Characteristics of the Mature State

Discussion

Leonid Grinin:

“The first initial (primitive) mature state (France in the reign of Louis XIV) appeared in the late 17th century. Yet, only in the 19th century they became dominant in Europe and the New World (see Table 6 and Diagram 8). Finally, by the end of the 20th century this type of state was prevalent everywhere, except possibly certain parts of Tropical Africa and Oceania. So in general, the mature state is a result of the development of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution; thus, it has a radically different production basis than previous state types. In addition to this, the transition to the mature statehood (or its analogue) is connected with the demographic revolution. Almost in every industrialized country a very rapid, explosive population growth was observed (see, e.g., Armengaud 1976; Korotayev, Malkov, Khaltourina 2006a; Grinin 2007a, 2010a). The mature state significantly surpasses the developed state with respect to the complexity and efficiency of its political organization and legal system; it necessarily has a professional bureaucracy with its definite characteristics (see e.g., Weber 1947: 333–334), distinct mechanisms and elaborated procedures of the legitimate transition of power.

The mature state can be defined as a category that denotes an organic form of political organization of an economically and culturally developed society, a system of bureaucratic and other specialized political institutions, organs and laws supporting the internal and external political life;

It is an organization of power, administration, and order maintenance that is separated from the population and that possesses:

a) sovereignty;

b) supremacy, legitimacy and the reality of power within a certain territory and a certain circle of people;

c) a developed apparatus of coercion and control; and

d) the ability to change social relations and norms in a systematic way.

It makes sense to pay attention to the point that the developed state is defined as a natural form of the political organization of society (that is, though the developed state is necessary to sustain social order in a supercomplex agrarian society, in principle, its main agricultural population could do without state, let alone a large state if there were no threat of external invasions). In contrast, the mature state is defined as an organic form of the political organization of a society, that is, such a form without which a respective type of society (and its population) could not reproduce itself in principle. In the meantime, statehood itself becomes virtually separated from concrete persons. In the monarchies of the initial period of the mature states a monarch (like Louis XIV) could still claim: ‘L'État, c'est moi!’, whereas in the constitutional regimes this became just impossible. We can also observe the development of certain autonomy of the bureaucratic apparatus and army that more and more act as an abstract mechanism of civil service.33 All these serve as a basis for the formation of civil society.

So France can be regarded as a mature state since the late 17th century. Let us mention just one telling example: by the early 16th century there were 8 thousand officials in France, whereas by the mid-17th century their number grew to 46 thousand (Koposov 1993: 180).

In England the mature statehood formed in the first decades of the 18th century, that is, some time after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the overthrow of James II, and the enthronement of William III of Orange, when a new system of state control began to form: constitutional monarchy, the two-party system, and a single-party government. In Prussia the mature statehood had existed since the late 18th century. By the early 19th century ‘within military, as well as civil, administration it established standards for whole Europe’ (Parsons 1997: 100). In Russia it has existed since the early 19th century – since the reforms of Alexander I and Mikhail Speransky. In Japan it appeared in the last third of the 19th century (after the ‘Restoration of Meidji’). The USA became a mature state after the period that is denoted as ‘Jackson's Democracy’ named after the President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) when we observe the formation of a two-party system and the abolition of the electoral qualification system.

China can be regarded as a mature state analogue since the late 17th century or the early 18th century (the final period of Kangxi's [16611722] reign). This state managed to organize politically an enormous (even from the present-day point of view) population against the background of its very fast (for the 18th century) demographic growth (McNeill 1993: 240–244). During the 18th century the Chinese population grew from 100–150 to over 300 million (Kryukov et al. 1987: 61–63; Korotayev, Malkov, and Khaltourina 2006b: 47–88; McNeill 1993: 240). In Qing China we can also observe a rather high level of administrative technologies, a number of social innovations atypical for developed (but not mature) states (for more detail see Grinin 2006d, 2006g, 2007a, 2007b, 2007i, 2010a)."

The main characteristics of the mature state:

a) it is already an industrial or industrialized state where a unified economic organism integrated by effective communications is formed. The ensuring of its normal functioning becomes a more and more important task of the state. An important role is also played here by military needs;

b) it has a sufficiently high level of administrative organization, a developed system of laws, or state regulations (as was found in the states of the ‘Communist Block’). In the mature state, administration institutions, as well as the apparatus of coercion and control, are both more elaborated and more specialized than in the developed state; while in the latter those organs and institutions far from always had clearly demarcated functions.

In the developed state both supreme and local administrative organs were often multifunctional and unclear with respect to their tasks. Real bureaucracy was only concentrated primarily within certain spheres that were different in different countries (e.g., in taxation, or courts of law), whereas it could be absent in the other spheres of life, especially at the level of local government.36 And such a situation did not always change immediately at the level of the primitive mature state (cf., for example, the situation in France in the 18th century [Malov 1994: 140]), whereas it is changed in really systematic way only at the level of the typical mature state (for more detail see Grinin 2007a, 2010a);

c) a new political regime is established: the representative democracy or one-party state. There are usually present the worked out forms of constitutions and the division of powers, and the role of law (especially civil law) significantly increases. In general, in mature states the systems of law and court procedures reach a level of development and elaboration that it appears difficult to compare them with the ones of earlier epoch (in totalitarian and authoritarian states instead legal branch we observe very complex political-administarative system);

d) one of the most important functions of the mature state is to secure not only the social order, but also the legal order, which was often paid little attention by the developed states;

e) mature states politically organize societies, where estates have disappeared, the industrial classes have formed. In connection with the growth of the role of property relations, the establishment of legal equality of the citizens, the abolishment of the privileges of the estates, the mature state is gradually transformed from the estate-class state to the purely class-corporate state. Thus, here the role of new industrial classes (bourgeois and employees or the analogous groups of the socialist nomenklatura and employees), dramatically increases within the state system. As the class division is mostly economic (see, e.g., Weber 1971, 2003), and not juridical, it becomes necessary to have organizations and corporations that express the interests of certain parts and groups of certain classes (and sometimes interests of a certain class as a whole). These are various organizations and political parties of both workers and bourgeoisie (see, e.g., Bergier 1976; for more detail see Grinin 2010a), as well as other social strata.37

f) it is based on the modern type of nation (or a set of nations), nation-state formed, that is why it can only exist within a society with a unified national (or supranational) culture (about the tight relations between the nation and the state see e.g., Armstrong 1982; Gellner 1983; Freidzon 1999: 10–12; Grinin 1997с; 2006e: 201–203, 222–235; 2009d).

In the developed states mass literacy was almost never observed, written information sources were controlled by the elites, whereas the mass literacy is normal for mature states were written information sources became available to the general population already in the 18th and 19th centuries and where the importance of mass media grew enormously. This stimulated radical changes in the forms, styles and directions of administration and contacts between the government and the people. That is why such a state is concerned with its influence on culture, including control over language, religion, education and so on. Hence, the ideology of the mature state always includes some nationalism (or some other ideas about the superiority of the given state's population; for example, its special progressiveness, revolutionary spirit, love for democracy/freedom, certain historical deeds, etc.); With respect to the relations between the state and society – that is, the state and the person – we find it necessary to speak about the formation of a new type of ideology that can be denoted as civil ideology, because it explained the relations between the person and the state from the point of view of the person-citizen who had equal legal rights and duties and lived in a nation-state. As a result of revolutions, reforms and proliferation of education this civil ideology gradually replaced the sacred traditional ideology of the developed state that implied the sanctity of the monarch's power and the inviolability of the estate social order.

Nationalism can be considered as the most universal type of civil ideology. Liberalism, democratism, revolutionism, and reformism can be regarded as other influential ideologies of the age of classical capitalism. The later period observed the formation of imperialism (as an ideology), communism, fascism, and anticommunism. As a result, the very criteria of the state's dignity changed. The splendor of the Court was replaced with the economic power of the nation, a more just social order, and, subsequently, the quality of the population's life as the criteria for judging the level of state development.

Thus, the mature state bases itself on new types of infrasocietal links:

– material links

– unified economic organization and unified market;

– cultural links

– unified culture-information organizations;

– national links

– consciousness of national unity and development of new symbols of this unity: nation, national interests, supreme interests;

– consolidation on the basis of ideology: cult of law and constitution, cult of nation;

– consolidation on the basis of participation in pan-national organizations and corporations (trade unions, parties, movements) and participation in pan-national elections. “

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