The State: Theories and Issues - Chapter One: Introduction: Theories of the State . The state means a a great variety of different things to different authors who all take different perspectives on the meaning of "the state" · The state: - mobilises populations in defence of its realm - regulates, monitors and polices conduct within civil society - intervenes (whether we like it or not) within the economy - regulates (in some instances controls) the flow of information within the public sphere . Cannot deny the commonness or persuasiveness of the influence of the state · Argued the influence of the state is decreasing due to globalisation DEFINING THE STATE . Dunleavy and O'Leary - the state is not a material object, it is a conceptual abstraction . The state's utility as a concept cannot and should not be taken for granted since it does not have a self-evident material object of reference . Our conception of the state has not developed in isolation from the development of the institution we associate with the state THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE . Hall and Ikenberry - most of human history has not been graced by the presence of states . Only since the 17th century that human history has been graced by the concept of the state . The origins of the state lie in the transition from the nomadic subsistence of hunter-gatherers to more agrarian societies . The institutional capacity to project power over a territory which we now associate with the state owes its origins to the historical accident of the replacement of hunting and gathering by agriculture . In these initial stages of its development, the state was largely tyrannical and coercive in the manner in which it exercised power over a population . Hunter gatherer communities tended to be tribal whereas the agrarian states which replaced them were not - this made them both rather more reliant upon coercion and rather more fragile politically when that coercion was challenged . It was the capacity of religion to lend legitimacy to the organised and increasingly centralised use of coercive power that made possible the consolidation of state power
. This facilitated the further development of the institutional capacity to govern and regulate a geographical territory and, with it, the capacity to mobilise militarily . The association between the state and the military was established early on and arguably persists to the present day · Western Europe = origins of the modern state . Characterisation of the modern state = its claim to act as a public power responsible for the governance of a tightly delineated geographical territory and its separation from those in whose name it claims to govern . The modern state is an institutional complex claiming sovereignty for itself as the supreme political authority within a defined territory for whose governance it is responsible . Most recent phase of significant state re-structuring and expansion is associated with the rise of the welfare state -