The Technology of Conflict and Endogenous Authority:The Problem of the Origin of the State
The state did not exist from the beginning.From a temporal perspective,the state emerged after humans entered agricultural society.From a spatial perspective,the states that independently emerged throughout the world were often located in areas restricted by geographical environment.The question arises:under what conditions does the state emerge?This paper attempts to preliminarily explore the conditions for the origin of the state through the analysis of anarchy.This paper constructs a model of endogenous authority in a state of lawlessness,focusing on the impact of technology of conflict on social order,proving the conjecture Proposed Hirshleifer(1995)that the anarchy may break down into hierarchy,which offers a necessary condition to the origin of the state.Specifically,by using the technology of conflict to depict how the fighting efforts to affect the probability of winning,and the elasticity of technology of conflict to depict the sensitivity of winning probability to the fighting effort,the model proves that when the elasticity of technology of conflict is less than a certain critical value,the anarchy without authority would result in a social order of equilibrium;when the elasticity of conflict technology is greater than this critical value,the hierarchy with authority would result in a social order of equilibrium.This paper believes that the primary nature of the state is a hierarchy based on violence or the threat of violence.Without hierarchy,there can be no state.Therefore,the conditions for the emergence of hierarchy are also the necessary conditions for the origin of the state.In this sense,this paper presents a necessary condition for the origin of the state,namely that the elasticity of the technology of conflict is sufficiently large.This is consistent with Carneiro's(1970)theory of environmental constraints.This paper may contribute in two ways.On the one hand,it provides a foundation for theoretical research on the origin of the state,that is,the necessary conditions for state formation;on the other hand,it offers insights for empirical research on the origin of the state,such as archaeological studies,that is,more systematic attention should be paid to the impact of changes in the technology of conflict on the origin of the state.
anarchytechnology of conflictendogenous authoritythe origin of the state
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