And now let’s move to more classical aspects of the world, of our present <i>Espace mondial</i>. Let’s take into account state, power, war, peace, international systems, international organizations and so on… Of course in a classical, in a traditional vision of the world, the concept of the state appears as a natural cornerstone. The state was consecrated as the main unit and even as an exclusive unit of international relations, that’s to say of interstate relations. This seems to be obvious, but in fact it’s much more complex. Let’s try to make an order in this very high complexity. First of all, state is not a concept easy to define. We are inclined to consider state as a political system and no more, but state must be considered as a very special political system, with a very precise definition, and it would be a bad method to consider state as a general political order, which can be applied to all the histories, all the cultures, all the societies. We must build the concept of state as an historical concept, if we don’t do that, we take the risk, we take a double risk. The risk first, to not really understand the specificity of articulation politics and society in all the histories, the politics and society are not bound in the same way, are not related to each other in the same way. And the second risk, if we have a too much general vision of state; is to consider that state, as we know it, as it was built in our European and western history, can be exported everywhere around the world, and we know now that this was a failure. State, if we consider it as an historical fact, appeared in the crisis of the European Middle Age, it was invented during the 13th and the 14th century in order to contain the fragmentation of the political and social and economic order inside the feudal society. State has to be considered as a political solution to a crisis, a very strong crisis, which took place at the end of the feudal era. That’s to say state is constituted by some characteristics that are setting up the definition we commonly give to it. States will be considered as a political system, but a special political system. That’s to say: a centered, centralized political system, a differentiated political system, an institutionalized political system, a sovereign political system and a territorial political system. Center, differentiation, institution, sovereignty and territory are the five components of the nation state model. Center: all the political systems are not centralized, if you take into account the tribal system, the tribal system is not centralized. If you take into account the feudal society, feudal society was not centralized, that’s to say that there is no necessary link between center and politics. State is a way of centralization, which took place when the decentralization of the feudal order went to collapse. Differentiation: this is another main characteristic of the western state, of the historical western state, that’s to say separation between private and public, between civil society and state. This differentiation cannot be found in other kinds of political systems, neither in empire nor in traditional monarchy or traditional political order as we find it in the traditional societies. Institutions: institutions that’s to say a separation between the norms and those who are implementing the norms, that’s to say state must be considered as an institutional political system, it is quite different for instance from a patrimonial monarchy and patrimonial order as it was conceived in a Weberian tradition. Sovereignty: that’s to say the state is sovereign, no other power behind the state power, this sovereignty, which is as you know the cornerstone of the Hobbes vision of the politics, is founding the state. We have in mind the great question: what about globalization in which a total sovereignty is not possible? Is state able to survive in this globalized order? And finally territory, that’s to say, and it appears very clearly in the definition of the state given by Weber, state implies a territorial order with very precise borderlines. This is also quite different from other kinds of political systems, like for instance empires. In an empire there is no clear borderline but there are these peripheries, which cannot be reduced to classical territory drawn by the borderline. If we admit this definition, we can clearly find the relationship between state building and overcoming the feudal order, solving the political crisis emerging from the medieval social disorder. And that’s why I will insist on a very important point, the more feudal society was fragmented, the more centralization was strong as a solution to the deadlock of this fragmentation, that’s to say, nowadays, those societies, which were strongly and deeply feudalized are now affected by a strong tradition of a strong state. That’s why for instance France was considered and is still considered as the motherland of states, where state is developed, where there is a strong culture of the state, a strong separation between public and private, and this culture of the state which is at the very center of the French culture is explained by the deep crisis of a very fragmented social order which took place in France at the end of the Middle Age. Now, if we consider other kinds of societies, of European societies, like for instance England, England was not strongly feudalized, and that’s why the state was never very strong and the civil society played a more important role than a state, a classical state order. And now if we move to US, which didn’t meet the history of feudality, we cannot find for this reason a strong tradition of state. I will add another point, which is connected to this one: that’s to say, the more a civil society is able to be govern by itself, the more, of course, it will escape from the state tradition, and the less developed the state is. Now we have also to take into account another aspect of this specificity, that’s to say the cultural background of the state. The state in his history is clearly related to the Christian culture as we mentioned in the last lecture, Christianity is probably bearing the state model, that’s to say this conception of separateness between temporality and spirituality, this vision of secularism, but also this institutional culture, this culture of representation. The way the church, the roman catholic church organized itself in administration, territorial administration, judicial administration, fiscal and tax administration and so on, all these trends were imitated by the kings and the state builders for shaping the new nation state, which was in creation from the 13th and 14th centuries. Last point which was stressed by the great sociologist Charles Tilly is that in the European history, there was a very dense interaction, interplaying, between state and war. War making, state making, as established Charles Tilly, this means that the history of the state building in Europe is clearly connected to the war history, and that the main features of the state are connected to the main features of the war. And that’s why also Hobbes stressed that there is an interaction between state and security. The security function was conceived at the very center of the state institutions, and it is not possible to have in mind state without having in mind security, as we will elaborate later. This is, Ladies and Gentlemen, what we call the westphalian system, which took place in the 17th century, and which implied a new international order, which is made of the juxtaposition of these units, of this territorial nation states. The question now is what about those political systems which now are reluctant to this model, this implies empires. We have some surviving empires like China, like Russia, which are not really conceived as states. And what about those imported states, which were not able to grow up as a new political system for instance in Africa or Asia?
