We generally define regime by Svend-Erik Skaaning’s meta-definition, derived from various seminal works in the literature:[1]
- Political regime (or simply regime) is an institutionalized set of fundamental formal and informal rules structuring the interaction in the political power center and its relation with the broader society.
In contrast, we define the state, following Weber and Fishman,[2] as follows:
- State is the institution by which the ruling elite of a people exercises the monopoly of legitimate use of violence to extract, manage and distribute resources within the borders of a certain territory.
The relation between the two is that the definition of the state contains what the definition of political regime calls “political power:” the capacity to extract, manage and distribute resources by the use of violence. Therefore, the state is none other but the political power center, controlled by people who may be generally termed “ruling elite” and exercise power through the institutionalized set of formal and informal rules [→ 2.2.1].
There are two important concepts we need to define within the definition of the state. The first one is the “use of violence,” which is important particularly because it is related to the voluntary-coercive dichotomy we are going to use very often in the book. We define violence as follows:
- Violence is a type of action when a person damages the self or property of another person against their will.
When it comes to the “use of violence” by the state, that means that the offers made toward the people by the state, such as requests for money (taxation) or orders to behave in certain ways (regulation or laws), are backed by a threat of violence, that is, an intention to damage the self or property of the people against their will should they reject the offers. In other words, state offers are enforced, typically by a law enforcement agency (police).
The threat of violence used by the state is the most important form of state coercion. Yet it is important to conceptually distinguish violence from coercion in general. For equating the two, though possibly a legitimate philosophical position,[3] is inadequate for the descriptive purposes of our framework. For that would confuse two kinds of non-violent exchanges: when A accepts B’s offer because (1) he expects to improve his original position (wealth, well-being etc.) and when (2) he does not expect to improve his original position but to avoid a greater deterioration of it. Simply put, an exchange in the former case is productive and in the latter case, unproductive: A does not choose a beneficial alternative but one that still harms him, albeit it is the lesser of two evils.[4] Offers for unproductive exchanges, which may be called non-violent threats, include, among other things, blackmail and existential threats, such as the threat of firing from a job that the employee has no similarly good alternatives of.
If a non-violent threat is accepted, it is only B’s position that improves while A’s position worsens, for he needs to serve B’s end instead of serving his own. What needs to be observed here is that the outcome is the same as in case of violent offers. Indeed, if a person in A’s role makes decisions on the basis of whether he can expect his position to improve or not, violent and non-violent threats are essentially the same for him, for they both imply the threat of inflicting harm on his original position should he not accept the offer. And as we are generally interested in social phenomena as they affect persons’ behavior (social action), it is justified, for the purposes of our framework, to treat violent acts and non-violent threats together under the label of “coercion.” This leads us to the following, broader definition:
- Coercion is a type of action when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose. Compared to his original position, the person who receives the offer cannot benefit but can only choose between losing greater amount—by rejecting the offer—or losing a smaller amount—by accepting the offer.
This definition is the closest to, and partially incorporates, F. A. Hayek’s understanding of coercion in The Constitution of Liberty (see Box 2.1). What Hayek calls “freedom,” on the other hand, defined by him as the absence of coercion,[5] is what we call “voluntariness” or voluntary action.The dichotomy of coercive and voluntary relations is one of the key dichotomies of our book and it will serve as a key aspect to differentiate certain ideal types of institutions and relationships. Furthermore, after Weber, who defined power as the ability of a person to carry out his own will upon others despite resistance,[6] we can say that coercion means the use of power in a social relationship.
Besides the “use of violence,” the other important concept we need to clarify in the definition of the state is “legitimate.” We will deal with this question in great detail in Chapter 4, building on Weber’s notion of legitimacy [→ 4.2.5].[7] To get a preliminary understanding, what needs to be emphasized here is that we use the word “legitimate” in the descriptive sense, meaning that this kind of use of violence is legitimized by its subjects, who accept the existence of state coercion as normal and proper. This does not mean that the people cannot disagree with the ways how state coercion is used. Instead, the great majority accepts that (1) state coercion should exist, that is, the use of violence should be the monopoly of a single institution and (2) that state coercion should be used in some way. If this is not the case, there is no legitimacy and we cannot speak about a state.[8]
| 2.1. Box: Hayek’s understanding of coercion. “Coercion occurs when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose. It is not that the coerced does not choose at all […]. Coercion implies […] that I still choose but that my mind is made someone else’s tool, because the alternatives before me have been so manipulated that the conduct that the coercer wants me to choose becomes for me the least painful one. […] Coercion clearly does not include all influences that men can exercise on the action of others. […] A person who blocks my path in the street and causes me to step aside, a person who has borrowed from the library the book I want, or even a person who drives me away by the unpleasant noises he produces cannot properly be said to coerce me. Coercion implies both the threat of inflicting harm and the intention thereby to bring about certain conduct. […] Though the coerced still chooses, the alternatives are determined for him by the coercer so that he will choose what the coercer wants. He is not altogether deprived of the use of his capacities; but he is deprived of the possibility of using his knowledge for his own aims. […] Though the coerced will still do the best he can do for himself at any given moment, the only comprehensive design that his actions fit into is that of another mind.” – F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition, ed. Ronald Hamowy, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 199–201. |
Conceptually, the relation of regime and state is clear: the state is the political power center of the regime, which in turn includes more than the state. Empirically, this distinction is not always so straightforward. In Western political regimes, or rather the ideal typical liberal democracies, the distinction between the state and regime is clear because the sphere of political action isseparated explicitly from the spheres of market and communal action. But the more the spheres of social action collude (the less they are separated), the more the boundary between state and regime becomes blurred. Indeed, scholars have widely recognized the merger of state and society in the post-communist region, where after the regime change the newly founded states embraced and in some areas incorporated society, which became a secondary actor vis-à-vis the state.[9] No wonder that many analyses use “state” and “regime” as synonyms, and the terms which have been used to describe such countries often operate with the term “state” with some specifying adjective while trying to capture the essential features of a polity.
[1] Skaaning, “Political Regimes and Their Changes.”
[2] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation”; Fishman, “Rethinking State and Regime.”
[3] Indeed, this is a popular libertarian position. See Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty.
[4] Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 84–87.
[5] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 57–61.
[6] Weber, Economy and Society, 53.
[7] Cf. Weber, 215–16.
[8] Cf. Call, “Beyond the ‘Failed State.’”
[9] For a meta-analysis, see Guliyev, “Personal Rule, Neopatrimonialism, and Regime Typologies.”