained prominence, restricting civil society.
10.4.3 The Hegelian, Marxian and Gramscian Traditions
Hegel (1770–1831): views the state as the synthesis of the thesis of families and the antithesis of civil society. Civil society for Hegel is “an expression for the individualist and atomistic atmosphere of middle class commercial society” — relationships governed by the “unseen hand” of economic laws. Civil society belongs to the “realm of mechanical necessity… ethically anarchical” (Sabine on Hegel). The state is higher in kind than civil society — ultimately, civil society is subordinated to the state, and the individual to the whole. Chandhoke: in the Hegelian formulation, “there can be no interrogation of the state.”
Marx: unlike Hegel who idealised the state and subordinated civil society to it, Marx seeks to restore civil society as the theatre of history. But civil society under capitalism had failed to deliver freedom and democratic transformation — individuals had to seek ways to integrate into society and the state.
Gramsci (1891–1937): one cannot understand the state without understanding civil society. The state should be understood as not only the apparatus of government but also the “private apparatus of hegemony or civil society.” Key concepts:
- Integral state = government + civil society. The integral state keeps reproducing itself in the practices of everyday life through activities situated in civil society.
- Hegemony provides moral and intellectual leadership to practices in civil society — working for both the dominant and the subaltern class. Each class, before seizing power, must hegemonise social relations in society.
Summary: for both liberals and Marxists, civil society is primary. While liberals argue for separation of civil society from the state’s autonomy, Marxists create an alternative tradition in which civil society, with all its potentialities, must keep itself reorganised and transformed.
10.5 Relationship Between State and Civil Society
Sometimes depicted as a zero-sum game: stronger state = weaker civil society, and vice versa. In modern liberal societies, the civil society sphere is larger than the state’s; in dictatorial regimes, the state’s sphere dominates.
10.5.1 State and Civil Society: Integrative Relationship
State and civil society are not opposite concepts and should not be seen as antitheses. Their relationship is reciprocal and integrative — each strengthens the cause of the other.
- The libertarian view (Hayek, Nozick) that the state oppresses civil society is, more or less, ill-founded.
- Civil society cannot function successfully without the state — the citizen is simultaneously constrained by the state and protected by it.
- The state provides the integrative framework (laws and rules) within which civil society operates; this framework creates coherence without which civil society would become uncivil.
- Civil society must challenge bureaucratic devices of the all-powerful state lest it ends in rigidity.
- State power must be exercised within the larger sphere of civil society; civil society must keep state power on its toes to prevent degeneration into absolutism.
10.5.2 State, Civil Society and Democracy
Democracy integrates state and civil society — the claims of the state are strengthened by civil society, and civil society is made more stable through the state.
The democratic state must:
- Be constituted democratically with decentralised powers and functions performed within laid-down rules and procedures.
- Respond to the ever-growing demands of civil society.
- Coordinate rather than interfere; be regulative in character.
- Guarantee rights and freedoms to individuals.
Democratic civil society must:
- Be open and diversified.
- Maintain continuous dialogue with the state and within all its constituents.
- Operate freely in the public sphere — forming public opinion and public discourse free from state interference.
- Allow every individual equal claim on the state, respecting each citizen as a human being.
In liberal-democratic states: constant interplay between state and civil society, each imprinting on the other. In dictatorial regimes: state power controls civil society — the state speaks for civil society. Democracy alone unites the state with civil society. Neither can exist for long without being democratically structured.
10.6 Summary (Key Takeaways)
- The state is not mere governance — it is a political community; Gramsci’s “visible political constitution of civil society.” It is a social relation — “the codified power of the social formation.”
- Civil society = the entire range of assumptions, values, and institutions including political, social, and civil rights, rule of law, representative institutions, a public sphere, and a plurality of associations. It is the public sphere where individuals come together for self-interest and for the reproduction of society.
- Pre-modern tradition: no clear distinction between state and society; the polis was simultaneously state, society, school, and church (Plato, Aristotle); civil society barely existed as a concept.
- Liberal tradition: from Hobbes onward, state and society were distinguished; from Locke onward, the state was made minimal; Mill, Green, and Tocqueville expanded democratic and civil society elements to limit the state.
- Marxist tradition: the state is a class institution; base-superstructure model; Gramsci — hegemony operates through civil society; the integral state includes civil society.
- Hegel: state is higher than and subsumes civil society — the synthesis that resolves the contradictions of civil society.
- Relationship: reciprocal and integrative, not zero-sum. The state cannot be imagined without civil society and vice versa. Democracy alone ensures genuine integration — in democracies, the state protects civil society; civil society strengthens the state. In dictatorial regimes, the state controls civil society.
