Characteristics of Early State Forms

Discussion

Leonid Grinin et al. :

"First of all, let me introduce our definition.

The early state is a category used to designate a special form of political organization of a relatively large and complex agrarian society (or a group of societies/territories) that determines its external policy and partly its social order; it is a power organization

(a) that possesses supremacy and sovereignty (or, at least, autonomy);

b) that is able to coerce the ruled to fulfil its demands; to alter important relationships and to introduce new norms, as well as to redistribute resources;

c) that is based (entirely or mostly) on such principles that are different from the kinship ones.

Once again we point out, this definition does not mention professional administrative and control apparatus, regular taxation and artificial territorial division as necessary traits of the early state because in the early states those traits are almost never observed in their entirety.

The state as a form of political organization of the society reflects the social construction of the latter. Our analysis of the traits typical for the early state indicates that this state should be regarded as incomplete. This incompleteness implies that there are certain restrictions within the system of relationships between the state and society that block the further development of the early state. These restrictions mean that such a relationship between the state and society is retrospectively (from the point of view of the evolutionary potential of the respective system) inadequate in comparison with what we observe within more developed systems. Thus, it is in no way strange (what is more, it is perfectly normal) that most early states never evolved into developed states (see, e.g., Claessen, van de Velde 1987; 1991; Skalník 1996; Shifferd 1987; Tymowski 1987; Kochakova 1995), whereas those that did it, usually only achieved this through painful crises and cataclysms that caused a deep reconstruction of the entire system. The restrictions manifest themselves in different ways. Sometimes the political form of the early state turned out to be insufficiently tightly connected with the society. In such cases it did not ‘matter’ (for a state superstructure) what it controlled. Take, for example, Central Asia where interstate borders did not get stabilized for centuries, they changed constantly in connection with purely military circumstances and a new conqueror's luck (this is also rather typical for West Asia and North Africa). As another example, one can take Medieval Europe during the 11th – 13th centuries, where huge areas were transferred from one ruler to another, and from one polity to another as a result of rulers' marriages/divorces, deaths and inheritance cases Europe at this time is an example of a political system with a weak administrative structure. However, we also find such cases of ‘incongruence’ between the state and society when the political system of a state possesses a developed administrative apparatus that is able to control and regulate different territories. This could be observed in Mesopotamia where states frequently changed their borders, grew and shrank in a rather fast way, which was accompanied by a fast dynastic change. However, the principles of statehood remained the same as the bureaucracy easily imposed itself over any territorial configurations. However, in some early states the above mentioned limitations expressed themselves in the fact that the links between the state and society were too tight, that is, some state form was appropriate only for a given society. As a result such states were incapable of performing qualitative transformations.

A good example is provided here by the organization of the Greek poleis that failed to transform themselves even when their independence was threatened. ‘A paradox of Greek history is that its main tendency was the continuous and generally unsuccessful aspiration to overcome the polis: it was continuous because of the incongruence of sometime established polis principles … with the subsequent social progress, whereas it was unsuccessful because the attempts to overcome the polis were undertaken on the very basis of the polis’ (Frolov 1979: 6). We have identified the two main types of incongruence between the political and structures of the ancient and medieval states.

The first and the most widespread incongruence is when the administrative structure of the state is underdeveloped. As was mentioned above, early states did not possess the complete set of important features of the developed state, or had not developed all (or some) of them up to a sufficient degree. In fact, some of these features could be rather developed, whereas the rest were underdeveloped (and some could just be absent).

First of all, this is relevant for such statehood attributes as:

(1) a professional administration/control/oppression apparatus;

(2) taxation;

(3) administrative (i.e. made specially for the purpose of governing) territorial division; and

(4) the presence of written law and written administrative documentation (orders, directives, reports, archives, etc.).

Frequently early states had a rather weak apparatus of administration and oppression. Sometimes this weakness was combined with a primitive character of social stratification, as, for example, could be observed in the European ‘barbarian kingdoms’ of the early Middle Ages.

On the other hand, estate-class stratification could be expressed in a rather distinct way, whereas the administrative apparatus was weak and non-bureaucratic, as could be found in Athens, Rome and other states where professional administrators were either absent all together (and magistrates occupied their positions in turn or by drawing lots), or they did not receive salaries and were elected for short periods of time (see, e.g., Osborne 1985: 9; Finley 1977: 75; Shtaerman 1989; Grinin 2004c, 2004e, 2008f, 2010a). It was not always the case (especially in the Ancient period) that early states had regular armies, whereas rulers relied on levies as their main military force. Also, police systems were seldom found in these early states.11 In some early states we find tribute, gifts, temporary loans rather than true regular taxation, etc. Frequently taxes were irregular; for example, often they were only collected during wars. In some cases they could be absent all together, as the government could have other sources of revenue, such as monopolies on some types of trade (including foreign trade), or some types of economic activities (e.g., extraction of salt and other minerals), special lands and territories whose revenues were used to support the ruler (thus, in medieval Europe revenues of the royal domain were frequently the main source of the state finance); tribute and contributions paid by subjugated areas; compulsory payments of allies (as, e.g., within the Athenian arche) and so on. In the early Roman Republic a very important source of public financing consisted of revenues from the public lands that were rented out, whereas taxes were only collected in extraordinary circumstances.

In some early states we find natural rather than administrative territorial divisions, or such divisions as based on clans, tribes, or local communities (see, e.g., Korotayev 1995, 1996; Grinin 2006g, 2007a).

Such incomplete early states were often just imposed over societies and restricted themselves to military and redistribution tasks, collection of tribute and duties without penetrating deeply into social life.14 Ancient Russia was such a state for a rather long period of time as well as many states created by nomads, many early states of Tropical Africa and so on. It was not rare when a young state nourished a vigorous layer of new nobility that stopped taking into account the interests of the very state that had created it and began to shape social processes of their own. A clear example is provided here by the titled nobility of medieval Europe that transformed service fiefs into private property, enslaved peasants, stripped the kings of their tax-payers and soldiers, and finally transformed kingdoms into nominal entities. Similar processes could be observed during certain periods in many other countries` history starting from rather ancient epochs (e.g., in China of the Chou period: Vasilyev 1993: 187–189; see also Kryukov 1974: 14–15; Kril 2001).

The process described above is the representative of the typical early state phase and turned out to be a period of feudal decentralizаtion. That is why the following statement makes sense: ‘Political decentralization of the early feudal epoch is not a symptom of the state's weakness, but a natural condition (within the observed circumstances): this was a hierarchicized alliance of vassals and seniors based on a system of personal links that were the prevalent form of social relations in this society’ (Gurevich 1970: 60).

In small (and to some extent in medium-size) states the administrative apparatus was usually underdeveloped and insufficiently separated from the population due to their sizes. Indeed, within such a scale many problems can be solved in a rather effective way by means that are different from state orders and controls (they could be solved, e.g., by private persons, through the direct expression of the population's will, or through the activities of clans, professional organizations and social groups). Here the growth of statehood was connected first of all with the necessity to wage successful wars, and sometimes to organize foreign trade. An important role could be played by the state in the settlement of social conflicts, as this was observed in Athens, some other Greek poleis, and to some extent in early Rome (with respect to the conflict between plebeians and patricians). As a result of such conditions, some features of statehood were strengthened and others lagged behind. The particulars depended on the peculiarities of concrete polities. Spartan, Athenian, Phoenician (as well as Roman and Carthaginian [naturally until the respective polities remained small]) ways are just some versions of such development. On the other hand, large early states of the imperial type that originated as a result of conquests were bound to disintegrate or to get radically reduced in size. Empires rarely remained powerful for more than 100 consecutive years (see, e.g., Taagapera 1968, 1978a, 1978b, 1979). Numerous rises and falls of Assyria in the 13th – 7th centuries BCE can serve here as a clear example (see, e.g., Sadayev 1979). However, even when an early state was militarily strong enough to keep its provinces under control for long periods of time, still it usually turned out to be insufficiently developed to integrate effectively its constituent parts. There was usually a pronounced imbalance between the statehood of the center and its periphery (see, e.g., Thapar 1981: 411). As a rule a typical early empire was a multipolity, that is, a political system consisting of a state in its center and various non-state polities at its periphery (see, e.g., Korotayev et al. 2000: 23–24; Grinin, Korotayev 2006: 79–80; 2009a). And such states as republics of Rome, or Carthage or Mauryan Empire in India in the 4th century BCE, and moreover Charlesmagne's Empire, Grand Duchy of Lithuania of the 14th century and many other large states were not tightly integrated systems, but rather conglomerates of territorial polities (for more detail see Grinin 2007a: 134–135). They possessed systems of special links between the center and every people, every region, every territory, whereas some peoples/communities had more rights, some others had fewer rights, some were almost equal to the center, and some had an extremely low status. The second kind of incompleteness of the early state was opposite to the first and by far less frequent one. We are referring to those states that possessed a developed bureaucratic administrative apparatus while, at the same time, had an underdeveloped social structure. Such states lacked sufficiently distinct forms of social stratification (that is, they did not have clearly expressed classes or estates, and lacked sufficiently mature land property relations). What is more, an overdeveloped administrative apparatus could block the formation of a sufficiently developed and stable social system. Examples of the similar situation are: Egypt of the Ancient Kingdom; the Inca Empire; Sumer of the Third Dynasty of Ur (the 21st century BCE); and the subsequent state of Hammurabi.

Thus, one may say that in such states bureaucracy (notwithstanding all its organizational importance) was an external superstructure over society. In other early states, military nobility with its retinues was imposed over society. However, these elites possessed different methods for exploiting and influencing the society (see Grinin 2007a for more detail). If in the former case of incompleteness the early state's weak governments sometimes failed to sufficiently mobilize country's resources as they dealt with self-willed nobility and local governors; in the latter case, the state suppressed the society by trying to restructure it entirely to meet the needs of the state. It took upon itself the functions of resource redistribution and production organizer/controller. Such a state's hypertrophy developed under conditions of a subsistence economy (as was observed, e.g., in the Inca Empire). However, an obsession with registration and control could also be found in societies with commodity-market relations if state duties in kind were also prevalent there; for example, the collection, transportation, storage, and redistribution of duties kind are much more arduous and cumbersome than the accumulation of money. However, the overdevelopment of the bureaucratic administrative apparatus within the state of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the kingdom of Hammurabi sharply distinguished them from the rest of archaic states. Hence, though, on the one hand, these states could be considered early states, on the other, they could also be regarded as developed state analogues."

(http://www.sociostudies.org/books/files/macrohistory_and_globalization/083-135.pdf)