State Formation In Western Europe

The most significant process of state emerging in Europe was in XV-XVII centuries. In XIX century, the European states took a modern form that became the ideal type of state as the most famous definition from the German sociologist, Max Weber: “is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (1958, 78). The formation of the ideal type had identified the followed politics within the new social organization in the historical process. The state is the main organizational form of majority societies in the world. The state has few key attributes that aloud to name it the state. This is territory, population, the coercive apparatus and bureaucracy, sovereignty (the
The beginning of the modern state is considered form ‘The Peace of Westphalia’ that ended the European wars of religion and emerged a new system of political order based upon the concept of co-existing sovereign states. The war that began on the religious conflict grew to the struggle for hegemony in western Europe. Till XVII century the new formed national states of France, Sweden, and Netherlands demonstrated more effective and successful self-protection and external politics than the medieval feudal system of Italian and German lands. At the foreign policy arena henceforth fought or cooperated not the feudal lords, but the sovereign national states with defined borders and cooperative relations.
The state formation and state failure in Western Europe can be explained by applying the model used by Charles Tilly. The analysis of Western European state formation is dependent on war as the precursor to state formation. This model is made up of three components related to warfare and society: a common identity, concentration of capital, and the monopoly of coercion; all three elements work together in an effort to gain control of a given territory. Additionally, these elements aid in the establishment of mechanisms and structures that later developed into the Western state
African states did not develop institutions that could effectively control their territories3 (Robinson,518). The failure of state formation in Africa has deep historical roots (colonization, Cold War and foreign development assistance). It is doubtful that passing through the same European war process, the African countries can successfully develop national identities and peaceful strengthen the state4 (Herbst, 138). Herbst argues that African leaders (pre, during, and post-colonization) have all faced similar issues when attempting to rule and have often came to the same conclusions on how to solve their problems. He compares the formation of African states to Europe. He claims that the consolidation of power over distance, as the dependent variable, is affected by the costs of extending power, the nature of boundaries, and the nature of the state system. The fundamental problem of state building in Africa is the creation of authority over inhospitable territories that contain relatively low densities of population. As well the process of state formation in the Middle East has not followed the path of the Western European experience5 (Schwarz, 25) the rentier states stand in contrast to states that have to rely on domestic resource