Quentin Skinner: What is the state? The question that "will not go away"

Duration: 55 mins 46 secs

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Description:	Professor Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, delivered the inaugural Lee Seng Tee Distinguished Lecture in College on 24 October 2007.


Created:	2010-01-18 10:53
Collection:	Lee Seng Tee Distinguished Lecture
Publisher:	Wolfson College, Cambridge
Copyright:	Wolfson College, Cambridge
Language:	eng (English)
Keywords:	state; sovereignty; history;


Abstract:	In the lecture, Professor Skinner challenged modern notions that no single person or institution can any longer be taken to exercise state sovereignty. He argued that the contemporary sceptical view about the state was a “serious mistake”, and he laid the groundwork for his case by tracing the history of how the question had been tackled in Anglophone legal and political thought. The state is the name normally assigned to the agency that wields sovereign power over some determinate territory. But this is scarcely a very illuminating definition, for what we basically need to know, in order to grasp the concept of the state, is whose actions properly count as actions of this agency, and hence as authentic expressions of the sovereignty of the state. The lecture proceeded by way of offering a genealogy of various rival answers that had been given to the question “What is the State?”. The earliest answer, the one we encounter among the parliamentarian and radical writers of the c17 English revolution, is that the power of the state can be equated with the power of the whole body of the people. This understanding was instantly challenged by Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan seeks to insist that the power of the state is that of a fictional Person distinct from both rulers and ruled. This conception of state power had a considerable influence in the course of the ensuing century. Notably, it is the understanding of the state that underpins William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. With Jeremy Bentham's attack on Blackstone, however, and with the growing influence of utilitarian legal and political theory, this vision was in turn challenged by a purportedly commonsensical view, present in Bentham, John Austin and later utilitarians such as Henry Sidgwick, according to which the power of the state is nothing other than the power of an established government. The lecture concluded with an assessment of the sceptical view of the state now prevalent in much contemporary political science. If, the sceptics argue, we take the state to be the bearer of sovereignty, and if we ask whose actions can properly be identified as actions of the state, we have to admit that there is no specific person or body of persons whose actions are equivalent to the actions of the state, simply because there is no specific person or body of persons who can any longer be said to exercise untrammelled sovereignty. The lecture ended by asking whether this marked the end of the road for the theory of the state. Professor Skinner’s case was that the issue is still very much alive, and indeed a question that “will not go away”. Such is the importance and nature of the debate, however, that how the question is to be answered in our times remains wide open.

Abstract:

In the lecture, Professor Skinner challenged modern notions that no single person or institution can any longer be taken to exercise state sovereignty. He argued that the contemporary sceptical view about the state was a “serious mistake”, and he laid the groundwork for his case by tracing the history of how the question had been tackled in Anglophone legal and political thought.

The state is the name normally assigned to the agency that wields sovereign power over some determinate territory. But this is scarcely a very illuminating definition, for what we basically need to know, in order to grasp the concept of the state, is whose actions properly count as actions of this agency, and hence as authentic expressions of the sovereignty of the state. The lecture proceeded by way of offering a genealogy of various rival answers that had been given to the question “What is the State?”. The earliest answer, the one we encounter among the parliamentarian and radical writers of the c17 English revolution, is that the power of the state can be equated with the power of the whole body of the people. This understanding was instantly challenged by Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan seeks to insist that the power of the state is that of a fictional Person distinct from both rulers and ruled. This conception of state power had a considerable influence in the course of the ensuing century. Notably, it is the understanding of the state that underpins William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. With Jeremy Bentham's attack on Blackstone, however, and with the growing influence of utilitarian legal and political theory, this vision was in turn challenged by a purportedly commonsensical view, present in Bentham, John Austin and later utilitarians such as Henry Sidgwick, according to which the power of the state is nothing other than the power of an established government.

The lecture concluded with an assessment of the sceptical view of the state now prevalent in much contemporary political science. If, the sceptics argue, we take the state to be the bearer of sovereignty, and if we ask whose actions can properly be identified as actions of the state, we have to admit that there is no specific person or body of persons whose actions are equivalent to the actions of the state, simply because there is no specific person or body of persons who can any longer be said to exercise untrammelled sovereignty. The lecture ended by asking whether this marked the end of the road for the theory of the state. Professor Skinner’s case was that the issue is still very much alive, and indeed a question that “will not go away”. Such is the importance and nature of the debate, however, that how the question is to be answered in our times remains wide open.

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