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  1. Home
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  3. A Theory of the State
  • Cited by 35
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2009
Print publication year:
2001
Online ISBN:
9780511606182
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606182
Subjects:
Political Theory, History, Political Economy, Politics and International Relations, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Series:
Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions
Information

Book description

This book models the emergence of the state, and the forces that shape it. State creation is bound to protection needs. A specialized protector-ruler is efficient, but is also self-seeking. Individuals will install a ruler only after they create a mechanism to control him. Among the offshoots of the organized protection are legal system and decision-making procedures that include voting. The initial 'state of nature' may gradually evolve into a rule-of-law state. The state endows individuals with rights by delineating what it will protect. Enforcement, however, is never perfect. People use third parties such as firms to enforce agreements. As commodities become standardized, scale economies increase. In order to exploit the economies of within-state enforcement, the state will expand the contact enforcement territory by treaty or by conquest. The force may explain the creation of rule-of-law empires.

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