This time on Weber’s conception of the state. I’m putting this up because political obligation, and the problems it generates for theories of the state, is something i find particularly interesting. As i think Weber’s approach avoids the traditional problem of political obligation, i think the Weberian account of the state is highly plausible. The following might provoke some thoughts and get some discussion going…

‘The modern state is a compulsory association which organises domination’ (WEBER). Is this an adequate description of the modern state?

II will argue in this essay that while the title quote taken alone is unlikely to offer an adequate description of the modern state, a broader presentation of Weber’s account of the state reveals it to be not only adequate, but also highly compelling. First, I will show that the specific manner in which Weber defines a state determines how that definition should be critiqued. Second, I will argue that Weber’s account is not only adequate, but also desirable, because it bypasses the outstanding challenge to many alternative theories of the state: the problem of obligation. By showing that Weber’s account is adequate (and desirable) as regards the concept of a state itself, it follows ipso facto that it is adequate (and desirable) regarding the modern state.

Before getting underway I must make a qualification. As it stands, the conclusion that the title quote is not in fact an adequate description of the modern state would, I think, be easily demonstrated. This is simply because the title quote taken alone tells us too little. Yet if it is taken alone, it is most certainly an overly narrow construal of Weber’s account. Hence taking it alone can be of no serious interest to us – supposing, that is, that we are seriously interested in what Weber had to say. To do justice to Weber’s position the title quote must be supplemented by his famous declaration that “a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. These two quotes together emphasise the two central aspects of Weber’s account, upon which this piece will focus: firstly, that the state is a compulsory association, and secondly that it is characterised specifically by the monopoly of legitimate force, by which Weber means violence and coercion. With this second component of Weber’s account in place, we are ready to proceed.

It is essential to be clear as to why Weber felt justified in defining the state as the successful monopolisation of the legitimate use of force (I will focus on compulsory association a little later). As Warren puts it, “because of the plurality of ends pursued by political organizations, it is not possible to define them in terms of shared values, goals or commitments. Rather, political organizations share only a characteristic means, the use of force”. What marks the state out is that it has monopolized the legitimate use of force; “the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it”. Hence Weber’s definition of the state is a very specific one: he denies that the state can be delineated according to its ends, or the goals it purses: “there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those associations which are designated as political ones…one can define the modern state…only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it”.

Critics of Weber’s position may wish to object to his defining the state according only to its means by one of two ways. The first is ruled out be the logic of Weber’s definition, the second, while logically possible, has I think yet to be achieved. The first response to Weber would be to deny that the means in question are peculiar to the state, and hence that this cannot be the defining characteristic of the state. This is untenable because Weber explicitly states that the state monopolizes the use of physical force. If the state successfully achieves this monopoly, then the use of force is peculiar to the state. If the attempted monopolization of force is unsuccessful, then we are not dealing with a state, but at best only a failed one.

The second response is to argue that there are goals and ends the pursuit of which is unique to states, or that there are means peculiar to the state other than monopolization of physical force. The issue then becomes an empirical one, with objectors attempting to provide examples of either ends and goals the all states pursue but that no non-states pursue, or of discovering some other means peculiar to the state apart from the monopolization of physical force. If either were successful, then it would appear to follow that Weber’s account is inadequate. It is worth noting however that Weber’s account is threatened more by successful examples of uniquely state-pursued ends and goals than additional unique state means. For in the case of the latter, newly discovered unique state means can simply be added to the original account, showing only that it was impoverished rather an inadequate. By contrast, demonstrating that there exist goals and ends peculiar only to states undercuts the foundation of Weber’s definition.

Do such examples of goals and ends peculiar to the state exist? To my knowledge, they do not. Now, I could spend the rest of this essay offering straw-man examples of goals and ends that purport to be peculiar to states, and then defending Weber’s account from such attacks. That, however, would be rather dull. Instead I wish to show that Weber’s account of the state should be viewed as adequate for a different reason than its not, as of yet, having been subject to empirical counter-example. That is that Weber’s account, by defining the state as both compulsory and as the monopolization of violence, is not subject to the problem of political obligation.

What is the problem of political obligation? To do justice to such a question requires an essay in itself. I think, however, that it can be adequately summarised as follows: any account of the state has to explain why members of that state are under an obligation to obey its commands. Now, the way the answer to this question is cashed-out will depend on how one conceives of the state. What I wish to argue here is that Weber’s account can does a far better job than most, because it does not posit the state as justified.

To see this, it will be helpful to consider, albeit only in outline, two prominent theories of political obligation, the Lockean and the Kantian. Very roughly, the former holds that individuals are under an obligation to obey the state if and only if they voluntarily consent to the authority of that state. The latter, by contrast, holds that individuals are obliged to obey the state insofar as the state fulfils certain moral demands and achieves certain moral ends. That is, one has a duty to obey, say, just states, because one has a duty to uphold and promote justice, and this is (in part) best served by obeying the state. Yet both of these theories rapidly run into difficulties. Locke himself famously got into trouble over his attempt to fit ‘tacit’ consent into the extremely stringent demands of the consent approach. That the vast majority of citizens in a state have never, and likely will never, consent to the authority of the state is a serious – I am inclined to believe, insoluble – problem for such an approach. The Kantian account suffers from the problem that, firstly, it is hard to think of any state that has ever been a paradigm of moral virtue, and secondly, the supposition that individuals must obey even the morally perfect state by virtue of its being morally perfect begs rather large ethical questions as to why human beings are obliged to act morally, and whether obligations to act morally exist at all.

What links these two approaches is that they both hold that the state is, or can be, justified. For the Lockean, the state is justified insofar as its members consent to it. For the Kantian, the state is justified insofar as it is meets certain moral requirements. As a result of this justification, the state can extract compliance from its members. Yet it is precisely on these issues of justification that both theories flounder. Here we see the advantage of the Weberian approach: for Weber, that the state is ‘justified’ is, in essence, a nonsensical notion. What defines the state is that it monopolizes physical force: yet how could physical force – violence – ever be justified? Indeed, the force of the point becomes especially clear when we recall that the state is a compulsory association. How could a monopoly of violence, exercised as organised domination over the members of a group for whom membership is compulsory, ever be justified? The answer is that it cannot. Rather, it is simply the way things are. Questions of justification are irrelevant.

As a consequence, we see that Weber eliminates the problem of political obligation at its root. Any theory of the state must answer the question of why particular individuals should obey the state. What matters here is that the sense of the word ‘should’ will be dramatically different for theories – like the Kantian and Lockean – which posit the state as justified and those, like Weber’s, that don’t. For those that posit the state as justified, ‘should’ implies some form of requirement upon the individual in lieu of the state’s being justified: you should obey because you consented, you should obey because the state pursues supremely moral ends, etc. For Weber, the reason you ‘should’ obey the state is because you cannot escape it (it is compulsory), and if you disobey, it has the capacity to inflict extraordinary violence upon you, in the face of which you can do virtually nothing. The Weberian account therefore has a massive advantage: theories positing the state as justified must explain the requirement upon individuals to obey in terms of the state’s being justified. Yet the state’s being justified is exactly where such approaches run into trouble, and as a consequence, why the problem of political obligation is a problem. For if the state is justified, this entails that there is some argument which can be levelled at disobedient individuals, appealing to the justified nature of the state – yet finding that argument proves notoriously tricky. By positing the state as unjustified, there is no problem of political obligation for Weber, because the answer to the question, ‘why should I obey the state?’, has nothing to do with providing arguments appealing to the individual. Rather, it is neatly answered by the reply ‘because if you don’t, then you will suffer’ – and that is the end of it. Thus Weber’s account completely avoids the problem that dogs accounts of the state that posit it as in some way justified. That it avoids such a seminal problem should, I think, speak volumes about the adequacy of his account.

My work, however, is not done, for it may well be objected that the above argument is not Weber’s. After all he writes that “[i]f the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be. When and why do men obey? Upon what inner justifications and upon what external means does this domination rest?” Indeed, he expressly states that there are “three inner justifications, hence basic legitimations of domination” . These three ‘pure’ forms of legitimation are ‘traditional’, ‘charismatic’ and ‘legal’, of which the second Weber is of course especially interested in. Thus, if Weber is expressly offering us an account of how domination can be legitimate, how it can be justified, it becomes unclear as to why he is committed to the position I outlined above. The answer comes in two parts, one concerning the logic of Weber’s position, the other appealing to the text. I take the former first.

Firstly, we see that the sense in which Weber uses the term ‘legitimacy’ cannot be appealing to a justification of domination over and above his understanding of the state as a compulsory association monopolizing violence. Let us take charismatic authority as our example. The charismatic leader may well command respect and adoration amongst vast swathes of a population, and those vast swathes may well declare such a leader to be ‘legitimate’ once he attains control of the state mechanism. But this legitimacy extends only so far as those who are captivated by the charismatic leader. For after all, there will always be some who are not so captivated, and do not lend their support to him. Yet what are they to do? They cannot (reasonably) be expected to leave the state, and if they disobey the leader the consequences will be dire, due to his monopoly of physical force via the state apparatus. How could the leader’s domination reasonably be said to be ‘legitimate’, when it rests merely upon widely yet not universally held sentiment, and the monopoly of physical force? This would imply that, at root, legitimacy consists simply in successfully monopolizing physical force. That, however, is a proposition few would feel comfortable accepting. Thus Weber’s meaning of ‘legitimacy’ should – I argue – not be read in the normal sense, but instead be understood as a referring to a sort of ‘sham’ concept, whereby ‘legitimacy’ is a cloak for the naked power of states.

However the objector might disagree: she might insist that at root legitimacy cannot be a ‘sham’ concept because, once we get the facts straight about what states are – helpfully provided to us by Weber – we see that monopolization of physical force, plus a few additional trappings like charismatic leadership, is simply what legitimacy, at root, consists of. Hence Weber does think that the state is legitimate and thereby justified, and we see this if we understand his very specific meaning of ‘legitimacy’. I reject this reading for the following reasons. If legitimacy really is, at root, simply monopoly of physical force, this implies a substantial error theory as regards ordinary people’s concepts of legitimacy. I think that it is fairly safe to say that if the proposition that legitimacy consists simply in monopolization of violence were put to most people, they would strongly deny it. Thus if Weber really is committed to the view that legitimacy is rooted in monopolization of physical force, then he is committed to saying that ordinary conceptions of legitimacy are fundamentally in error. But that, I think, is to read Weber the wrong way around. For I do believe Weber is committed to an error theory, but it is not about the concept of legitimacy itself. Rather, it is about legitimacy applied to state power. Where ordinary people go wrong is not in thinking that legitimacy can be based on something other than, at root, violence, it is in thinking that state power is based on something other than, at root, violence. Thus legitimacy applied to states is a sham concept, because what defines the state is its monopoly of violence, yet this monopoly cannot be what we really have in mind when we say that the actions and powers of an organisation, association or institution are ‘legitimate’.

To show that this must be the correct reading of Weber, I appeal finally to the text. For after introducing the three ‘pure’ forms of legitimate domination, Weber tells us that “It is understood that, in reality, obedience is determined by highly robust motives of fear and hope – fear of the vengeance of magical powers or of the power-holder, hope for reward in this world or beyond – and besides all this, by interests of the most varied sort”. That is, it is not the ‘legitimacy’ of domination that determines our obedience, it is our own interests in self preservation and self aggrandisement. This connects to my earlier point that for Weber, ‘justification’ and ‘legitimacy’ are irrelevant concepts in explaining why individuals obey the state. Yet it also follows from this that legitimacy cannot simply be, at root, successful monopolization of physical force, or else ‘legitimacy’ would serve as a justification of state power, and would explain why men obey the state. Legitimacy for Weber must mean something over and above the successful monopolization of physical force, thus when applied to the state, ‘legitimacy’ is a sham concept.

In conclusion, I believe that Weber’s account is not only adequate, but also highly compelling. The elegance of Weber’s definition and his avoidance of the problem of obligation – the problem for accounts that posit the state as in some way justified – provide a highly sophisticated account of the state. To be sure, there will be those who are uncomfortable with the conclusion that states are not and cannot be justified, and that not only do they have no legitimate claims to our obedience, but the very notion that the power of the state could ever be legitimate is itself a fundamental error. Yet feelings of uneasiness do not constitute intellectual refutation. Thus I submit that Weber’s account of the state is not merely adequate, it is correct.