On the Nature and Features of the (Early) State:

An Anthropological Reanalysis*
Dmitri M. Bondarenko
Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, 30/1 Spiridonovka St.,
Ru-123001 Moscow
Abstract. The state is usually considered to be a centralized and specialized coercive institution for governing a society. Contrariwise, our approach stems from the presumption that the state should be studied as a type of society for which this institution is adequate. This leads to the necessity of paying
special attention to the coming to the fore of the non-kin relations in state society. Political centralization cannot be regarded as a feature specific to the state, as it is applicable to many non-state forms of
societies. In the meantime, the feature typical only for the state is specialization resulting in administrators professionalization, that is, in the formation of bureaucracy which is related directly to the nonkin social ties coming into prominence. As for the right to coerce, it is a dependent variable: the legitimate violence in states is exercised through and by bureaucrats who operate within bureaucratic institutions.
[state, society, kinship, territoriality, political centralization, administrative specialization, bureaucracy, legitimized violence]

The state as a societal type

Up until the present time, hundreds of definitions of the state have been proposed,
and it turns out to be actually impossible to combine all (or even almost all) of them
into one generalized definition. However, it still may be argued quite safely that
within the framework of the overwhelming majority of modern theories of the state
this phenomenon is considered to be a specialized and centralized institution for governing a society. The states right to exercise coercive authority (legitimized violence) is
often added as the states critical characteristic feature (see, e. g., summarizing definitions in anthropological encyclopedias and text-books of the 2000s: Abls 2000;
Kottak 2002:104, 242, 269, 509; Kradin 2004:268; Ferraro and Andreatta 2011:
319 320, 429). This approach to the state, rooted in the European political, philo-

* The paper is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program
at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2014.
The author is also grateful to Mr. Kirk Sorbo for bringing the text of the article in accordance
with the rules of the English language.
Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie 139 (2014) 215232

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sophic, legal, and anthropological thought from Antiquity on (Service 1975:21 46;
1978a; Gomerov 2002:14 68), became equally typical for Marxists, (neo)evolutionists, and structuralists in the 20th century notwithstanding the significant differences
between them.
However, the approach the present author advocates stems from the presumption
that the state should be perceived not as a specific set of political institutions only, but
first and foremost as a type of society to which this set of institutions is adequate (Bondarenko 2008)1. However, at the same time we admit that on some occasions it may
be reasonable to separate the two aspects of the state for analytical purposes and thus
to talk about the state in two respects: political and social. The society is normally a
broader notion. On the one hand, it supplements political characteristics by, and combines them with, social (and through them economic) characteristics. On the other
hand, the social and political subsystems often develop asynchronously, with the political system most frequently2 evolving at a more rapid pace and being able to approach
the parameters of state-type administration earlier than the social system acquires the
primarily territorial division of the citizens and composition of the polity as its basis.
As Johnson and Earle put it,
Whereas chiefdoms vest leadership in generalized regional institutions, in states the
increased scope of integration requires specialized regional institutions to perform
the tasks of control and management. . . . Along with this increasing elaboration of
the ruling apparatus comes increasing stratification. Elites are now unrelated by
kinship to the populations they govern. . . (2000:304).
However, it is clear that all its subsystems (economic, social, etc., including political)
are intertwined and in preindustrial cultures are even inseparably integrated. This fact
gives us even better grounds for labeling a society by its general, overall societal type,
and not by the features of its political institutions only. It ought to be noted that the
understanding of societal forms (including the state) as involving not only political but
also socio-economic characteristics serves as a basis for the still somewhat influential
theories of evolutionists (from Maine to Engels), of the French sociological (Durk-

In most of our previous publications on the (early) state we concentrated mainly on the variability
and alternativeness of pathways leading or not leading to the state, on representing and studying state
formation as just an opportunity and by no means a necessity in the process of social evolution (Bondarenko 2000; 2005; 2006; 2008; Bondarenko et al. 2000; Grinin et al. 2004; etc.). In the present article, we are dealing directly with the state as such, making an attempt to reveal the essence of this
phenomenon and to formulate its distinctions from other supercomplex societal forms.
2
Although not always. The area representing probably the most important (in the historical longrun) exceptions to the rule is Europe, in some parts of which (Greece, Italy, Scandinavia) the unilineal
descent groups disappeared at early stages of history at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages having been substituted by the nuclear family and neighbor (territorial) community (see, e. g., Roussel
1976; Dozhdev 2000; Earle 1997:25 26, 163; Kristiansen 1998:45, 46).

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heim, Mauss), American historical (especially Lowie), and British structuralist (EvansPritchard, Fortes, Mair and others) schools, and of substantivists in economic anthropology beginning with Polanyi (see Earle 1994:947). The famous American neoevolutionist conceptions (of Sahlins, Service, Fried, Carneiro, and Haas) also derive more or
less openly from this premise, though, indeed in the final analysis the whole progression (from band to state. D. B.) . . . is defined in terms of political organization
(Vansina 1999:166).
We are convinced that scholars can use whatever definitions of the state they choose
if they are appropriate for the purposes of their concrete research and if the definitions
remain consistent throughout their single pieces, but within the general theoretical framework the notion of the state must not be reduced to its political component. Otherwise, two independent notions the state and the state institution, are mixed up
(Belkov 1993:32). In the meantime, for instance, the Archaic State conception elaborated by a group of archaeologists headed by Feinman and Marcus (1998) does limit
the notion of the state to a specific kind of political organization, as the state is seen by
them merely . . . as a political or governmental unit . . . (Marcus and Feinman
1998:4). In his recent works Alain Testart also declares openly that the State is something political and . . . the emergence of the State is a political fact (2012:105, 107).
Contrary to the approaches of this sort, Henri Claessen, a founder and the main proponent of the Early State concept, declares openly that the state . . . is a specific kind
of social organization, expressing a specific type of social order in a society (2002:102;
2003:161). Precisely this vision (which also naturally presupposes the embracing of the
political aspect of a social system) coincides completely with that of the present author.
The holistic approach to the state, that is the approach that treats it as a type of
society for which a definite set of political institutions is adequate, leads to the necessity of paying special attention to the coming to the fore of the non-kin, territorial
relations in state society a point which, as it must become clear from the aforesaid,
is often left out of many contemporary definitions of the state, consciously or not, due
to the widespread vision of it as merely a specific form of political organization3.
As it is well known, Maine and Morgan contrasted the kin-based prestate society
(societas) with the territory-based state society (civitas) as the one underpinned by presumably primordial natural ties versus the one formed by, in this sense, artificial ties.
However, already Shurtz at the dawn of the 20th century and ultimately the British
structuralists and American Boasians in the mid 20th century demonstrated that Maine

As well as to cultures in comparison with which the state is defined; e. g., Earle postulates unequivocally that . . . chiefdoms must be understood as political systems (1991:14). Note that we do not feel
it necessary to intervene in the present article in the current debates on whether or not chiefdom is a
reality or a delusion (vide stricto Pauketat 2007; heated discussions of, and polemics around this
book see, particularly, in the following journals: Native South 2009. 2:69 132, and Social Evolution
and History 2010. 9 (1):135 176). What is important for us here is that the non-state societies which
are traditionally labeled as such in any case possess the characteristics discussed throughout this text.

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218

and Morgan (as well as later Engels4 following Morgan) had postulated the opposition
between kinship and territoriality too rigidly, even if the social dimension of the former
phenomenon had been acknowledged. These and a number of other mid-20th century
anthropologists provided conclusive arguments for the importance of territorial ties in
non-state cultures. As a result, already in 1965 Lewis had good reasons to argue that
the fundamentally territorial character of social and political association in general is
indeed usually taken for granted, and has been assumed to apply as much to the segmentary lineage societies as to other types of society (1965:96). A year later Winter
wrote categorically that although the dichotomy between kinship and territoriality
had been useful in the days when it had been introduced by Maine, that day has
passed (1966:173). From approximately the same time on, archaeologists and anthropologists do not hesitate to write about territoriality among even the most primitive
human associations those of non-specialized foragers (e. g., Campbell 1968). Finally,
since the 1960s sociobiologists also, based mainly on the ethnographic evidence from
the most archaic cultures, postulate that the sense of territoriality (that is, the feeling of
a territory as his or hers and willingness to protect it from outsiders intrusions) is an
inborn human feature inherited from the pre-human ancestors (e. g., Ardrey 1966).
On the other hand, historians (especially medievalists) have also shown that typologically non- and originally prestate institutions of kinship could and did remain important in state societies. Reynolds even complained in 1990 of that though all that
we know of medieval [Western European] society leaves no doubt of the importance of
kinship . . . we (medievalists. D. B.) have in the past tended to stress kinship at the
expense of other bonds (1990:4). As for anthropologists, by the mid-1950s, experience in the field has shown again and again that for thousands of years and in many
latitudes, kin ties have coexisted with the pre-capitalist state (Murra 1980:XXI). In
fact, it has eventually turned out that the kinship vs. territory problem is a matter of
degree and not of almost complete presence or absence, although the general sociohistorical tendency is really for the gradual substitution of kin-based institutions by
territory-based ones at the supralocal levels of socio-cultural and political complexity.
At the same moment, Testart insists on omitting control over a well-defined territory
from the definition of the state. He is right in emphasizing that it is only a modern
legal tradition to relate a state as an association of its citizens to a territory, a tradition
that put a clear imprint on anthropological thought (Testart 2005:81 82). Indeed, in
archaic societies the sovereigns power is typically regarded as that over people, not over
a certain part of the Earths surface (see, e. g., Kopytoff 1987).

In the Marxist theory the transition from kin to territorial ties has begun to serve as an essential precondition for social class formation, prior to which the rise of the state was declared impossible, as the
state was seen as political organization predestined for guaranteeing the exploitative class dominance
in society. Most rigidly this postulate was formulated by Lenin: The state appears where and when
the division of society into classes appears (1974/1917:67).

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In reality, Morton Fried was correct in postulating that the state is organized not on
a non-kin but on a suprakin basis (1970/1960:692 693).
Taking all the aforesaid into account, we nevertheless still agree with the argument
that the most fundamental. . . distinction (between the state and non-state societies.
D. B.) is that states are organized on political and territorial lines, not on the kinship
lines. . . (Diamond 1997:280). Hence we also believe that the kinship territoriality
criterion of differentiation between the state and non-state societies is valid and deserves attention (Bondarenko 2008:19 22). Note that even highly developed prestate
cultures, like complex chiefdoms, are normally characterized as essentially kin-based
societies (vide stricto Earle 1997:5; Milner 1998:2; Grinin 2011:247 248, 254; Sneath
2011:146 149). What should be realized clearly and not forgotten while dealing with
this criterion is that it is really evolutionary: Kinship-based divisions [in the society]
gradually lose their importance in favour of institutional, political and economic divisions (Tymowski 2008:172; emphasis added. D. B.). In this respect, history is a
continuum of socio-political forms in the typological sequence. In this sequence one
can observe a general dynamic from greater to less importance of kin vs. territorial relations that eventually resulted in the fact that kinship and other types of ascriptive
relationship have ceased to be central organizing principles of society (Hallpike
1986:1). So, by no means should one expect a gap from complete (or even almost
complete) domination of kinship to absolute prominence of territorial ties.
We shall not argue that the state in its full sense, that is in both social and political
respects, begins when division by territory supplants that by kin virtually completely
(following Maine, Morgan, and Engels). However, we will also disagree with Claessen
that the inchoate but nevertheless state may be . . . associated with dominant kinship, family and community ties in the field of politics. . . (1978:589). We will rather
take an intermediate position between the postulates of 19th century evolutionism and
the Early State conception5. Bearing in mind the older idea that in the state, territory
dominates over kinship on the one hand, and taking into account the aforementioned achievements of 20th century anthropologists and historians, we shall say that
the state in its full sense may be fixed in the situation when territorial ties clearly
(though not overwhelmingly) dominate over those of kinship on the supralocal levels
of a societys complexity. This threshold is lower than that established particularly by
Maine and Morgan but higher than the one sufficient for Claessen and other the Early
State school adherents. Indeed, the categories like clear but not overwhelming dominance do not sound defineable enough and probably even leave too much room for a

A vivid example of the difference in the early (and not exceptionally early) evolutionists and the
Early State theorists approaches to the problem of the relation between the kin and territorial ties in
states is the way they treat the eventual substitution of the Merovingian title King of the Franks by
Capetian King of France. It signifies the formation of state society out of pre-state for Maine
(1861:61 63; see also Sahlins 1968:6) on the one hand, and the development from the inchoate to
transitional through typical early state for Claessen (1985) on the other.

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researchers voluntarism, not like, for example, in the case when the state is defined
through the category of the kinship ties absence. But such a milder categorization
does reflect and capture the essentially evolutionary, gradual nature of the state formation process.
One more point significant for the present discussion has been elucidated by David
Anderson:
As I and a number of other authors have argued, there are a great many social and
environmental factors promoting organizational instability in chiefdoms, of which
the fact that succession to power was based on kinship and any number of a
chief s close kin were thus qualified to take his or her place was perhaps the single
most important factor, all but ensuring incessant factional competition and warfare
between rival elites in these societies (1997:253).
This argument is consistent with the one of Ronald Cohen who insists on the states
ability to resist fission as its most significant characteristic feature (1981). We believe
that Cohens emphasis on it is too heavy (see, e. g., Adams, R. McC. 2001:353 356)
but nevertheless there seem to be factual and theoretical grounds for considering the
state as an all in all firmer socio-political construction compared to pre-state complex
societies (Tainter 1988:27). The substitution of kinship as the basic organizational
principle by territoriality and the appearance of specialized professional administration, intrinsically connected to this transition (e. g., Diamond 1997:281; Bondarenko
2006:64), is the pledge of the states relatively greater firmness.
In the meantime, what we see as a true and reliably verifiable criterion of the territorial organizations coming into prominence (i. e., of the state in its broader full
sense appearance) is the ability of the government to recarve arbitrarily the traditional
division of the countrys territory, as determined by kin groupings, into parts. Given it
is possible6, one has good reasons to argue that even if those social entities preserved
their initial structure and the right to manage their purely internal affairs, they were
nothing more than administrative (and taxpaying as well as labor providing) units in
the wider context of the state polity. Naturally under such circumstances, such social
entities are administered by functionaries either appointed or confirmed outside the
community in the political center of the regional or/and the whole-polity level.
The Near East of the 3rd 2nd millennia BCE gives especially vivid examples of the
aforesaid7. It is vitally important for an early state in that if an early state fails to adapt
the community to its needs, stagnation and decline of the political system follow (as it

For instance, if the central authority can solute original societal units (especially communities) with
others or cut them into parts.
7
Besides many publications on particular societies, see general and comparative works, e. g., Maisels
1987:345 346; 1993:154 161, 252 264; Diakonoff and Yakobson 1998; Baines and Yoffee
1998:225 227.

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happened, for example, in the cases of the 19th century West African Samoris state and
Kenedugu [Tymowski 1985; 1987:65 66]). In modern and contemporary polities,
structural discrepancies between the community and the state, the dependent position
of the former with regard to the latter, are completely apparent (see, e. g., McGlynn
and Tuden 1991:181 272). Generally speaking, in a successful state, supreme power
does not develop the community matrix further on but rather on the contrary begins
to restructure society in its own image (Beliaev 2000:194). Indeed, as Kurtz rightly
points out, . . . the reduction of the influence of local level organization upon the citizens is a major goal of states legitimation strategies (1991/1984:162; see also
2008). If it is a success, the encompassment of the local sphere by the state (Tanabe
1996:154) becomes the case. Indeed, even in very complex non-state societies, not less
complex than many early states, one can observe the situation of the whole socio-political constructions encompassment not from above (as it must be in states) but from
below, that is from the local community level. The state tends to encompass all the
spheres of social life including such an important one as family relations (Trigger
2003:194, 271, 274), and with its rise, the situation when the local institutions (the
family, lineage, and community) influenced directly the form and nature of supralocal
institutions was reversed. In fact, this, as well as bureaucracys very appearance and existence, becomes possibleonly due to the territorial ties coming into prominence,
asonly under such circumstances can a stranger unrelated to any member of a community by kin ties be effectively appointed the community ruler or supervisor from above
this local unit. The possibility of it can serve as another means of verification of a societys state nature.

The states distinctive features: A discussion

In any case, the state of the art in state studies by now is such that we may ascertain
safely that the two characteristics political centralization (in the sense of either the
concentration of power in the hands of a few [Roscoe 1993:113; see also, e. g., Morris 1998:293], or the degree of linkage between the various subsystems and the highest-order controls in society [Flannery 1972:409; see also, e. g., Cohen 1978b:45
46], or both) and specialization of administration, still form the backbone of the theory of the state in general. It is also recognized, hardly not as commonly, that . . . the
expansion of the administration, and more especially the trend towards bureaucratization in the early state were closely connected with centralization (Skalnk 1978:600).
Yet, notwithstanding the historiographic tradition8, political centralization cannot
be regarded as a feature specific to the state, as it is applicable to many non-state forms

Particularly, contrary to the postulate of political anthropologys Founding Fathers, Meyer Fortes
and Edward Evans-Pritchard (1987/1940:5).

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of societies. For example, consider the following definitions of chiefdoms (emphases

added): Chiefdoms are redistributional societies with a permanent central agency of
coordination (Service 1971:134); chiefdom is a polity that organizes centrally a regional population in the thousands (Earle 1991:1); . . . a chiefdom is an aggregate of
villages under the centralized rule of a paramount political leader. This is the basic
structural nature of a chiefdom (Carneiro 1998:19); chiefdoms are societies with centralized but not internally specialized authority (Spencer 1998:5; following [Wright
1977:381]). This is even more so in the case of complex chiefdoms (e. g., Earle
1978:173 185; Pauketat 1994; Johnson and Earle 2000:301 303). As Timothy Earle
concludes in his prominent review article (1987:289), . . . centrality is the clearest indicator of chiefdoms. Furthermore, even in simple societies power may be centralized
by a big man, great man (Sahlins 1963; Godelier 1982; Godelier and Strathern
1991), or chieftain who thus establishes . . . centralized political leadership that operates from time to time among autonomous village societies but that is generally
short-lived, so the term chieftain . . . designates explicitly the form of centralized
leadership. . . (Redmond 1998:3). The variety of non-state centralized forms of societies and leadership types is by no means at all limited to those mentioned above. Significantly, in current research of the state-level polities . . . there is a clear movement
away from a view of states as highly centralized, omnipotent entities toward a heterogeneous model that recognizes variability in state/urban organization and explores the
limits of state power within the broader society (Stein 1998:10; see also McIntosh
1999:17).
In the meantime, specialization resulting in administrators professionalization is
precisely the feature which is typical for the state only. In the specialization of the administrative apparatus scholars usually see the line between the state and all the nonstate forms of socio-political organization, including such centralized ones as the chiefdom and complex chiefdom (vide stricto Fried 1967; Wright 1977:381 385; Earle
1978:1 7; Claessen 1987; Marcus and Feinman 1998:4; Spencer 1998; Blanton et
al. 1999:112; Johnson and Earle 2000:245 329), especially as far as the impossibility
of drawing a clear line between the chiefdom and the early state in the spheres of economy and ideology is often recognized (Muller, J.-C. 1981; Claessen and Oosten
1996b:365; 1996c:20; Oosten 1996; Muller, J. 1997; Claessen 2000:182 186; Earle
2002; Smith 2004:80). In the final analysis, Godiner (1991:51) is generally right in
pointing out (though a bit too toughly) that any, even the most sophisticated, theory
of the state reduces it to the specialized institution of managing the society; at least,
the theories tend to center round such an institution. So, we shall agree with Charles
Spencers (1998:5) elegantly simple dictum (the first part of which has already just
been quoted above and which is based on Henry Wrights seminal publication of
1977): specifically chiefdoms are societies with centralized but not internally specialized authority, and states are societies with centralized and also internally specialized
authority (see also Earle 1987:289). As Eisenstatdt (1971:74, 76) emphasizes, states
and non-states differ not in presence or absence of political centralization but in . . .

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the degree of structural differentiation with which they present themselves. . . . Primitive societies can therefore be said to have a decentralized centrality if this expression
is not too paradoxical. A state administration, from this perspective, is inherently
bureaucratic, Spencer (2003:11185) concludes (see also Flannery 1972:403; Cohen
1978a; 1978b:36; Britan and Cohen 1983; Marcus and Feinman 1998:4, 6; Spencer
and Redmond 2004:173; Bondarenko 2006:25 30; Llobera 2007:110 111; Claessen
2008:12 13; Kradin 2008:115 118; 2009:33).
Indeed, the administrative apparatus becomes specialized when it is filled with
professional (i. e., permanent and full-time) administrators thus forming bureaucracy.
It is true that bureaucracy can be developed poorly in early states. Besides, it does differ in a number of respects from its modern incarnation (Weber 1947/1922:333 334,
343; see also Vitkin 1981; Goody 1986:87 126; Morony 1987:9 10; Shifferd
1987:48 49; Claessen 2008:12 13). Yet, notwithstanding all this, in our opinion
(as well as in that of many other authors), the presence or absence of the stratum of
professional administrators, that is of bureaucracy, is a proper indicator of the state or
non-state nature of a society (see, e. g., in publications of the 2000s: Johnson and Earle
2000:35; Bondarenko 2002; 2006:25 30; 2008:22 26; Spencer 2003:11185; Spencer and Redmond 2004:173; Llobera 2007:110 111; Claessen 2008:12 13; Kradin
2008:115 118; 2009:33).
Some time ago Alain Testart (2004) made an attempt to create a theory of the prebureaucratic state which, within the theorys framework, historically preceded the
bureaucratic state (while sometimes the former actually never transformed into the
latter due to these or those particular circumstances which varied from case to case).
The political system in non-bureaucratic states is based, according to Testart, on personal fidelity to a monarch of his retinue, royal slaves and brothers by blood being
the closest to him, followed by clients, mercenaries, refugees, and debtors. With respect to this theory we shall note that it definitely captures an important mechanism
of the process of state formation, previously represented most clearly in literature on
state formation in medieval Europe with respect to political leaders military retinue.
We must pay attention to the fact that all those about whom Testart writes were people
who in some way fell out of the kin net (the same as true bureaucrats) and thus had
to (or could) pay allegiance to the monarch only, depend exclusively on him, serve
him, and thus strengthen the central, suprakin and supracommunity, authority. However, some of the societies Testart discusses to this point_ (the Scythians, medieval
Mongols, a number of medieval and modern African kingdoms, etc.) were organized
along kin lines not only politically but also socially, which, even leaving out the natural
fact under such circumstances that these societies lacked bureaucracy, does not allow us
(following, e. g., Gutnov [2002], Kradin and Skrynnikova [2006], Vansina [1992],
Skalnk [2002], and some other specialists) to designate them as states. As for such a
specific example as the Greek polis, we believe its principally non- and even antibureaucratic nature does not give us the right to consider it within the Testart theorys
framework at all. The polis was not a case in which a prebureaucratic state was not

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independently succeeded by a bureaucratic state owing to some purely historical circumstances. This can be admitted speculatively, with more or less of a degree of probability, for some other societies which Testart analyses; however, the polis clearly had no
internal intention and potential for such transformation.
We think the weak point of Testarts generally high quality work is his following
the Weberian idea (Weber 1946/1918) (also picked up by Wittfogel [1957:239]; Service [1975:15; 1978b:8], Claessen and Skalnk [1978a:18; 1978b:630; 1981:487, 492]
among many others) that the state begins with the appearance of the monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force (see also Testart 2005; 2012). However, the monopoly
of violence defined as loosely as it was done by Weber9 can be found in a great number
of definitely stateless societies. For instance, was the physical force used by African and
Melanesian secret societies or Polynesian chiefs illegal and hence subjected to rightful
resistance within the respective cultures context, at least before the imposition of colonial and postcolonial political systems? Clearly, facts just of this sort were taken into
consideration by Radcliffe-Brown who in Foreword to African Political Systems (1987/
1940:XXIII) extrapolated the Weberian definition to societies of all kinds, not states
only: The political organization of a society is that aspect of the total organization
which is concerned with the control and regulation of the use of physical force. Many
other structuralists of the mid-20th century, being influenced by Radcliffe-Brown,
tended to discredit the right to exercise coercive authority as a feature typical for the
state organization, arguing that it characterizes any political system (Fortes and EvansPritchard 1987/1940:6; Mair 1965:101 102; 1970:16 20). Contrary to them,
Marxists do not hesitate to assign coercion as an exclusive characteristic of the state,
but their approach is more specific compared to Webers, which is in fact the broadest
possible definition. According to Marxists, not any but only ripe, that is class-based,
coercion distinguishes the state from prestate forms of socio-political organization. Actually, this is the core of the Marxist class approach to the phenomenon of the state
(though in anthropology in general this idea is rooted owing to other concepts of Max
Weber [1947/1922; 1978], those of political community and legitimation of
power, to not less of a degree than the classics of Marxism). Meanwhile, neoevolutionists disagree with each other as to whether the origin of the state is already rooted
in coercion, or whether the protostate was entering the historical stage as an all-benefiting institution which became coercive just at the very moment of transformation
into a true state (the famous Fried Service controversy).
Yet another problem with the Weberian postulate arises from the fact that even in
the states of the ancient East, famous for firmly established monarchical regimes and

Claessen accentuates one more aspect of the problem by writing (2005:156 157) that though [i]n
all polities. . . there are found efforts by the central government. . . to maintain norms, values, rules
and regulations, and in order to do so striving to monopolize force . . . in practice none ever succeeded in doing so completely.

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codified written laws that explicitly proclaimed the authoritys monopoly of violence to
be completely legal, this monopoly could be, and not so rarely was, considered dubious and arguable by various social and political forces including parts of the elite
(Glassner 2004:38 39). Indeed, many early state rulers could not boast of being
monopolists in the use of physical force (Carneiro 1981:68; 1987:768; Grinin
2004:439 440). The real legitimate right to coerce should not be made the central
point of the state concept because it is a dependent variable itself. If it is reached by
the powers that be, it happens as an outcome of the two-way legitimation process in
which the common peoples aspirations must be understood and met by a state ideology in order to achieve their consent for the present powers existence; no political regime can survive for a long time based on coercion exclusively or even primarily (see,
e. g., Trigger 1985; Beetham 1991; Claessen 1994; Claessen and Oosten 1996a).
As for contemporaneity, Clifford Geertz (2004:579) has elaborated on the evident
fact that the concept of state as the expression of the monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force in a territory is too problematic when the focus is on the majority of the
Third World states burdened by tribalism, regionalism, warlordism and other phenomena of the sort due to which the central authorities monopoly of violence is, openly or
not but in any case constantly and largely successfully, discredited as citizens loyalties
tend to remain with the non-state institutions. The view that the Weberian formulation of the states most essential feature is inappropriate for the study of state-making
in the contemporary world is also shared by many political anthropologists on other
grounds that the present-day states have very different histories reflected in peoples
mentalities in different ways which influence immediately the particular states nature
(Kapferer 2012). Given this, those anthropologists argue, the coercive concept of the
contemporary state cannot claim universal applicability; at best it may be relevant for
cases from a limited part of the world (see Nustad 2002). Thus the crucial point is with
whom the monopoly of the legitimate use of force rests and how it is legitimized. In
my opinion, the specificity of the monopoly of legitimate violence in a state society is
precisely that it is exercised through and by bureaucrats who operate within bureaucratic institutions. So, as Jonathan Haas (1995:18) writes, the presence of institutional
bureaucracies is among basic characteristics. . . standing at the heart of the state form
of organization which is shared by all societies eligible for being labeled as states, including the earliest, pristine ones (see also Johnson and Earle 2000:35).
Thus, stemming from the presumption that the state should be perceived not as a
specific set of political institutions only but, first and foremost, as a type of society to
which this set of institutions is adequate leads to the necessity of paying special attention to coming to the fore of the non-kin, territorial relations in state society. It also
makes us argue that political centralization cannot be regarded as a feature specific to
the state, as it is applicable to many non-state forms of societies. Contrariwise, the feature typical for the state only, and related directly to the non-kin social ties coming
into prominence, is administrators professionalization, that is formation of bureaucracy which arrogates to itself the right to coerce.

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