POLITICS AND THE STATE
•Politics is often understood as the study of the state, the analysis of its
institutional organizations, the evaluation of its impact on society and
so on.
•The state has four key features: a defined territory, a permanent
population, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into
relations with other states. Its core feature, however, is sovereignty, the
principle of absolute and unlimited power. There are nevertheless
internal and external dimensions of sovereignty.
•The terms state has been used to refer to a bewildering (şaşırtıcı) range
of things: a collection of institutions, a territorial unit, a philosophical
idea, an instrument of coercion or oppression, and so on.
•The state has been understood in four quite different ways
1. Idealist perspective: by defining the state in ethical terms, fails
to distinguish clearly between institutions that are part of the
state and those that are outside the state.
2. Functionalist approach: the state focus on the role or purpose
of state institutions. the central function of the state is invariably
seen as the maintenance of social order.
3. Organizational view: defines the states as the apparatus (vasıta)
of government in its broadest sense; that is, as that set of
institutions that are recognizably ‘public’ in that they are
responsible for the collective organization of social existence
and are funded at the public’s expense.
■The state comprises the various institutions of government: the
bureaucracy, the military, the police, the courts, the social security system
and so on..
■In this light, it is possible to identify five key features of the state:
1. The state is sovereign. It exercises absolute and unrestricted power, in
that it stands above all other associations and groups in society.
2. State institutions are recognizably ‘public’ , in contrast to the ‘private’
institutions of civil society. Public bodies are responsible for making
and enforcing collective decisions.
