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Origins of States: The Case of Archaic 351–377 Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

W. G. Runciman
W. G. Runciman
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Cambridge
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Extract

The plurals in my title carry two implications, neither of which I take to be controversial, if they ever were: first, that there is more than one kind of “original” state; second, that there is more than one way in which states originate. There is, admittedly, continuing controversy over the definition of “state.” But for the purposes of this article, I assume that there are four necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the emergence of a state from nonstate or stateless forms of social organization: specialization of governmental roles; centralization of enforceable authority; permanence, or at least more than ephemeral stability, of structure; and emancipation from real or fictive kinship as the basis of relations between the occupants of governmental roles and those whom they govern. All four admit of differences of degree. But they furnish an adequate framework within which the different processes by which different states have come into being can be analyzed and compared.

Type
State Making
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1982 , pp. 351 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1982

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References

I am indebted to Sir Moses Finley, S. C. Humphreys, and G. S. Kirk for useful criticisms of earlier drafts.

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