Topic:

“Western Concept of State”

Course:
Political Science
Program:
BS English Linguistics
Submitted to:
Mam Humera
Submitted by:
Fatima Noor
Faiqa Iman
 What is state?
“State as a community of persons, more or less numerous
permanently occupying a definite portion of territory,
independent, or nearly so, of external control and possessing
an organized government to which the great body of
inhabitants render habitual obedience.”
(Garner)
 Concept of State:
1. Islamic Concept of State
2. Western Concept of State
 What are western States?
The western world, also known as the west, refers to various
regions, nations and states, depending on the contest, most often
consisting of the majority of Europe, North America and
Oceania. The western world is also known as the Occident
(from the word occidem, sunset, west)
For instance: U.K., Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, The United
States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
 Evolution Of State:
• Beginning is impossible to be traced. There are several factors
which led to the evolution of state of which the most important
are:
 1. Kinship 2. Religion
3. Conquests and War 4. Political consciousness
5. Economic needs Stages
• Evolution of state signifies following stages:
1. Tribal form of Organization:
Kinship plays an important role in
this form of Organization. Its most primitive form was the
tribe in which the chief of tribe had main authority. The
main purpose of their existence was the preservation of
internal order. The scope of their political power was
narrow. Gradually, it became hereditary and absolute
authority was assumed. This form of organization has
existed in some parts of Earth. Even today in under
developed and among backward people the type persists.
2. The Oriental Empire:
The next step in state building
resulted from the aggregation of population, accumulation of
wealth and improvement in arts of peace and war in regions
favored by nature. Warm climate, fertile soil, abundance of
water and considerable area free from geographic barriers
were required to support large population and to bring about
those permanent relations among men that demanded
increasing government in cradles of civilization, wealth
accumulated and cities arose.
Furnishing abundant food with little effort attracted
surrounding people and led to that conflict and intermingling
which was so important in creating the state, as contrasted
 with earlier kinship organizations. So, it’s the first political
entity that was organized on territorial basis.
3. Greek City States:
After dark ages, in 4th and 5th
century B.C villages start to band together in part for
protection and in part for more organized trade as they want
strong trading center. Groups of villages banded together
were called city states. Early European civilization reached
at its peak in Greek city states. Each city state had its own
army and own form of government. This made an important
contribution to political thought. Organized self govt. and
Individual freedom had been developed. Moreover, state was
coincided with society as difference couldn’t be maintained
between the two.
4. The Roman Empire:
The evolution of body politic in
Rome also started with the emergence of city states. In it, the
form of government was hereditary monarchy and rulers
exercised absolute authority. The glorious period of the Rome
was the one known as Roman Empire. The whole system of
empire was based on autocracy and oppression in which the
ruling elite was the only privileged class. Later, it got
disintegrated at the hands of Barbarian Hordes.
5. The Feudal Empire:
With the disintegration of Holy
Roman Empire, the whole empire was divided into small
feuds under the hegemony of different feudalists. The Feudal
 system was based on knit socio- economic system and
reflected a peculiar civilization. The only form of wealth was
agriculture and it’s produced. “The whole territory under
the control of one lord was called a Feud.”
6. Emergence of Modern Nation State:
New political divisions emerged
on the basis of:
1. Territorial nationalism
2. Introduction of new technology
3. Role of middle class
4. Popularity of democracy
 History of Western State
•Niccolò Machiavelli:
He was born in Florence in 1469. His
father was lawyer and so he received extensive formal
education and got his first job as secretory for the city of
Florence. But soon after his appointment, Florence exploded
politically and expelled the Medici family who had ruled it
over 60 years. As a consequence, he faced series of carrier
reversals. He can remember
as a truly great man because of his two works:
1. The Prince. 2. The discourses
A good politician in his remarkable view isn’t one who is
friendly, kind and honest but it’s someone who knows how to
defend, enrich and bring honor to state. Being nice may well be
a virtue in general but what citizens most need from their rulers
is effectiveness, which may well call upon some darker arts.
•Plato and Aristotle:
They wrote of the polis, or city-state, as
an ideal form of association, in which the whole community’s
religious, cultural, political, and economic needs could be
satisfied. This city-state, characterized primarily by its self-
sufficiency, was seen by Aristotle as the means of developing
morality in the human character.
•Roman (res publica) or common wealth:
It is more similar to the modern concept
of the state. The res publica was a legal system whose
jurisdiction extended to all Roman citizens, securing their rights
and determining their responsibilities. With the fragmentation of
the Roman system, the question of authority and the need for
order and security led to a long period of struggle between the

warring feudal lords of Europe.

 WESTERN SOVEREIGNTY;
AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF STATE
“Sovereignty means the supremacy of will of the state”
Aristotle believes sovereign as supreme power of state. Bodin
refers it to source of state’s authority. (Absolute, indivisible,
perpetual) Sovereignty maybe vested in a king or in some elite
group or even in the corporate citizenry of the society. If king
was limited by common law, he was not the sovereign.
Sovereignty can’t be divided among institutions, nor be
limited.
 Important aspects of western states:
 Secularism:
By secular concept of the state is
meant that the state is separate from religion. It means, in
other words, that the state has nothing to do with religion,
while religion, i.e., church, is not to interfere in matters of
politics and state. A secular state is not necessarily an
irreligious state, but it believes that religion is a private affair
of the individual, in which it cannot and should not interfere
at all. In this respect, modern state is different from the
Greek concept of state which was ethical, and from the
medieval concept, which was deeply religious, as we have
explained regarding Augustine’s concept of the state above.
Secularism is a modern concept, which first came into being
in the West during the early years of the twentieth century,
when politics was separated from religion in almost all the
Western countries. However, the idea of secular state was
first propounded by Machiavelli. But it did-not bring about
real secularism, i.e., complete separation of religion and state,
for he advocated that the ruler should use religion for his
political purposes. Secularist ideas were first expressed by the
thinkers and philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment in
France during the eighteenth century. They asserted that
 Church and state should be separated, from each other.
However, it was in the twentieth century that secular states
came into being in Europe and America.
Afterwards, the idea of secular state spread to some of the
newly independent states’1 in Asia and Africa when they
were liberated from centuries of Western imperialist
domination after the Second World War, such as Egypt,
Iraq, Syria, Bharat, etc. However, in the case of India,
secularism is really a political ploy or propaganda, for the
policies, acts and laws of the so-called secularist India are in
the interest of the Hindu religion, the religion of the Hindu
majority in that country.

 Nationalism:
Modern state is a national state, what
is a nation? A nation is a people united by the bonds of
common language, religion, culture, or race, and common
historical experience, aspiring to establish or maintain their
separate and independent state. In other words, a nation-state
means a people who are conscious of their separate and
independent national identity under their separate and
independent state.
As such, a nation-state has two component elements:
objective and subjective.
Objective factors are common geography or territory,
common language, religion, culture and common historical
experience of national liberation struggles, past and present,
 while the subjective elements are the psychological factors of
national feelings and consciousness.
As a matter of fact, the psychological elements of nationhood
are more important than the objective ones. As it is said by
Dankwart A. Rustow;
“It is not mountains and valleys, said, that make a
people a nation; it is their consciousness of being a nation
that makes them so.”
 Past Ages:
In the past ages, the people of a state never felt Nation-state is
a modern to be a nation, for they were divided into various
tribes, clans, races, local communities or cities. Loyalty was
primarily to these lesser units or groups, and secondarily and
in a limited manner to the king or emperor.
 Middle Ages: In the Middle Ages in Europe, the Christian
Church produced the concept of universal community of
Christianity, in which the loyalty was at once to the State in
matters concerning the State and towards the Church
concerning religion. As a matter of fact, the rise of the
national states in Europe in the modern time was a revolt
against this concept of universal Christian community,
preached by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.
England and France were the first national state, which came
into being during the Hundred Year War which raged
between them during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Next Spain and Portugal became nation-states due to their
wars against the Spanish Muslims. But their national states
became stunted owing to the overriding influence of the
 Catholic Church and Inquisition. Next Holland became a
nation state. After the French Revolution of 1789, several
central and southern European nation-states came in to
being, such as Germany, Italy, etc.
The idea of nationalism then spread into
eastern Europe, when several nation-states came into being in
consequence of their wars against the Ottoman Empire.
After the Second World War, nationalism spread in Asia and
Africa, where nearly sixty nation-states, e.g., India, Pakistan,
Egypt, Iraq, Algeria, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, and others
were established. At present, the U.N.O. consists of about 159
nation-states. Nevertheless, there are still several
multinational states, like the USSR, the U.K., the Union of
South Africa, etc.
Moreover, many nation-states have also several ethnic,
religious and linguistic minorities within their boundaries,
such as Israel, India, etc. As a matter of fact, there is no
nation-state in the world today, which has not a minority or
ethnic group in it. This fact adds an element of political
tension and instability in the nation-state, which has, in some
cases, led to revolts and national liberation struggles, such as
those of the Tamils in Sir Lanka, of Sikhs in India, of the
Blacks in South Africa, or the Christians in Sudan or of the
Palestinians in Israel.

 Legalism:
Modern state is based upon law.
Law means a general rule of external conduct, passed and
 enforced by the state. Law is an instrument of social control
to prevent conflict, violance, and crimes in society over such
matters as property, life and limb, honour and individual or
group interests.
But law cannot exist without the coercive authority of the
state and its administrative and judicial systems.
In other words, laws are authoritative norms, made and
enforced by the state. As such, law is a statement of rights and
duties of the citizens. Law is, however, a modern concept,
especially with regard to its two aspects:
 legislative enactment
 universal enforcement
It is applied to citizens regardless of differences of class,
social status, wealth or rank. Subordination to law of all the
people, whether rich or poor, high or low, is known as Rule
of Law. In the past ages, law was not taken in this sense. In
ancient times, law was only the custom upheld by the king’s
authority. It had really originated in the tribes and local
communities, which later came to be ruled by the kings or the
like. In such conditions, the very idea of law being made by a
legislative body was unknown.
Moreover, law was then considered to apply to human as well
as to non-human beings. Furthermore, law and morality were
then not clearly distinguished. Modern state and law have
grown together. This development really began when the
legislative system, acquired the exclusive power to make
laws, first in English Parliament during the eighteenth
century. Later on, other European states also set up their
legislative bodies, variously called as National Assembly as
in France, Congress as in the U.S.A., Reichstag or
Bundestag as in Germany, or Cortes as in Spain, etc. In the
twentieth century, when independent and sovereign states
came into being in Asia and Africa, they too set up their own
legislative bodies, named differently.
For instance, in India and Pakistan, where the British
tradition is still very strong, it is usually called Parliament, in
Iran it is called Majlis, and so on. It may be mentioned,
however, that in Iran it is the sources of laws lie not in the
legislative organ of the state, but in the social, economic,
cultural, historical and other conditions, norms and values of
the people and in their ordinary day-to-day experiences and
interactions.
 Reference:
 Political science by Mazhar ul Haq (9th edition)
 Introduction to Political science by Dr Muhammad
Sarwar
 https://www.politicalscienceview.com/the-
evolution-of-the-state/
 https://youtu.be/AOXl0Ll_t9s