The Capitalist State and Structural Democracy
By: Dr Grouf
Tags: War, Democracy, Capitalism, Bureaucracy

Democracy and the Capitalist State: The Routinization of Manipulation

In this paper I outline the relationship between state strength and capitalism with implications for democracy based on the Marxist notion that true democracy (as in communism) cannot involve the state institution and that the capitalist state evolves to manage class conflict, with its strength indicative of the volume of such conflict. Using OLS multivariate regression analysis on a cross national sample of 126 nation states, I test the relationship between state strength and capitalization and between political vulnerability (operatonalizing Karl Mannheim’s (1936) definition of politics) and capitalization controlling for various explanatory factors. The results indicate that as capitalism advances (greater accumulation) and conflict becomes acute, a stronger state emerges that successively closes the realm of politics (structural democracy) and enhances administrative control to manage conflict, net of other effects. This provides confirmatory evidence in support of the Marxist notion of the state and Lenski’s (1966) claim that the specialization of the functioning of the state (and the progressive closing of the class structure) was due to the enhancement of economic surplus.

Dr. Grouf, PhD.

Social power, according to Marx and Engels is based on class-situation that manifests itself through private ownership of the means of production or capital, leading to individual power, a macro to micro socio-structural translation. Since capital needs the united action of the many in order to be “set in motion,” it represents not personal but social power, which is linked to the relationships of production within capitalism. Through private ownership of the means of production, power has been expropriated by the bourgeoisie in a capitalistic setup (Marx and Engels 1848). Communism, through abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, the private ownership of capital (and not all private property), will democratize power and a democratization of power will lead to the state dying out or as more famously stated “withering away” (Engels 1880). True democracy and the state cannot coexist in the Marxist formulation. The existence of the state, whether a capitalist or a socialist state indicates the existence of class conflict.

According to Engels (1880) the necessity of the state as political organization is a consequence of the “anarchy of production” based on private ownership of the means of production. With the abolition of private ownership of capital there will be no need for the state. The state is “not abolished but dies out” (Engels 1880). Within this scheme, socialism would be an intermediary stage marking the end of capitalism and the beginning of the period that leads to communism, yet the stages of the success or failure of this intermediary phase are indicated through state strength which can be empirically measured. Socialism by itself, where the state becomes the owner of capital and hence the arbiter of social power, represents capitalism’s higher tyranny in a reduced but not abolished form. To end capitalist tyranny and the human stratification (the modern day caste system) that is inscribed in its very nature, the atrophy of the state and the emergence of classless, stateless communism is an absolute necessity for the Marxist dialectic to end. The state of true democracy therefore can be empirically measured in its inverse relationship to state strength, political vulnerability, indicative of a state not yet “become” (Mannheim 1936), indicates the realm of true politics as structural democracy.

According to Karl Mannheim (1936) any action undertaken to alter state and society, that are still in process of “becoming” (the irrational in social existence) can be described as political conduct, a form of structural power as opposed to social events that have been subordinated to habit and have assumed set patterns (the rationalized sphere of social existence). Using the Austrian sociologist Albert Schaffle’s terminology he refers to the former as politics and the latter as merely routine affairs of the state. As more aspects of life are brought under the “routine affairs of the state,” the individual surrenders greater ever increasing levels of autonomy and loses his or her structural power. To bring the irrational under bureaucratic control is the main preoccupation of the modern state which involves a narrowing of the domain of the irrational and thus a narrowing of politics in the real sense. Political science as such, brought under the realm of the bureaucratic procedure becomes an administrative science. This narrowing of the realm of politics is linked to the ascendency of the liberal bourgeoisie (and their institutionalization of a politically benign ‘conflict’) (Marcuse 1964) and their move towards rationalization of all aspects of social existence. The level of political stability of the state therefore is a valid measure of the level of administrative (formal democratic- routine affairs of the state) versus political (real structural democracy) aspects of society.

Mannheim states that behind all theories that attain social circulation are group interests involving power, both rooted in “social and existential” (Mannheim (1936) 1960: 124) conditions of groups that are then generalized to the whole of society. This generalization of the interests of the powerful to all of social existence forms the basis of what Marx defined as ideology. Conflict within the bourgeoisie emerges in the routine matters of the state during non-crisis times, in times of crisis they develop consciousness of their class interests similar to their period of prior struggle against feudalism that culminated in what Marx defined as the “bourgeoisie revolution” (Marx 1852). Gerhard Lenski (1966) theorizing about the social origin of inequality suggests that the economic surplus that results due to technological and environmental factors determines organizational features of society including its political organization. He states that in the political realm industrialization has led to the elimination of the monarchial form of government, functional specialization of the state and the expansion of its domain of functions. Also relative democratization, in that political power is more widely diffused, is a consequence of industrialization, according to Lenski, as is the growth of the state’s military powers (p.303–305), and the comparative closing of the class structure, which implies a narrowing of the qualitative realm of democracy.

In simple horticulture societies where a political custodial realm develops in its infancy for the purpose of distribution, people avoid political office but in advanced horticultural societies where the political realm starts to attain functional autonomy and status, people actively seek office because of its privileges, leaders become rulers and the use of force increases (Lenski 1966:176, 185). Since agricultural societies are more politically advanced compared to advanced horticultural societies, they are preoccupied with wars. The monarchial form of government is successful in agricultural societies because of perpetual wars, and through selection (based on success) becomes the dominant form, because constitutionalism makes war fighting tenuous due to conflicts of interest and indecision within separate functional units. Functional specialization requires a reliance on advisors which together with a lesser frequency of wars makes the probability of success of constitutional governments greater in industrial societies and so monarchial forms of government successively vanish (Lenski 1966:188).

In the non-Marxist rendition of the state as the wielder of the instruments of violence and extraction, the state emerges as relatively autarkic, in that it is not affected in the most part by the wider society in its decision making process and does not serve the interest of any particular class as such. The state does however respond to external (international) competition both political and economic. All decision making according to this model is incremental given the bureaucratic organizational form of the state that functions with uniformity, changes in which occur only during exceptional circumstances, which are extrinsic to the state and therefore not explained by these theories. For state decision making, the interests that matter according to this perspective are the interests specific to the state bureaucracy and the self-interests of the state managers who do not represent any particular class interest. According to Skocpol (1985), states respond to new situations based on their structural features guided by the lessons derived from previous decision making. She also feels that a coalition based explanation of state decision making that gives autonomous interests to the state and state actors is superior to class struggle based Marxist models because they “highlight the positive sum character of social policies” (Skocpol 1985:115) as against the zero sum outcome of a bourgeoisie directed, “committee of the ruling class” state. In this rendition therefore there is no direct relationship between state strength and economic accumulation.

My purpose in this paper is to outline the relationship between state strength and capitalism with implications for democracy based on a review of Marxist and non Marxist theories of the state. I test the Marxist notion that true democracy (as in communism) cannot involve the state institution and that the capitalist state evolves to manage class conflict, with its strength indicative of the volume of such conflict. For that purpose I seek to empirically test two hypotheses using OLS multivariate regression analysis on a sample comprising of 126 nation states: Hypothesis 1: Net of other effects, a greater level of capitalization enhances state strength, and Hypothesis 2: Net of other effects, a greater level of capitalization reduces political instability, indicating quantitative democracy as against politics or qualitative, substantive democracy (Mannheim 1936).

Power, Bureaucracy and Democracy

Max Weber defined power afrom a micro to macro level translation as “the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action” (Weber, Gerth and Mills 1958:180). Weber, unlike Marx and Engels didn’t actually outline the sociological (structural) source of power even though he described the class situation in terms of it in his socio-psychological rendition neither did he describe power as being structural or social power, which makes us question the sociology behind such a description of power. Weber (1958) stated that the distribution of power within social groups determined “classes, status groups and parties,” with classes representing economic power, status groups, “social” power through honor, and parties, political power, because they existed within what Weber defines as a “house of power,” the state. Political power nevertheless is in need of social power for communal action and therefore in need of honor and prestige (p.181). Economic power, since it determines honor and prestige in capitalist societies according to Weber (1958:190) is a necessary prerequisite to political power as well and therefore to the strengthening of the state. Parties according to Weber represent a constellation of interests through “class situations or status situations” (1958:194). The sociological causal priority to societal structure is thus missing in Weber’s work.

Weber understood that it would be nearly impossible and at the very least extremely resource intensive to struggle continuously for group advantages through direct coercion. If however the advantages of the dominant group could be institutionalized through bureaucratic processes, opposition would be muted and the ongoing conflict could be managed with greater ease. The bureaucratic set up of the modern state (bureaucracy being primarily a structure) and the successive rationalization of society (or commodification of social existence in Marxist terminology) that is the hallmark of modernity is a means of carrying “community action over into rationally ordered societal action” and “an instrument for soceitalizing relations of power” and a “power instrument of the first order” (Weber, Gerth and Mills 1958:228) according to Weber. The reason why states bureaucratized in the first place is because bureaucracy had “technical superiority over any other form of organization” (Kiser and Baer 2005:229). The legal-rational bureaucratized state being a successor to the other ideal type state Weber outlined, which was the patrimonial state where everything depended on personal favors, connections and affiliative considerations (Budd 2005).

Bureaucratization of states proceeds due to specific needs of a specialized division of labor, it assumes a “rapid development of effective communication and transportation systems” (Kiser and Baer 2005:233) without which monitoring and the functional “organic” (Durkheim (1893) 1997) connection between specialized units becomes ineffective. Therefore, without such concurrent developments bureaucratization will not be complete. Transportation technologies facilitate centralized bureaucratic control and the bureaucratization process in Western states followed the development of “transportation technologies” (Kiser and Baer 2005:233), which represent a faster transmission of communication, symbols being the intermediaries between people and their social actions (Mills 1959). Bureaucratization leads to the enhancement of administration as “routine affairs of the state” (Mannheim 1936) and a closing of the realm of politics and structural democracy, it represents a greater level of social control.

Theories of the State:

Social theories of the state can be broadly grouped into two major categories: Marxist models of the state and Non-Marxist models of the state. The Marxist models can be subdivided into Marxist instrumentalist (Domhoff 2005) and Marxist structuralist models (Poulantzas 2001; Boies 1994 etc.). The non-Marxist models of the state are the state autonomy or state centrist models, they differ from the Marxist models in their treatment of the state’s decision making process. Whereas the Marxist models are centered around economic causes to both state formation and functioning, even the Marxist structuralist models that attribute relative autonomy to the state as part of its function of “managing” the capitalist structure give causal primacy to the economy ‘in the last instance,’ the non-Marxist models look at the state as an autonomous unit having both separate interests to the capitalist class as well as capacity to execute those interests (Skocpol 1985).

Political action theorists like Charles Tilly merge state and society, according to Skocpol (1979:26) by making groups with ‘low cost access’ to government the deciding factor in social revolutions thereby not giving the state any real autonomy. The Marxist theorists see the state as a feature of the underlying class divided mode of production and therefore they also do not give autonomy to the state. New developments among the Marxists however have accommodated the relative autonomy of the state into their explanations by suggesting that overall class interest is best served when the state is autonomous of specific dominant class groups. In their view the state cannot be reduced to either a social institution representing society or an instrument of the bourgeoisie but a specific materialization of the basic class relations of a given society with built in mechanisms for reproducing it. Skocpol thinks a more state-centered approach to social revolutions is needed because all revolutions “begin and end” at the state level (Skocpol 1979:29). States also compete with the dominant classes to some extent in order to maintain order, the smoothest way of doing which is to ensure the class order of a society. Besides maintaining order, the state also concerns itself with competition with other states both actual and potential in the global environment and local claimants to statehood that would upset the class order. International pressures (of the military sort) might prompt states to take steps that might deviate from the interests of its dominant classes according to Skocpol. She calls her explanation the “organizational and realist” version of the state (Skocpol 1979:31). The state is anchored dually in this approach both in its internal class structure and in its location within a world system of nation states while also being autonomous in its decision making?

The very opposite of this explanation of state steering of society, of state autonomy translating into state capacity for action, that is non-Marxist and quite conservative in the sense of system legitimation, but arrives at a somewhat similar conclusion to the Marxist perspective, is provided by Niklas Luhmann (1997) who goes to great lengths to explain that all attempts at steering social change through the state are bound to fail because it is functionally differentiated and therefore (according to him), autonomous based on functional specialization. He states that the state emerged as a result of social differentiation of society, based on a Durkhemian elaboration of functional differentiation through division of labor (Durkheim (1893) 1997, Parsons 1951), and thus all attempts at directing change through it will be futile because the state differentiated in order to preserve the social order (Luhmann 1997).

According to Charles Tilly (1985, 1996), the organizational bureaucracy of European states was based on struggles, both internal and external, that involved “checking of great regional lords and the imposition of taxation on peasant villages” (Tilly 1985:185). The bureaucracy that emerged involved a subordination of military power to civilian control, the development of the machinery of surveillance and the representation of the masses through parliamentary and judicial petitioning. Citizenship, according to Tilly is “transactional” (Tilly 1996:14) because it involves rights and obligations between agents representing the state and people, giving the person membership into an exclusive category. The frequency and intensity of these transactions determines whether citizenship is thick or thin. Citizenship was historically tied to military service with “democratization” first occurring through universal conscription and only later through male franchise. The tying of citizenship to military service and the presumed economic independence of men (which already existed in non-state organizations like households and communities) was directly incorporated into the state’s organization. The state according to Tilly therefore is not autarkic as some state centered theorists might suggest, rather it involves struggle over resources that manifests itself in wars and culminates in a transactional relationship where organizational forms that emerge, reflect organizations of relationships that preexist the state (Tilly 1996). Kathleen Arnold (2004) similarly states how the previous organizational relationships involving the home and self-identity (and the accompanying emotions) were, “Reconceptualized in terms of homeland and emotions attached to the home and self-identity displaced onto citizenship and nation state” (Arnold 2004:53).

Since the military organization was subordinated to civilian control internally during European state formation we do not see military coups of the sort that are evident in the newly independent states of what was described as the “Third World.” The military buildup in Europe due to internal and external struggles reduced the political autonomy of the military as the military became dependent on the civilian apparatus for finance as well as relations with the wider society from whom they were separated as ‘soldiers’. Military expansion following the French conquest post French Revolution that expanded the scope of citizenship by incorporating civil and political rights within the concept of sovereignty (Tilly 1996:225) and led to the expansion of the state that now embarked on direct rule and making exclusive the concept of citizenship and national sovereignty. Exclusivity required the homogenization of citizens and efforts to that end were directly made by the state through socially embedded cultural symbols that were given a national flavor (Tilly 1996; Arnold 2004). The military also served as a conduit for previously disenfranchised groups, enabling them to enter the mainstream of society, the process of democratization began first in the military and only later was followed by the civilian state (Janowitz 1975:19). Tilly agrees with Engels and Janowitz that formal democracy grew because of the need for increased militarization where “rulers felt themselves obliged to bargain with their civilian populations for the essential manpower and means of war” (Tilly 1996:235). Not only is democracy related to militarization, bureaucratization and the tendency to bureaucratize has its history in the need states felt when they had to maintain large standing armies and therefore had to rely on public taxation. Max Weber stated:

…the bureaucratic tendency has chiefly been influenced by needs arising from the creation of standing armies as determined by power politics and with the development of public finance connected with the military establishment. (Weber, Gerth and Mills 1958:212)

Living within a bureaucratic society eventually leads to ‘self rationalization’ (according to Karl Mannheim), in that the individual shapes himself/herself according to the requirements of such a society (in order to get a preformed identity for status fulfillment). Such a life therefore is in contradiction to all that was understood as ‘individuality’ post enlightenment. This means that in the post-modern era the control of a person’s destiny moves from the individual to the bureaucratic society in which he/she lives or the bureaucratic organization for which he/she works the best years of his or her life. The result of this kind of (what Riesman would say) “other directedness” has resulted in the emergence of wide spread alienation among the population. In the absence of a self-educating, self-reflecting public and the resulting movements for social change, what we know as ‘democracy’ is one of form only and not of substance. Democracy itself must be understood by situating it within a social structure and the relationship of that structure to the individual’s biography and whether the people have the power to alter structures or merely fit into restrictive choices that are described as “democracy.”

Bureaucratization, as the hallmark feature of modernity, its “organizational embodiment” (Kiser and Baer 205:225), where it occurred in modern states is rooted in the needs of states for large military organizations. Military organizations were the first large scale bureaucracies and hence the historical foundation of this type of social organization. The oligarchic control of the professional military translated into the social formations of the civil state that was made in its image, resulting in public affairs being managed by “a minority of influential persons to which management, willingly or unwillingly, the majority defer” (Mosca (1939)1961:192). Robert Michels traces a similar path to the rule of the many by the bureaucratic elite. “Extensive organization” he says, which is an indicator of functional specialization of a bureaucracy, requires “expert leadership” and this expertise then becomes one of the caste-like attributes of membership in the leadership club. Monopolization of these attributes by the leaders that are “gradually withdrawn from the masses” leads to what Michels describes as oligarchic rule represented by “a minority of directors and a majority of directed” (Michels 1962:70, 71). Terming this a “universally applicable social law,” Michels traces this process to the formation of special interest of every grouping that results due to a division of labor, and the conflict of those specific interests with the general interest of the population at large. These distinctions of interests in the long run are transformed into distinct classes (Michels 1962:353). Michels arrives at a similar conclusion to Mosca stating that society cannot exist without a non-representative ruling class of elites whose interests differ from the underlying masses and whose legal system is an outcome of their exercise of power.

The power elite explanation by C. Wright Mills (1956) is a positional analysis in tune with Mosca and Michels in that Mills defined the elite as those at the pinnacles of the economic, military and political institutions, conditioned formally through a bureaucratized setup. These elite move within and between these three institutional structures, i.e. positions of power are interchangeable among the military, political and economic domains (1956:12) resulting in institutionally circumscribed adaptation, producing a near uniform world view among the elite. Further, this power elite possesses a specific and clear “class consciousness” and unique image of self as a (social) psychological fact, considering themselves separate and superior to the rest of society, regardless of popularly ascribed ideological label or party membership (1956:283)

Fiscal Sociology and Measuring State Strength

According to Campbell (1993) elites within the state respond to “geopolitical, economic or fiscal crisis” (1993:173) by altering tax policies. The way that tax policies will get altered depends, according to Campbell, on how various groups within society influence political elites. Different groups are proposed to have different “tax tolerance” (1993:173). The end governmental response based on group pressure depends on the accessibility of political elites as well as their “capacity to collect taxes” (1993:174). Political elites can also influence the mobilization of pressure groups. The consequences of the taxation part of fiscal sociology (taxation policy by the government, its precursors and consequences) include, according to Campbell, rebellion when people cannot pay the taxes demanded and pressure to enact programs that alleviate conditions to justify taxation. Fiscal crises of the state, its inability to collect taxation can foster revolution through state breakdown. Taxation as the “key to successful state building” (1993:174), is a necessity that historically arose in order to defeat foreign challengers to the state through maintenance of large armies or local competitors to state power (Tilly 1985), leading to the development of state bureaucracies of “extraction and monitoring” (Campbell 1993:177) as well as avenues for political participation and public goods delivery in order to give legitimacy to taxation policy. In short, “the organizational strength of social classes, the institutional structure of the state and the system of political representation” (p.168), influences taxation, the level of which is an indicator of state strength (Robinson 1977).

Taxation is therefore of central importance in understanding the state and must be understood in state failure (through fiscal crisis) as well as state building and bureaucratization. Taxation can also affect the “location of economic activity” (Campbell 1993:178) as well as the structure of economic organizations: the rise of large monopolistic firms is attributed to the U.S. government’s tariff policies during the 19th century that “contributed to the decline of entrepreneurial firms and the rise of large, concentrated companies and economic sectors” (1993:178). Taxation might also affect labor force participation as revealed by the negative income tax experiments of the 1970s, as well as philanthropy by the wealthy that seeks to counter the redistributive effects of taxation, through tax write offs, formation of foundations and non-profit organizations and the like, and “contributes to the preservation of inequality” (1993:180).

Whereas Hegel can be described as state centric, Marx dethroned the state to being a mere managing device for societal class conflict, acting on behalf of the (whole) bourgeoisie while presenting the face of a sovereign, autonomous entity as false consciousness for legitimation purposes. Within the functions of the state highlighted by Marx was the limited redistribution function associated with contemporary welfare states as conflict management adjustment, where the structure of private ownership and bourgeoisie mode of production is maintained through charity like redistribution that renders the condition of the proletariat “tolerable” in order to abort revolutions (Marx 1850). It is worth noting that contrary to the interpretation by instrumental Marxists, Marx and Engels suggested that the state manages the class interests of the (whole) bourgeoisie and not the interests of individual capitalists, in other words the state tries to manage the structural status quo of capitalism.

Poulantzas arguing against Marxist instrumentalists to whom the interests of “the ruling class” are the supreme preoccupation of state managers, recognizes the separation (or relative autonomy) of the state from the economic in a capitalist order, with its main function being social cohesion for the continuation of that order. For that purpose, the state serves the interests of some groups more so than others as an automatic fulfillment of its reproduction function. The state emerges as a “point of condensation” (Poulantzas and Martin 2008:10) between contradictions of class, where the site of class conflict is displaced from the economic to the political realm. A true Marxist understanding of the state according to Poulantzas would combine an internal analysis of state structure as well as its external manifestation in policy and law formation (Poulantzas and Martin 2008:5). Poulantzas critiques the Marxist instrumentalists and their naïve reading of Marx by suggesting that they overemphasize the base (economism) while relegating a non-sociological volunteerism to the superstructure, which arises through the base in history. Since their interpretation of Marx ignores history and its mark on the superstructure, instead of the dialectic process, they pursue, in Poulantzas’ view a voluntaristic determinism that is non-Marxist in its methodology. The superstructure even though situated within the relationships of production articulates itself in real form through both preexisting structures of organization that it supersedes historically (and not instantaneously), as well as through fulfillment of the base’s demands indirectly (through structural president) and not in a voluntaristic or extra societal manner.

The state is not a foreign imposition on a society except in the case of the newly formed nations, but represents the distilled effects of class conflict and the attempts by the dominant classes to manage both their internal conflicts as well as class conflict with legitimation, displacing it unto a seemingly autonomous and sovereign entity. Therefore statelessness in this formulation just as the idea behind (total) state autonomy assumes a lack of class conflict or class conflict that is benign in which multiple contenders have equal (transactional) access to the state and its decision making apparatus, as in pluralism (Dahl 2005). When Marx and Engels mention the withering away of the state, they were referring to an end point of the process that leads to a termination of class conflict. As long as there are divergences in interests leading to class conflict, coercion as a tool in management of such conflict will become institutionalized in the form of a state, physically dismantling which will lead to its reemergence due to social precedence, in the Marxist formula. The evolution of the state, where it assumes functional autonomy, integrates the system and reproduces it, cannot make it a mere tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and it cannot be functionally dependent on any other institutional sphere. The mark of history on it ensures that it works to reproduce a bourgeoisie dominated system and hence benefits, indirectly, the bourgeoisie. Domhoff’s voluntaristic interpretation of the state, as guided by the ruling class explanation, is as erroneous in my opinion as Skocpol’s non-society explanation of the state as independent variable, as the beginning and end of all social change. The truth lies in between where the mark of history in the functional differentiation of the state ensures that it behaves in a manner which reveals to the keen observer that the state acts in the long run to ensure the reproduction of the class system while in the short run (in non-crisis times), it assumes business as usual. This business as usual appears to the casual observer as a capitalist class divided against itself (as in the case of Domhoff 2007), or as a state acting with near total autonomy to steer society (Skocpol 1985), so both offer as solution working through the state apparatus to cause social change, in other words they both legitimize the state within capitalist society.

Measures and Empirical Analysis

I started with a dataset comprising of 173 nation states for the purpose of this analysis, the data were collected from various international data collecting organizations like the U.N, the World Bank and the CIA Factbook. Data years were 2010 or nearest, with the latest nearest being 2006.. I lost several countries that did not have data based on a list wise (or case) deletion approach, which is essential for generalizable analyses but runs the risk of over representing those nation states that have well developed record keeping bureaucracies, which more often than not happen to be the more capitalized countries in the world. There is therefore this ‘elite bias’ in all such cross national studies. I ended up with a sample comprising of 126 nation states.

For the purpose of measuring state strength, I used the definition of the state made famous by Max Weber, which was elaborated upon by Charles Tilly (1985, 1990). The state, which in Tilly’s (1985) elaboration is in the business of “selling” protection through creation of threats (where none exist) and thereby (in Weberian terms) monopolizing the means of violence (to increase the “price” of protection by eliminating competitors), is effective and legitimate if its extraction “racket” (Tilly 1985:171) is successful. This can be measured through tax revenue as a percent of GDP (which makes comparison between states possible). The level of taxation is an indicator of state strength (Robinson 1977). I therefore used tax revenue as percentage of GDP as the operationalized indicator of state strength.

In order to measure the level of capitalization of an economy based on accumulation, as predictor of state strength, I constructed an economic scale using a principle component factor analysis that captured in its computation the latent structure of global economic accumulation. The results suggested that three variables could be grouped into one summary index of economic accumulation. The three absolute measures of economic development/accumulation were: the log of GNI per capita, the log of inbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stock and the log of inbound Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flow. The Eigen value (2.48) was above the conventional threshold of 1.00. The factor loadings ranged from 0.832 for the log of GNI per capita to 0.963 for the log of inbound Foreign Direct Investment. The first variable (log of GNI per capita) measures the size of the economy, the next two (log of inbound FDI stock and log of inbound FDI flow), foreign investment and accumulation activity in the economy. All of these measures were standardized by taking their Z-scores before factor analysis.

The variables combined to form this factor were in agreement with the indicators of economic accumulation outlined in the development literature (Firebaugh 1992; Firebaugh and Beck 1994; London and Williams 1998; Bornschier and Chase Dunn 1985; Chase Dunn 1975). The scale that measures the underlying concept of economic accumulation/development was empirically validated in that it explained 82.75% of the variation in these economic variables among the nation states. For the purpose of uncovering the global structure of militarization, as control, I developed a militarization scale using a principle component factor analysis that captured in its computation the latent structure of global militarization. The results suggested that three variables could be grouped into one summary index of militarization. These three measures of militarization were: the log of government military expenditure as a percentage of GDP, the log of government military expenditure as a percentage of total tax revenue and the log of military personnel as a percentage of total population. The variables combined to form this factor that formed the militarization scale were empirically validated in that the scale explained 70.81% of the variation in these militarization variables among the nation states and incorporated both the military burden of a nation state as well as the military participation ratio. The controls used in the regression models were: the log of population (representing a control for demographic factors), Gini income inequality coefficient (representing a control for inequality and relative deprivation) and the UN’s (non-income) Human Development Index (representing a control for basic needs provision) and militarization.

Bivariate correlations reveal that economic capitalization (accumulation) is positively associated with state strength (r=0.580 p<0.001) as expected, a higher level of capitalization signifies a more advanced level of capitalism and therefore the need for greater conflict management and the strengthening of the functions of the state that specializes in such management of conflict according to the Marxist perspective. A higher level of accumulation also signifies greater surplus and in tune with Lenski’s (1966) rendition, it would require a greater bureaucratization of the state leading to the strengthening of its functions and indicated through greater extraction ability via rationalized legitimation, which includes the expansion of formalized (administrative) democracy. The demographic variable representing population (log of population) had a negative relationship with state strength (r= -0.153, P<0.05). This is in tune with expectations since a growing population implies a less capitalized country where fertility has not transitioned in response to lower mortality (the theory of demographic transition) as a result of which states are weak. The Gini income inequality coefficient was negatively correlated with state strength (r=-0.402, p<0.001). This is in tune with expectation since a higher level of inequality implies a greater level of (uncontrolled) conflict and lack of state legitimacy which leads to a weaker state. Lower inequality implies that the state in order to control conflict is managing relative deprivation, which leads to a strong state. Non-income HDI had a strong positive correlation with state strength (r=0.655, p<0.001). This is also in tune with expectations: in order to build legitimacy states enhance the provision of basic goods thereby vesting people in the political economy and the political process through citizenship which enhances state strength. On the other hand the non provision of basic necessities alienates the population and results in the failure of state extraction activities leading to a weak state. However, bivariate relationships are no guarantee of magnitude, direction or significance of multivariate relationships, therefore I used multivariate regression analysis to isolate the effects of militarization on economic growth, net of other effects, and tested for non-linear relationships as well.

Table 1 presents the OLS multivariate regression results. Model 1 regresses state strength as measured through a state’s extraction strength (tax revenue as percentage of GDP) on economic capitalization- accumulation. Model 2 adds the demographic (log of population) variable. Model 3 adds the Gini (measures income inequality), non-income HDI (measures basic needs provision) and the militarization variables to model 2. Model 4 adds economic capitalization-accumulation squared and militarization squared to model 3 to check for non-linear (quadratic) effects. Model 5 replaces the dependent variable in Model 4 with political vulnerability (based on the ‘underlying vulnerability’ portion of the Economist’s Political Instability Index, nation state level data, 2010). Collinearity did not seem to be a problem in the model, the highest VIF detected was 3.83 for the economic capitalization variable and 3.65 for the non-income HDI, both of these variables were positively correlated (r=0.784, P<0.001), however since the VIF was relatively low (VIF<4) collinearity was not considered a problem and adjustment was undertaken.

As Table 1 shows, 34% of the variation in state strength was explained by model 1 that has economic capitalization (accumulation) as predictor. Adding demographic, inequality, basic needs provision and militarization significantly improved the model by 18%. However, model 3 reveals that the strongest positive influence on state strength (beta=0.429), per standard deviation increase, net of other effects was economic capitalization (accumulation), in tune with my hypothesis 1. Militarization as predictor of inequality was not statistically significant (model 3), even though the direction of association was revealing and as expected (b=-1.250 p=0.922), since militarization leads to non-representative rule which reduces state strength in the long run. HDI (non-income) which measures basic need provision in life expectancy (health) and education, net of other effects had a enhancing effect on state strength (b= 15.953, P<0.05, model 3). For every one unit increase in basic need provision, state strength goes up by 15.93 units (15.93%), net of other effects. In fact HDI had the second strongest state strength enhancing effect in the model based upon its standardized slope (beta=-0.257), net of other effects, per standard deviation increase in HDI.

Table 1. Ordinary Least Squares Regression of State Strength on Economic Capitalization-Accumulation (N=126)

Political Vulnerability Dependent N=126

(deleted)

When rulers lose legitimacy, as a tactic of enhancing their rule they manipulate basic goods provision while maintaining the structure of inequality similar to the multinational “accumulation-legitimation” cycle (London and Williams 1998), which explains why a higher level of basic goods provision is expected to lead to a strengthening of the state. I can therefore confirm my hypothesis 1 which stated that net of other effects a higher level of capitalization of the economy would result in the strengthening of the state. This is in tune with the Marxist models of the state that give it a functional specialization related to the management of conflict and system reproduction, where a higher level of capitalization (accumulation) represents a more advanced capitalism where the state has become strengthened due to the enhancement of the need for its specialized function of managing conflict through monopolization of “legitimate” force.

Model 4 reveals that both economic capitalization (accumulation) and militarization have curvilinear relationships with state strength. Fitting the quadratic curve to the data range of economic capitalization reveals the relationship depicted in Figure 1. When the quadratic term was added to the model (in Model 4), the model significantly improved from explaining 52% of the variation in state strength to explaining 58% of the variation. The quadratic slope of economic capitalization (accumulation) (a= 1.866, P<0.01) was significant. This means that economic capitalization (accumulation) (minimum= -2.764, maximum=2.261) has a curvilinear relationship with state strength, and since the quadratic term is positive, the curve is convex, its curvature is upwards. Past the lowest quintile of economic capitalization (very low levels of capitalism), further increases in capitalization result in enhanced state strength as predicted.

Figure 1. Curvilinear Relationship between State Strength and Capitalization

Figure 2. Curvilinear Relationship between Political Vulnerability and Capitalization

Substituting underlying political vulnerability as the dependent variable in place of state strength (Model 5 in Table 1) reveals much the same, the curve that describes the quadratic relationship between political instability and capitalization is inverted around nearly the same coordinates of economic capitalization (Figure 2) as the relationship that described state strength and capitalization (Figure 1). Political vulnerability increases, per unit increase in capitalization, net of other effects, in the lowest quintile of the economic capitalization (accumulation) scale. Past the lowest quintile of capitalization, political vulnerability decreases, per unit increase in capitalization, net of other effects, indicating the closing of the realm of politics (that is structural democracy, based on Karl Mannheim’s (1936) rendition of politics) and the enhancement of the realm of administration (formal bourgeoisie democracy), confirming my hypothesis 2.

Conclusion: Bringing Society back into the Sociology of the State

State autonomy theorists see states as “regulators and distorters of markets” (Skocpol 1985:3). Within such a perspective, the state emerges as an entity sui generis rather than merely a result of societal class conflict as in Marxist models. In the formulation of policies, the idea of “bureaucratic politics” implies that the state in its policy making goes beyond the requirements of any class interest (Skocpol 1985) and therefore its link to a societal status quo or structure maintenance is ambiguous. My analysis did not support the state autonomy perspective. Not only is state strength causally (positively) linked to economic accumulation and basic needs provision of the population, it is also causally (negatively) linked to the size of the population, and also related to a state’s war-making ability (militarization). The state autonomy theorists like Skocpol, going against Tilly’s conclusion that states incorporate societal organizational forms that predate them almost wholesale in some instances, quote Alfred Stepan who suggests that states themselves are “administrative, bureaucratic and legal systems” that structure relationships within civil society and not only within the governmental apparatus (Skocpol 1985:7). According to Skocpol, state autonomy is plausible because policies produced by the state are different to those demanded by societal actors and it is also plausible given the state’s capacity to implement those policies (Skocpol 1985:15–16). I empirically demonstrated given cross-national data that that is not the case, the additive OLS multivariate models demonstrate the net positive link between capitalist accumulation and state strength. Taking the “society” out of interpretations of the state, as Skocpol does in order to differentiate her views on the state from the Marxist views, using a literal coercion based interpretation of state autonomy, in that the state reacts to external occurrences only after the event, in tune with its special interests, renders every such an analysis non-sociological because the state is not historically situated within a social structure and the causal precedence is not given to society but to polity. All attempts at understanding state organization outside of a preexisting society mystify the state, which is a form of ‘social’ organization.

Past the lowest quintile on the economic capitalization-accumulation scale (that is very low levels of capitalism), further accumulation results in enhancement of state strength, net of other effects, in effect proving the Marxist assertion of classless and hence stateless communism as the opposite of the conflict managing function of the capitalist state. As capitalism advances (greater accumulation) and conflict becomes acute, a stronger state is needed to manage that conflict. This also provides empirical evidence for Lenski’s (1966) assertion of the specialization of the functioning of the state and the progressive closing of the class structure due to the enhancement of economic surplus. It also supports the assertion that capitalist accumulation enhances state strength not for the purpose of causing change or redistribution but for the purpose of further accumulation given the standardized effects, the state in effect manages “the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (Marx and Engels 1848). Comparing these results with measures of political instability in a similar predictive model also provided evidence that by stabilizing the political status quo through enhanced state strength, the capitalist nations have stripped people of structural power, resulting in political (administrative) stability which means, in Karl Mannheim’s formulation, the diminution of politics and the end of structural democracy. This also implies that there is greater “real democracy” in the developing nations (with weak states) compared to the formally “democratic” capitalist nations, even when their state is (formally) dictatorial.

Further research should look at attitudinal (subjective) measures of state legitimacy so that broader dimensions of state strength can be empirically investigated. World Systemic position based on an intersection of the military and economic dimensions of the global division of labor should be incorporated as predictors of state strength and political stability. Besides political vulnerability other measures of substantive democracy, what I describe in this paper as structural democracy, should also be explored and constructed.

References

Arnold, Kathleen. 2004. Homelessness, Citizenship and Identity. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Brooks, Risa. 1998. Political-Military Relations and the Stability of Arab Regimes. New York: Oxford University Press.

Boies, John L. 1994. Buying for Armageddon: Business Society and Military Spending Since the Cuban Missile Crisis. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press

Bornschier, Volker and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 1985. Transnational Corporations and Underdevelopment. Westport, CT: Praeger Press.

Budd, Eric. 2005. Whither the Patrimonial State in the Age of Globalization. Kasarinlan: Philippiine Journal of Third World Studies, 20(2): 37–55.

Campbell, John. 1993. “The State and Fiscal Sociology”. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol.19. Pp 163–185.

Chase-Dunn, Christopher. 1975. “The Effects of International Economic Dependence on Development and Inequality: A Cross- National Study.” American Sociological Review, Vol.40, №6, pp.720–738.

Dahl, Robert A and Douglas W. Rae. 2005. Who Governs? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Durkheim, Emile. 1997. Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press.

Domhoff, William G. 2005. Who Rules America? New York: McGraw Hill.

Engels, Frederich. 1880. “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.” Http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm, retrieved 11/18/2010.

Firebaugh, Glenn. 1992. “Growth Effects of Foreign and Domestic Investment.” American Journal of Sociology 98:105–30.

Firebaugh, G. and Frank Beck (1994). “Does Economic Growth Benefit the Masses? Growth, Dependence, and Welfare in the Third World.” American Sociological Review 59:631–653.

Janowitz, Morris.1975. Military Conflict: Essays in the Institutional Analysis of War and Peace. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Kerber, Linda K. 1990. May All Our Citizens Be Soldiers and All Our Soldiers Citizens: The Ambiguities of Female Citizenship in the New Nation. In Jean Bethke Eltshain and Sheila Tobias. Women, Militarism and War: Essays in History, Politics and Social Theory. Savage, Md. Rowman and Littlefield.

Kiser, Edgar and Justin Baer. 2005. The Bureaucratization of States: Towards an Analytical Weberianism. In Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff (eds). Remaking Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Lenski, Gerhard. 1966. Power and Privilege. New York: McGraw Hill.

London, Bruce and Bruce A. Williams. 1988. “Multinational Corporate Penetration, Protest and Basic Need Provision in Non-Core Nations: A Cross-National Analysis.” Social Forces, Vol.66, №3, pp.747–773.

Luhmann, Niklas. 1997. The Limits of Steering. In Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff and Indermohan Virk (Eds). Contemporary Sociological Theory. New York: Blackwell Publishers Pp 139–153.

Mannheim, Karl. 1936 (1960). “The Prospects of Scientific Politics.” Pp 65–98 in C. Wright Mills (ed), Images of Man. New York: Braziller.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1991. One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Societies. New York: Beacon Press.

Marx, Karl and Frederich Engels. 1848. The Communist Manifesto. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm, retrieved 11/20/’10.

_____. 1859. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm, retrieved 11/21/’10

______. 1852. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/, retrieved 11/22/’10

_____. 1875. The Critique of the Gotha Program. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm, retrieved 11/20/’10.

Michels, Robert. 1962. Political Parties. New York: The Free Press.

Mills, C. Wright. 1956. The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.

_____. 1958. The Causes of World War III. New York: Ballantine Books.

_____. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. USA: Oxford University Press.

_____.1960. The Images of Man: The Classic Tradition in Sociological Thinking. New York: George Braziller, Inc.

______.(1959) 2008. “The Cultural Apparatus.” Pp 203–212, in The Politics of Truth, edited by John H. Summers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Mosca, Gaetano. (1939)1961. The Ruling Class. In C. Wright Mills (Ed). The Images of Man. New York: George Braziller Inc. Pp 192–232.

Marcuse, Herbert. 1964. One Dimensional Man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press

Michels, Robert. 1962. Political Parties. New York: The Free Press.

Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press.

Poulantzas, Nicos. 2001. State, Power, Socialism. New York: Verso.

_____ and James Martin (Ed). 2008. The Poulantzas Reader: Marxism, Law and the State. New York: Verso.

Robinson, R. 1977. “Dependence, Government Revenue and Economic Growth, 1955–1970.” Studies in Comparative International Development 12:3–28.

Segal, David R and Mady Wechsler Segal. 1983. “Change in Military Organization”. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 9. Pp 151–170.

Skocpol, Theda. 1977. “Wallerstein’s World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and Historical Critique.” American Journal of Sociology, 82, 5: 1075–90.

______. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. New York: Cambridge University Press.

_____. 1985. “Bringing the State Back In”. In Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (Eds). Bringing the State Back In. NY: Cambridge University Press. Pp 3–30

Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. New York: Russell Sage.

_____. 1985. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime”. In Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol (Eds). Bringing the State Back In. NY: Cambridge University Press. Pp 169–187

_____. 1990. Coercion, Capitalism and European States. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

_____ (ed). 1996. Citizenship, Identity and Social history. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press.

Veblen, Thorstein (1932)1961. “Status and Discontent”. In C. Wright Mills. Images of Man. New York: George Braziller Inc. Pp 136–148.

Weber, Max, Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills.,eds. 1958. From Max Weber. New York: Oxford University Press.