Coercion, Capital, and European States

 National states are defined as states governing multiple contiguous regions and their cities by means of centralized, differentiated, and autonomous structures.  National states vs. nation states  Two factors challenging national-states

 Groups headed by religious leaders  City states  Empires  National states  And probably another type will emerge

 Statist theories => political change as a result of forces, internal to the state (domestic developments)  Geopolitical theories => political change as a result of forces external to the state (international system)  Mode-of-production theories => different mode of production produced different type of states (capitalism, feudalism, etc.)  World system theories => mode of production creates different class structures which produces different states

 War-making and preparation are two reasons behind political change and state making.  Men who controlled concentrated means of coercion use them to extend and wield power. Most powerful states forced other states to comply with war production. Otherwise, those rivals fall.  War and preparation for war entailed extracting resources, such as arms, men, supply, and money.  Extraction and struggle created the organizational structures of the states and became a centralizing force

 The increasing scale of war and development of an international system of trade, military, and diplomatic interaction gave war making advantage to those states that could field standing armies. They set the terms of war, and their type of state (national state) became the predominant one in Europe.

 Capital: any tangible mobile resources and enforceable claims on such resources  Capitalist: specialized in the accumulation, purchase, and sale of the capital  Exploitation: yielding surpluses from the relationship between production and exchange.  Therefore, the field of the capitalists is exploitation

 Trade, warehousing, banking, and production depend on their proximity to each other. When capital accumulates and concentrates within a territory, the urban growth tends to occur throughout the same territory. (capital concentration vs. capital accumulation)

 Coercion includes all concerted application threated or actual, of action that commonly causes loss or damage to the persons or possessions of individuals or groups who are aware of both the action and the potential damage.  This includes inadvertent, indirect, and secret damage.  Coercion involves domination by using armed forces, and extends to  Incarceration, expropriation, humiliation, publication of threats, and so on.

 When accumulation and concentration of coercion grow together, this process results in the formation of national states.  Coercive means and capital merge when the same object serves exploitation and domination.  Efforts to subordinate the neighbors results in the formation of the armies. This effort also gives birth to civilian staffs that sustain rulers’ day-to-day control over the rest of the civilians.

 Coercive control of a territory creates two needs:  Rulers need to manage lands, resources, and people within that particular land  This entails extraction of resources, distribution of goods, services, and income, and adjudication of disputes  Coercive control of territory involves rulers in extraction.  This entails infrastructure of taxation (creating proper bureaucratic means to collect taxes), supplying the government (army) with the necessary resources and equipment, and administering the process of extraction.

 Transition to centralization in rule gave the rulers  access to citizens and resources through  Taxation, mass conscription, censuses, and police system  With the cost of widespread resistance, extensive bargaining, and creation of rights for citizens  Laid new state structures, governing budgets, personnel, and organization diagrams.

 Countries such as Prussia, Russia, Poland, and Hungary are established through coercion intensive means.  Dutch, Dubrovnik, and Genoa were established through capital intensive means  France and England were formed through a combination of both, capitalized-coercion.  Capitalized-coercion is the model that the other states try to imitate in the world in the present.

 Tribute-taking empires: These types of political organizations leave the local administration to local elites (lower level of concentrated coercion).  Fragmented sovereignty: They employ coalitions and institutions during wars. But such states do not have large state apparatuses in peace time, either in terms of estate or in terms of military force.(city states and urban-federations)  National states: they have national militaries; they have highly developed and centralized administrative, distributive, productive, and extractive state bureaucracies.