Lecture 2.1--States and State Capacity

Overview

What is a state?

What is state capacity?

What is a failed state?

Definition: A set of institutions that possesses the exclusive legitimate authority to make and coercively enforce laws that are binding on the population within a given territory
What do we mean by institutions, and how do these institutions help to ‘coercively enforce’ a country’s laws?

Chief functions
- make laws
- check the power of executive and bureaucracies
Two types
- unicameral = one house
- bicameral = two houses, typically an upper and a lower

Chief functions: 1) adjudicating civil and criminal cases; 2) judicial review. Power varies greatly from country to country

Chief functions: 1) devise and execute law; 2) head of military. Important distinction: head of state vs. head of government.

Chief functions: 1) protect country from external threats; 2) maintain law and order. Extent of military intervention varies with regime type.

Chief function: maintain law and order. Police are the means through which the state exercises its exclusive legitimate authority.

Three levels of state power
- National (federal)
- Regional (state or provincial)
- Local
Federalism: A system in which regional legislatures, executives (governors), judiciaries and police have substantial authority to make, review and enforce their own laws

Legitimacy: the extent to which the population accepts the authority of the state
Three main types of legitimacy
- Traditional
- Charismatic
- Rational-legal

Scope: the reach of the state; the extent of state regulation and intervention in the lives of its citizens
Strength: the ability of the state to perform its most basic functions, i.e. to enforce the law it generates

State fragility refers to a loss of capacity or legitimacy that leaves citizens vulnerable to calamity
State failure refers to a loss of capacity or legitimacy to the extent that the state can no longer perform its most basic functions