The Origins of the Modern State in Europe as a Topic in the Theory of Social Selection - article ; n°1 ; vol.171, pg 45-60

Walter G.Runciman

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Publications de l'École française de Rome - Année 1993 - Volume 171 - Numéro 1 - Pages 45-60
The origins of the modern state in Europe are analyzed within the framework of a general sociological theory according to which societies evolve through a process analogous but not reducible to natural selection. Particular attention is given to the divergent evolution of the English and French monarchies over the period from 1200 to 1700 and to the different functions for which the practices defining the roles of monarchs and their most powerful subjects were selected.
16 pages

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• Publié par: PUBLICATIONS_DE_L-ECOLE_FRANCAISE_DE_ROME0
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1993
• Nombre de lectures: 144
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Walter G. Runciman
The Origins of the Modern State in Europe as a Topic in the
Theory of Social Selection
In: Visions sur le développement des États européens. Théories et historiographies de l'État moderne. Actes du
colloque de Rome (18-31 mars 1990). Rome : École Française de Rome, 1993. pp. 45-60. (Publications de l'École
française de Rome, 171)
Abstract
The origins of the modern state in Europe are analyzed within the framework of a general sociological theory according to which
societies evolve through a process analogous but not reducible to natural selection. Particular attention is given to the divergent
evolution of the English and French monarchies over the period from 1200 to 1700 and to the different functions for which the
practices defining the roles of monarchs and their most powerful subjects were selected.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Runciman Walter G. The Origins of the Modern State in Europe as a Topic in the Theory of Social Selection. In: Visions sur le
développement des États européens. Théories et historiographies de l'État moderne. Actes du colloque de Rome (18-31 mars
1990). Rome : École Française de Rome, 1993. pp. 45-60. (Publications de l'École française de Rome, 171)
http://www.persee.fr/web/ouvrages/home/prescript/article/efr_0000-0000_1993_act_171_1_3031WALTER G. RUNCIMAN
THE ORIGINS OF THE MODERN STATE IN EUROPE
AND AS A TOPIC IN THE THEORY
OF SOCIAL SELECTION
As a general sociologist invited to contribute to the proceedings
of a conference of historians, I am not only wary of proffering
observations about the origins of the modern state in Europe which
are based on little or no first-hand acquaintance with the
documentary sources, but also conscious of risking the reaction that
these observations may appear valid only to the extent that they are
already familiar in other terms. Let me therefore emphasize not only
that I stand open to correction on points of historical detail but that
the sociological propositions for which I argue go beyond, although
they are entirely compatible with, explanations of a straightforward
narrative kind about the origins of any individual state. My aim, in
other words, is to introduce into the theme of the conference a set of
ideas capable of taking the discussion to a more general level
without weakening the force of detailed conclusions established by
specialists at the level of particular case-histories.
This set of ideas, for which I have recently argued in a full-
length volume1, can best be summarized by saying that the essence
of the theory of social selection is that the objects competitively
selected in the course of the evolution of any and all human societies
are the practices constitutive of the roles by which societies are
defined; and the general sociologist's task is to establish why some
but not other forms of society - which is to say, modes of
production, persuasion and coercion - are to be found at successive
places and times. As in the theory of natural selection, it is necessary
to be able to specify not only what the objects of selection are but
what are the functions they are selected for; and in the theory of
social selection the answer is that mutant or recombinant practices
are selected for the economic, ideological or coercive power which
they confer on their carriers, just as in the theory of natural
selection it is the reproductive capacity which mutant or
1 W. G. Runciman, A Treatise on Social Theory. Volume II: Substantive Social
Theory, Cambridge, 1989. 46 WALTER G. RUNCIMAN
recombinant genes confer on theirs. This is not the place for me to
state and rebut the possible objections which can be made to these
propositions. But two points are worth my stressing, one
methodological and the other substantive. The methodological point
is that no more in the theory of social than of natural selection
should it be supposed that retrospective identification of the
winners, as it were, which the process of selection has selected is
arrived at by merely circular reasoning. On the contrary, the critical
hypotheses are those which specify the functions which caused
certain practices to be the winners, and these hypotheses have to be
tested like any other against the evidence of the historical record.
The substantive point is that the theory of social selection is no more
than the theory of natural selection a teleological theory framed by
reference to a predefined end-state. It no more claims to be able to
predict the future evolution of societies than the theory of natural
selection to predict the future evolution of species. It rejects the
presuppositions of Social Darwinism, as categorically as those of
Historical Materialism2. Its claim is no more - but also no less -
than to be able to explain in retrospect the modes of production,
persuasion and coercion of any society chosen for study by
reference to the competitive advantage conferred on the roles of
which it consists by the practices which define those roles.
Whatever the objections to which this formulation may be open,
it should be immediately obvious that the origin of states is a topic
of very great interest to anyone concerned to test and extend the
theory of social selection. Not only does the emergence of states out
of what sociologists are apt to call "proto-"state forms of political
organization3 mark an unmistakably qualitative evolutionary shift
from one to another mode of the distribution of power, but the
interrelation of economic, ideological and coercive practices which
is involved affords a particularly fertile field for the testing of
hypotheses formulated for that purpose. Some sort of definition of
what does or doesn't constitute a "state" needs perhaps to be put
forward at the outset, but it should be enough to say that a state
exists when the practices defining the roles of its ruler or rulers are
such that those roles are permanent (i.e. the power attaching to
them is independent of the attributes of their individual
incumbents), central (i.e. the power attaching to them extends over
the whole territory of the population in question), and public (i.e.
the power attaching to them does not derive only from household or
2 W. G. Runciman, "Evolution in Sociology", in Alan Grafen, ed., Evolution
and its Influence, Oxford, 1989, pp. 19-33.
3 W. G. "Origins of States: the Case of Archaic Greece",
Comparative Studies in Society and History XXIV, 1982, pp. 352-356. ORIGINS OF THE MODERN STATE AND THEORY OF SOCIAL SELECTION 47
kinship relations). For Europe from 1200 to 1700, the definition is in
any case fairly academic : we are dealing not with what sociologists
call "primary" state formation but with the reinforcement or
reestablishment of political institutions of a kind already familiar
from other societies or the same societies at earlier times. On the
other hand, there are still some borderline cases, whether bishoprics
or counties or municipalities or religious or military orders; and it
needs to be remembered that there were as many as 500 more or
less independent political units in the Europe of 15004.
Consideration of the evolution of the "modern" state in Europe
involves, therefore, consideration of the reasons for which the
powers attaching to the roles of a very large number of rulers did (or
in many cases didn't) remain permanent, central and public.
The warning against teleology has, however, a double force. It is
not simply that the theory of social selection is anti-teleological but
that any suggestion of a standard sequence of stages in the evolution
of states must be repudiated from the start. The "modern" European
state is the range of sets of governmental roles and thereby
institutions which has happened to evolve since 1200 in response to
selective pressures which no more arise out of an inexorable process
of cumulative rationalization à la Weber than out of an inescapable
series of contradictions between the forces and social relations of
production à la Marx. Nor does the theory of selection
presuppose that the form taken by the emergent institutions of the
"modern" state in any one society is to be taken as the model,
archetype or paradigm for any of the others. The gradual
centralization and consolidation of the tiny Capetian kingdom, the
dispersion and reconstruction of sovereignty among the German
principalities, the emergence of monarchical absolutism in Spain
after the Reconquest, the replacement of the boyars by a service
nobility in Russia, or the reemergence of civic autonomy in the
towns of Northern Italy are all distinctive evolutionary sequences in
which the practices which define their new modes of production,
persuasion and coercion perform their distinctive functions in
response to distinctive exogenous and endogenous selective
pressures.
Now if, in the space available to me, I am to demonstrate at all
convincingly the relevance of this approach to the origins of the
modern state in Europe, I have to narrow the focus of the discuss