Development Of City State

DEVELOPMENT OF STATE

The State occupies the most important place among all social institutions. It is 'the keystone of the social arch', as Laski says. In the words of Finer' the state is the supreme social frame work. Without state there would be chaos and confusion in the society. It is not only a natural but also a necessary institution. It exists to control and regulate the behaviour of the human beings. It protects the weak against the strong, maintains peace and order and serves the common good life of all individuals. Man cannot live without the state.

This lesson is about the evolution of the state. The state is the result of a slow and steady growth extending over a long period and has many stages in its development.

Different factors produced different types of states in different societies. It is difficult to show the stages of evolution which the modern nation state had to undergo during its emergence.

The process of the evolution of the state has not been uniform. In the early period there were the Oriental empire, Greek city-state, the Roman Empire, the Feudal state, the Nation state, socialist state and welfare state. The following typologies of state are described below: (1) City State, (2) Feudal State, (3) Nation-State, (4) Socialist State and (5) Welfare State.

CITY STATE

After the Oriental Empire there was the City-State in Greece around 1000 B.C. In fact, political theory may be said to begin with the Greek City-States. The Greek City-States were the first communities to have given conscious thought to 'politics'. Although the Greek political institutions were probably not unique, yet they presented the most fully developed instance of a way of life and government for which evidence is avilable.

When the Greeks settled in Europe, they were divided into local communities organised on the primitive model according to clans and tribes. Each clan and tribe occupied distinct valleys and islands into which Greece was broken up by sea and hills. These valleys and islands, over the lapse of time, became centers of political life sharply different from the Oriental Empires. From the history of the Greek City-States, and especially from the history of Athens, we can trace how the tribal administration gradually gave place to the local principle in government, and how the local community was developed into the City-a new political type of governance. The Greek City was a true State in the modern sense of the term in which the political, economic, intellectual, and moral life of the people was focussed on the central city.

With the Greek City-State two ideas were integral. Each City was a politically organised State independent of others and proud of its independence. The Greeks never thought, and perhaps it was foreign to their nature, to merge their identify in any other City and to make a large unit of political administration. Secondly, the Greek City-State was deliberately limited in size and population. According to Greek political philosophy, the concentration of political, social and intellectual life at one central city was possible only when the State was small. Aristotle put definite limitations on the population and size of the State. He held that neither ten nor a hundred thousand could make a good State, because both these numbers were extremes. He laid down the general principle that the number should be neither too large nor too small. It should be large enough to be self-sufficing and small enough to be well governed.

The Greek City-State developed to the stage of a conscious effort directed to the realisation of liberty and equal laws. It was a great experiment not only in the art of self-government, but also in quest of virtue. To be a citizen of the State did not merely imply, in the Greek view, the payment of taxes and the casting of a vote. It implied a direct and active co-operation in all the functions of civil and military life. A citizen was normally a soldier, a judge and a member of the governing assembly. He performed his public duties in person; the Gods of the city were his Gods, and he attended all festivals. The State was, thus identified with society. The Greek City was at once a State, church and school and it embraced the whole life of man. Since the object of the State was to secure a good life for all citizens all forms of State control calculated to secure that end were considered proper and justified, and no line was drawn between matters of political, moral, religious and economic. Edmund Burke's description of the State as 'a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection' was the real life of the Greek City-State, Athens at the height of her fame was regarded as the embodiment of all that was most advanced in Greek political ideas.

        The City-States of Greece were typical examples of direct democracy in the modern sense of term. All citizens were directly associated with the governance of the State and it really meant the power of the people. But forms of government, according to Greek philosophers, were subject to cyclic changes. Monarchy was the first and in time it gave way to aristocracy. Aristocracy was succeeded by oligarchy. Then came polity and, finally, democracy. Democracy was held to be rule by the mob.

The Greek City-States fundamentally differed from the Oriental Empires. But there were snags, too, in the Greek political life. Their love of independence verging on separatism ultimately resulted in their collapse, when a powerful state arose in the north under Philip of Macedonia. They were also wanting in what may be called the submissive virtues-patience, self-denial, and the spirit of compromise and tolerance. Their self-will and lack of disciplined life embittered the faction fight in their Cities between the rich and the poor, nobles and commons, friends of Athens and friends of Sparta. The works of the Greek historians and political thinkers clearly show that the Greek society of their time was not in a sound state. The philosophers were constantly asking the question, what virtue was, and how it might be taught. And they looked on this question as one of immediate and even urgent importance to society. They felt that their countrymen were thinking too much of liberty,' and far too little of discipline. They foresaw that a people in this state of mind must fall before that power whose people were better disciplined than the Greeks. The Macedonians, and after them the Romans, proved the truth of this forecast.

The Greeks were also wanting in humanity. They made liberty the exclusive right of superior people and denied the same to others what they valued for themselves the most. Even the wisest of the Greeks regarded slavery as a natural institution and they never dreamt that civilised life was possible without slavery. Athens, for example, had only about 20,000 citizens who obtained leisure for their public duties by turning over all the rough work to a much larger body of slaves. Slavery is incompatible with civilisation and, as such, with democracy. A democratic society is one in which all enjoy equal rights and privileges without any barrier of class distinction. The brotherhood of man is its basis and all its members are equal.

The Greek City-State was an all-inclusive partnership in every aspect of human existence. But this broad inclusiveness made the Greeks neglect one of the most essential of political problems, that of clearly defining the functions of the State and separating it from various other associations which composed, society. 'The failure to distinguish the State from the community' says Mac Iver, 'left Athenian liberty itself a monument broken and defaced. The all-inclusive State, whether its dimensions are those of the city or nation, cannot draw the line between law and customs, between enforcement and spontaneity, between the conditions of order and those of culture, so long as the theory is accepted that the State is omnipotent. Under such a theory no form of life is safe, no religion, no opinion, unless its adherents control the government. So the very diversity which enriches a civilisation when recognised as existing of right, creates under the principle of the 'universal partnership' those violent and factious oppositions which on the contrary destroy it'.