The Development of the Modern Nation-State

Abstract

This chapter examines the development over time of the modern western state. Specifically it looks at the emergence of a more impersonal and public system of rule over territorially circumscribed societies, exercised through a complex set of institutional arrangements and offices, which is distinguished from the largely localised and particularistic forms of power which preceded it. At one level of abstraction the general structural contours of the emergent modern state will be outlined, whilst recognising that this may hide considerable diversity in practises and historical trajectories at the level of particular societies. We shall see that a major issue is raised by the development of a liberal constitutional state and the claim that legitimate authority is based upon the concept of the ruled. The claim to supreme authority becomes increasingly to rest less on hereditary rank or divine or godly sanction than on the relationship between the ruler and the ruled.