There is no alternative to the state. Whatever form of political organization societies may have taken in the past—tribe, feudal order, theocracy, city state, empire—today they are invariably organized as states. The ‘construction of states changed everything’ (Hall 2015, 63). States can promote peace more effectively than any alternative form of political organization but also sustain war and violence at much larger scales. States can act as powerful engines of economic modernization and social advancement but they can also throttle progress and immiserate societies. They can guarantee political rights or undermine them, facilitate democratic self-government or enforce autocratic rule, create collective identities or destroy them.
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