The State, as a power separate from society, did not exist from the beginning of human history. It might have emerged either as a specific way of organizing civic and public activities by groups of people with similar allegiance, habitation, leadership and resources at command or as a specific agency to work for the powerful and dominant class in society. It is difficult to find out an exact time in history when the concept of the State could be identified. Generally, early Greek civilization is treated as the progenitor of the concept of the State, coinciding with the era of city-states.2 The Greek polis, the city-state (a good example is Athens), represented a holistic concept of life for its inhabitants. Such was the all-encompassing nature of the city-state that the Greeks would call a person an ‘idiot’ (from the Classical Greek word idios, which means ‘one’s own private’ as opposed to public affairs, i.e., the polis) if he was disinterested in the affairs of the polis.
The Greek city-states came to be identified with specific elements like territory, population, government and some kind of sovereign authority. Compared with this, it is easy to guess that there would have been ‘stateless societies’, which lacked some of these elements (or at least, the sovereign authority).
For Romans, the res republica or the things pertaining to the public realm signified what we call the State.3 In ancient Rome, the group of people who enjoyed rights and performed duties was called the civitas or community where individuals possessed something very similar to the concept of modern citizenship. The concept of res republica, however, implied not merely the idea of citizenship but also conveyed the notion of public welfare.4 In Greece and Rome, the form of the state was comparable to that of a city or municipality, excepting the Roman Empire.
In medieval Europe, the concept of the secular state found itself struggling against the Christian church. With the decline of the Greek and the Roman political setups and the spread of Christianity in Europe, a long-drawn struggle between religious and political power-centres ensued. The Church, fearing the reduction of its power, claimed that the State was only a limited arm of human life, the primary aspect being the religious and spiritual life. On the other hand, due to the feudal nature of the medieval economy, the power of the state was not very consolidated. At best, the State could only enjoy ‘suzerainty’, i.e., limited and pre-determined rights over various groups and power wielders. The Church challenged any secular agency claiming ethical and moral superiority over it. The feudal nature of the economy allowed only a limited type of secular authority in the form of the State. In short, the concept of the state during the medieval period became a victim of the Church on the one hand and feudalism on the other.
In The Prince, Machiavelli developed the concept of the modern state and explained that all the powers which have had and have authority over men are States and are either monarchies or republics. This modern concept of the State has been referred to as stati (Italian) in Machiavelli’s The Prince, etat (French, as in raison d’etat) and staat (German, as in Landesstaatsrecht). From polis to res republica to stati to the nation-state, the concept of the State as a way of organizing civic and political activities has travelled a long way.
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