Introduction

Have you ever wondered why we pay taxes, drive on the left, do not smoke or drink alcohol in public places? For that matter, why do we expect that some entity would provide reservations in jobs, cheaper petrol, diesel, food, electricity and fertilizers to the people? Furthermore, why do we assume that the safety and security of the people against hostile forces would be the responsibility of some powerful agency? We do so as we trust that there is an agency powerful enough to enforce discipline and order in society, to redistribute its resources and wealth and to protect through a publicly maintained national defence force. We identify this agency as the ‘State’. We will try to understand the nature of the State, which is one of the central themes of political science. The State is an organ of society, representing coercive power, which it uses or threatens to use for collecting taxes, enforcing discipline, providing subsidies and ensuring security.

Society is the primary basis of human association and social relationships. Sociologists suggest that society has emerged through the process of natural evolution and instinctive affiliation of human beings with each other. It is a realm of various relationships—for establishing and sustaining families, making friends and peers, becoming and remaining members of religious, cultural, interest and professional associations such as castes, communities, unions, etc. Because society is a primary and natural association, it encompasses all aspects of the familial, religious, cultural, economic and political realms of human life.

However, society needs to maintain social order and regulate the rights and obligations of its members. This is done through social customs, traditions and social control. Social control may be exercised through social and religious means such as social boycotts, ostracism, criticism, moral appeals and peer pressure. But such means alone may not be adequate. It requires the application or the threat of application of force, along with negotiation, adjustment and reconciliation. Moreover, a society with members having different customs, traditions, religions and cultural affiliations requires a separate agency. Therefore, society must make use of a separate and impartial agency, the State, which can carry out these functions. Like the elder in a family or a student union in a college or university, the State becomes the representative of society as a whole, as well as the repository of society’s power to regulate social order and adjust interests and relationships of different individuals and associations. By virtue of this, it becomes a superior or sovereign power. When we accept an older male or female in our family as its head, we concede that the elder will decide on all the vital matters concerning the family members. In turn, we also expect that the elder will be impartial and fair in dealing with all the family members, in the same way that you expect your class representative on a student-faculty committee or a class monitor or a student union president to be impartial. This understanding of the State is part of a liberal approach to it.

The Marxist approach views the State differently. It considers the State to be a class instrument which serves the interest of the economically dominant class alone. According to them, this class wants to maintain stability and order in society so that inequalities in economic relationships are justified and maintained.

The laws of the State have primacy over all other rules and regulations in society. The State–society relationship is characterized by the:

• State as a product of society where society is natural and prior to the State¹
• State as something that covers a smaller realm of individual life than the society
• State as something that emerges from society, but is the repository of the power of society
• State as something that needs to represent the reconciled interest of all the members by becoming acceptable as a general power of all its members

In the modern world, the power and functions of the State are organized through constitutions and governments. The terms and conditions of exercise of power by the State are regulated through a formal document called the constitution. A constitution defines the scope and limits of power, the rights and obligations of individuals and associations in society and the organs through which power of the State is exercised in day-to-day life. The government represents the day-to-day operation of the power of the State. This is carried out through the organs of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. While the State is considered a permanent i nstitution, governments are treated as changeable. For example, after every election, a new government is formed in all democracies, but the basic source of the government, the State, continues to be the same. The State is considered to be the source of all power. The government is only a trust or agent of the State. Governments enjoy power on behalf of the State and are considered to be one of the elements of the State. John Locke regarded the government to be the trust of the supreme power of the people. Harold J. Laski refused to give primacy of power to the State because he thought that the State was operationally run, as government, by fallible men. Thus, he equated State with government.

The State differs from the nation. A nation is understood as a group of people who share emotional and customary unity on the basis of shared traditions, customs, ethnicity, language, culture, etc. A nation is a society that may or may not have a State. When a nation is organized under a single political authority which has the supreme power of decision making, it is called a nation-state. It is generally argued that Palestinians, Kurds and Tibetans are agitating for statehood, as they constitute separate nations. For example, before 1971, Bangladesh qualified as a nation due to its linguistic basis, but was not a nation-state. It became a nation-state after it set up an independent decision-making power.