Characteristic of the State: Not power or sovereignty but the purpose or end it serves

Political pluralism views the State not in terms of power or sovereignty but essentially in terms of purpose and the end it serves or should serve according to R. M. MacIver, Leon Duguit and Hugo Krabbe. According to MacIver, service is the end of the state and power is its means. Since the service of the state is not unlimited (since other associations and groups render numerous services) its power or sovereignty cannot be unlimited too. Accordingly, concept of unlimited sovereignty is ‘dangerously false’. For Duguit, as we have seen above, objectivity of law is because of the end it serves. He considers the modern state primarily as a social service state. For him, public service rather than sovereignty is the essential characteristic of the State where the State does not command but serves. For Krabbe also, power is not the essential feature of the State as state being a legal community performs no function except to impute legal value to certain interests. Political pluralism, thus, instead of endorsing or taking for granted the claim of sovereignty by the State, requires that the State must justify its claim to authority. This claim of authority has to be in proportion to the service it renders. Automatic assumption of sovereignty as an essential element of the State is thereby brought into question by political pluralism.