Debates on the Origin of the State: Some Results and Perspectives
Journal: Social Evolution & History. Volume 24, Number 2 / September 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30884/seh/2025.02.11
Nikolay N. Kradin
Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnology, Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
The origins of the state are a never-ending story. Since the mid-1980s, when I started studying this topic, we had similar authorities (Carneiro 1970; Service 1975; Claessen and Skalnik 1978; Kubbel’ 1988). Over forty years, many important books and articles have been published in this field (Earle 1997; Feinman and Marcus 1998; Claessen 2000; Kradin et al. 2000; Haas 2001; Trigger 2003; Grinin et al. 2004; Yoffee 2005; Bondarenko 2006; Maisels 2010; Price and Feinman 2010; Gri-nin 2011; Flannery and Marcus 2012; Berezkin 2013; Turchin 2016; Scott 2017; Bondarenko, Kowalewski, and Small 2020; Graeber and Wengrow 2021; Kradin 2021; etc.). Here, I will try to summarize contemporary ideas about the formation of statehood and civilization.
As is known, the most ancient archaic or early states could form in different ecological conditions – arid zones with river irrigation (Mesopotamia, Egypt), river valleys in the jungle (India), loess river valleys (China) and mountain jungles (Mexico, the Andes). The emergence of statehood could be influenced by various factors – favorable ecology, a productive economy, population growth, an increase in internal conflicts, technological innovations, diffusion, wars and conquests, external influence, long-distance trade, ideology, etc. Currently, most researchers agree that the emergence of the state was a complex multivariate process dependent on a large number of different variables (Peregrine, Ember, and Ember 2007: 84).
In the course of long discussions, two opposing approaches to the state phenomenon were formed. Supporters of the first approach emphasize the positive and creative role of the state. In anthropology, this is commonly referred to as the functional (adaptationist, integrative) approach. Adherents of the second approach view the state as an instrument of control and power. They consider it an institution of violence, and often also as a mechanism for oppression of the poor. Therefore, some propose to destroy it (anarchism) or radically transform (Marxism). This approach is called the conflict or Marxist approach. Nowadays, few researchers are willing to unconditionally accept either side. It is obvious to everyone that they are two sides of the same process. They are intertwined. The state is ambivalent: it both helps and punishes, while performing important social functions (it protects the population from external and internal threats, maintaining infrastructure, buildings towns, etc.). At the same time, those with power have more access to resources and benefits, while the subjects are forced to accept their lower status.
It is common to divide early or archaic states into pristine and secondary. The pristine states include those that emerged in the course of spontaneous evolution without external influence. There were only six such states: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Mesoamerica, and the Incas. Their emergence spanned over a long historical period from 3500 to 1500 BC. All secondary states arose under the influence of already established centers, and this must be taken into account when studying them. Six major leaps in the growth of polities and states are recorded in Afro-Eurasia. All of them are directly connected with global world-system processes. The first (3000 BC) was the origin of pristine civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Harappa. The second (2000 BC) was the synchronous growth of Egypt (the Middle Kingdom), Babylon, Crete, and complex polities in China. The third stage (1000 BC), after the Bronze Age crisis, was associated with the beginning of the Iron Age and simultaneous rise of the Western and East Asian world-systems. The fourth (300 BC) is the onset of the so-called classical antiquity in Afro-Eurasia. It led to the formation of the first global Eurasian communication network (the Silk Road) between Rome and Han China. The fifth step (600 AD) can be designated as the beginning of the early Middle Ages. The next important step (1200 AD) was the stage of Mongol expansion and unification of the mediaeval world-system. Finally, the last leap (1600 AD) marked the beginning of the Modernity and the formation of the capitalist world-system (Taagapera 1997: 475, 480; Kradin 2024: 145–148).
Most researchers believe that three major steps or stages can be distinguished on the path to modern statehood: (1) the stage of pre-state society, in which the population is removed from key decision-making (pre-feudal society, pre-class
society, chiefdom, analogues of the state, etc.); (2) early state with an inchoate apparatus, but without developed private property (early state, early class society, archaic state, barbarian state, tribal state, early feudal state etc.); (3) a for-
med pre-industrial state, with a bureaucracy and private property (traditional state, mature state, agrarian state, developed state, estate-class society etc.) (Claessen and Skalnik 1978, 1981; Gellner 1988; Pavlenko 1989; Iliushechkin 1990; Johnson and Earle 2000; Grinin 2011; etc.). According to big data (see Seshat), the threshold of statehood is reached when the population number in a polity exceeds 100,000 (Turchin et al. 2021).
By the way, there is at least one exception – nomadic or steppe empires. They could unite large masses of people without bureaucracy. Nomads were usually semi-peripheral societies. They were neighbors of agrarian states and civilizations. The degree of centralization of pastoral society depended on the level of centralization in the neighboring sedentary society. Tribal confederations and chiefdoms arose near oases. Nomadic empires were created near urban civilizations. The power of the leaders and rulers in steppe empires was based on their ability to organize raids and distribute booty and gifts (Khazanov 1984/1994; Barfield 1992; Kradin, Bondarenko, and Barfield 2003; Golden 2003; Kradin 2014 etc.).
In the settled agrarian world, in parallel with the creation of hierarchical societies (chiefdoms, early and mature states), there is another vector of social or cultural evolution. In anthropology and archeology, it is customary to talk about two opposing strategies – hierarchical or network and heterarchical or corporate. These strategies represent polar variants of social types. At one end are classical chiefdoms and states of varying complexity, and at the other end are complex societies with no clearly expressed hierarchical structure. In between, there are a vast number of variations with different economic systems, political institutions, and forms of ideology (Berezkin 1995; Korotayev 1995; Crumley 1995; 2001; Blanton et al. 1996; Kristiansen 1998; Bondarenko and Korotayev 2000; Kradin et al. 2000; Haas 2001; Feinman 2001; Grinin et al. 2004; Bondarenko 2006; Chapman 2008; Earle and Kristiansen 2010; Price and Feinman 2010; Chacon and Mendoza 2017; etc.).
Therefore, social or cultural evolution is multilinear. In a somewhat schematic form, the general scheme of the evolution of pre-industrial societies can be presented as follows:
Probably the most confusing issue is the features that distinguish a state from pre-state formations. Vere Gordon Childe identified ten characteristics of the stage of civilization, which he associated with the urban revolution (Childe 1950). In fact, his publication was about archaeological features of the state. The article became the beginning of an endless discussion about the criteria of the state. This list of characteristics has been repeatedly clarified and revised. The most common criteria are urbanization, monumental architecture, the elite burials, three or more levels of hierarchy, taxes, laws, writing (Feinman and Marcus 1998; Maisels 2010; Flannery and Marcus 2012; Smith 2023 etc.). However, there is no universal criterion.
Anthropologists have also criticized Max Weber's thesis that the state has a monopoly on violence (Carneiro 1981; Gellner 1988). As a result, the view has become widespread in anthropology that bureaucracy is the only criterion for a state (I have also contributed to the spread of this position [Kradin 2009; 2021]). As a consequence, there have been discussions about whether all ancient and medieval civilizations can be considered states. Initially, experts in the history of early Rome (Shtaerman 1989) and ancient Greece (Berent 2000) argued that the polis was not a state because it lacked a professional bureaucracy. This caused an angry protest from historians of antiquity (Van der Vliet 2005). Then, we came to the conclusion that many nomadic empires were not states, but supercomplex chiefdoms without a bureaucratic apparatus (Kradin, Bondarenko, and Barfield 2003; Kradin 2014). This has caused similar misunderstandings among classical historians (Scheidel 2011), as well as among historians of young post-Socialists nations. The same debate arose among medieval historians regarding whether feudal kingdoms were states, or statehood in Europe emerged during the late medieval – early modern period (in particular, see Davies 2003; Reynolds 2003).
As a result, a terminological trap arose. Based on logic, the state must correspond to the stage of civilization. But understanding the state as bureaucracy leads us to the fact that civilization appears before the state. To avoid scholastic disputes, I suggest recalling the discussion among archaeologists about the Neolithic. There were also disputes about when certain signs of the Neolithic appeared. Over time, archaeologists realized that it was a very complex process, which took place differently in different parts of the world. So they prefer to talk about the process of Neolithization. I propose to talk about the origins of the state and civilization in a similar context. This could be called civilization as a process. What does it mean? In different regions of the world, the signs of a state (or civilization) appear differently. In many early states in Africa, there was no writing. But writing was in the heterarchies of the Celts. Monumental structures were found in many chiefdoms in Europe and Asia. There were towns in the ancient civilization of Harappa, but there was no state there. On the contrary, on Hawaii, there were no towns but an early state emerged there. There are many other examples. It is important to note that, taken as a whole, this was a gradual process of transformation of human societies into a state with towns, writing, bureaucracy, taxes, and laws.
A similar term was used by Norbert Elias. However, his main function of the civilizing process was the internal transformation of human psyche and the formation of ethics and mentality, using the example of medieval Western Europe (Elias 1994). I believe that the formation of a specific ethos is an important part of the process of development of a civilization (or different civilizations). However, the civilizational process is a broader phenomenon that includes technological innovations and inventions, exquisite crafts, writing and literature, the beginnings of scientific knowledge, architecture, urbanization, original artistic styles, ideology or religion, and much more. In the course of an original transformation in different polities, some features of a civilization or state may appear earlier or later than others due to a combination of some special circumstances. All this suggests that the civilizational process was complex, multifactorial, and multilinear.
Apparently, tangible progress in the study of state origins in the future may be associated not with history and anthropology, but with archeology, where new discoveries are regularly made. Modeling historical processes using big data (Turchin et al. 2021), comparative studies (Peregrine 2004; Smith 2012) and the creation of middle range theories (Smith 2023).
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