The State of State by Nils Karlson

Author:Nils Karlson [Karlson, Nils]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781351320542
Google: 7qs0DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-08T04:36:42+00:00

Figure 3.5: Society with a Small State

Without the state civil society would consist of inefficient markets, voluntary organizations, conventions and large number of more or less self-sustained and impoverished communities. Social order and prosperity would prevail to a certain extent, but it could be greatly improved by the introduction of the state. At least initially.

1 For a preliminary and shorter version of some of the ideas and major arguments presented in this chapter, see Karlson, 1990b.

2 The brief historical overview that follows is based on Miller, 1987, Keane, 1988 and Berntsson, 1990.

3 Keane, 1988, p. 36

4 Taylor, 1982, pp. 44-50

5 Elster, 1989b, p. 1

6 For example Lane, 1985, Usher, 1981 and Buchanan, 1986.

7 This is probably the most common partition of civil society (it corresponds to the academic disciplines of sociology and economics), but there are also other, sometimes similar, sub-divisions used in the literature. Streeck & Schmitter (1985), for example, suggest that we should add a fourth “central institution” (including the state), namely associations; Dahl & Lindblom (1953) identifies four central “socio-cultural processes” in society: hierarchy, polyarchy, bargaining and prices; Etzioni (1961) distinguishes between three “kinds of power” that occur in society: coercive, remunerative and normative; Lavoie (1985) finds three “coordinating processes”: tradition, market and planning; Polanyi (1951) identifies three “methods of adjustment”: consultation, competition and persuasion; etc. See also Boulding, 1978, Offe, 1984 and Lindblom, 1977 for other classifications.

8 Expressed more formally, according to the influential definition given by David Lewis:

A regularity R in the behavior of members of a population Ρ when they are agents in a recurrent situation S is a convention if and only if it is true that, and it is common knowledge in Ρ that, in almost any instance of S among members of P,

1. almost everyone conforms to R;

2. almost everyone expects almost everyone else to conform to R;

3. almost everyone has approximately the same preferences regarding all combinations of actions;

4. almost everyone prefers that any one more (person) conform to R, on the condition that almost everyone conform to R,

5. almost everyone would prefer that any one more (person) conform to R, on the condition that almost everyone conform to R, where R is some possible regularity in the behavior of the members of Ρ in S, such that almost no one in almost any instance of S among members of Ρ could conform both to R and to R (Lewis, 1969, p. 14).

I shall disregard the “common knowledge” clause, since from the perspective chosen here many conventions may be unarticulated. Cf. Haidin, 1982a, pp. 158-159.

9 This also rules out the possibility, suggested by, for example, Hardin, 1982a, chap. 10, that convention can arise among fully rational actors in many other types of social-interaction situations, such as iterated chicken or prisoners’ dilemma. Usually the informational problems connected with the strategic uncertainty are prohibitive.

10 Ullmann-Margalit, 1977, chap. III. She also makes the mistake of calling them “norms”.

11 Sugden, 1986, Chapter 3

12 It should be noticed that other, competing, conventions may arise at the same time.

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