The Expansion of the State

Abstract

The state has come to be a major focus of political and historical sociology in recent years. In the growing literature, there appears to be an underemphasis on the cultural and institutional contexts of the state's emergence and expansion.Two distinct issues are crucial: (a) the evolution of society as a collective actor, including the establishment of sovereignty and the expansion of its jurisdiction; and (b) the degree to which this sovereignty and jurisdiction are structured within a particular bureaucratic organization. We first review studies of the emergence of states in formerly stateless polities. We then discuss the process es of state formation and nation building in the Western system. Finally, we review more specialized theoretical works concerning classes, the world econ omy, and the construction of national institutions. The literature discussed has added considerably to macrosociology. More work is needed, however, in which the state is viewed as an institution that is essentially cultural in nature and that derives from a wider rationalizing project.Sociological interest in states as social institutions has expanded in recent years. More attention has always been paid to this topic in Europe, but even there it often has been a secondary theme. American sociologists have ignored the state, concentrating on voters, interest groups, power arrangements, and so on. The forces that engendered this situation deserve consideration, since they continue to create difficulties in sociological thinking about the state. Sociolo-461

The “Actors” of Modern Society: The Cultural Construction of Social Agency

“…5 By "rationalization" we refer (conventionally) to the cultural accounting of society and its environments in terms of articulated, unified, integrated, universalized, and causally and logically structured schemes (Weber 1927;Parsons 1966;Kalberg 1994). this "axial tension" is to be this-worldly, attained through the joint transformation of society and the individual. Society is instrumentalized as a modifiable vehicle for salvation (later, progress and justice) (Bellah 1964;Thomas and Meyer 1984), but in the Western tradition it is the cultural project that is sacred, not some specific control structure in itself. The contrast with China in this respect, from an early historical period, is striking (Weber 1927;Needham 1954;Eisenstadt 1986Eisenstadt , 1987.…”

Political Modernities: Disentangling Two Underlying Dimensions of Institutional Differentiation

“…5 That is, in its ecological aspects it selected ruthlessly for polities that pursued an intensive mobilization of internal resources and activities~Wallerstein 1974 ;Mann 1986;Tilly 1992;Jones 1981 for review!. Also, in its cultural aspects, Christendom spawned highly ideological and purposive "imagined" polities~Anderson 1991!-projects organized around expansive religious and post-religious visions of development and progress~McNeill 1963; Thomas and Meyer 1984;Hall 1986;Eisenstadt 1987;Meyer 1989!. From an early stage, the European system established both considerable ideological motivation and substantial competitive pressure for "rationalizing" social structures, as Weber and others have noted.…”

State Formation of the Child Care Sector: Family Demand and Policy Action

“…One early claim of neoinstitutional theorists was that state actors are simply instruments of a much deeper "great rationalization project," serving to advance "statemanaged childhood at the institutional level" (Boli and Meyer 1983:217-18). The growth of child care centers may simply have coincided with the creeping formalization of children's lives in general (Thomas and Meyer 1984). Baum andOliver (1991, 1992) showed, for example, that the growth of centers was more robust in neighborhoods that were more densely populated with civic institutions, which acted as scaffolds for activists who were seeking to formalize child care.…”