http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/photos/780x439/2016/apr-15/Big-Thinkers-Conference.jpg

### **The conception of the State**

The conception of the State begins with the need to preserve the social order and coexistence among men, by virtue of which it has been erected as an extended creation beyond its institutionality, which it intends from human devices, exercise control through different devices, ranging from strength to persuasion. One or another device is present in diverse conceptions of a State, from that one supported in the Greek city-State, passing through another one that, metaphorically, described it as a great animal that waited at the edge of a world -considered flat-, to swallow who transgressed the limits (***leviathan, thomas hobbes***), until being considered, at present, as a differentiated and permanent set of institutions (administrative bureaucratic, legal, extractive and coercive), framed in a geographically delimited territory - which is called society - within which it manages to exercise a monopoly on the creation of binding collective norms, thanks to the backing granted by monopoly control of the means of violence and coercion. The state and the institutions in which it is installed do not acquire centrality within the single territory or primarily through the monopoly of force; This is, above all, an instrument for fulfilling its essential function: the creation and maintenance of a certain internal order, capable of taking predictable and reliable social interactions.

We could also define that the State is an entity configured by the process of social organization, for its self-control, which has the power to establish order, but which in turn is due to society in terms of its objectives and limitations, and the way to mediate between these two instances is through politics.

The form of the State-Society relationship, as well as the specific functions of the State, may vary. Some of the main positions can be summarized in two oppositions: that of the Welfare State and the proposal of the Neoliberal State. Which I will take care to describe briefly in this post.

### **The welfare state.**

The emergence of the welfare state, also known as social state or welfare state, was driven by the social movements of the workers and the socialist and communist parties of nineteenth-century Europe, whose population had experienced the progressive deterioration of their quality of life and the loss of political freedoms in the face of the accelerated progress of capitalism and industrialization. The liberal state law was not able to provide satisfactory answers to these problems, which was why it had to be transformed into a state that corrected the effects of capitalism on the less favored classes. However, it was not until the beginning of the 20th century that the conception of the welfare state was consolidated.

The primary function of the welfare state was to correct the adverse effects of the competitive industrial society. More specifically, this model of State seeks to guarantee the minimum conditions of existence through measures that favor a better and just distribution, from their perspective, of income, generalized access to various social services, generation of jobs and minimum wages for each person, among other.

Although this model has sought to resolve a series of social problems, various implications are associated with it. On the one hand, we could ask ourselves what will be the resources that the State will distribute, which, according to the proposal, must be obtained from the private ones, through taxation; Second, the State must take an active role in the economic process to fulfill its role as a distributor of resources. On the other hand, the State must actively participate in the provision of some services given the various faults that the market presents; Finally, one could ask who and on what aspects the benefits would be granted, since although the ideology of equality could lead to supposing that the benefits should be universal, a similar policy could generate even more inequalities by providing the same benefits to sectors of the population that have different opportunities and different resources.

The criticisms of this model are diverse. From a neoliberal perspective it is considered economically unfeasible because it generates a growth of demands towards the State and the government, which in the long run seem to be unsustainable and could create, by maintaining a market economy, serious distortions in economic processes; On the other hand, the production of goods and services by the State becomes a problem, since it lacks the information obtained by private producers through the market, just as it is produced, under the market criteria maintained by the market. model, a lack of competitiveness that inhibits government efforts to achieve higher quality services. Additionally, the definition of criteria to determine those who benefit state policies are not only usually arbitrary but could even be fundamentally adjusted to the interests of the State and governments, which aspire to obtain sufficient support to continue in the exercise of power . Regarding the neoliberal perspective, it is considered that the State's excessive intervention violates the citizen's freedom principle, the right to private property and the freedom of contracts, assuming that the welfare state model is a true approximation to the socialist model; Ultimately, for neoliberal critics a relationship of dependency between citizens and the State is created, the emergence of interest groups is favored and the State is faced with an ungovernable society, which resists any attempt to change the distribution of resources.

### **The neoliberal State**

The neoliberal state model arises in reaction to the experience of application of the welfare state and its strong state intervention. However, this model reduces the State to its minimum expression, with a clear tendency to privatize its basic services, legally controlled by the State. From this perspective, neoliberalism tries to return to the economic principles of classical liberalism distorted both in the theory and in the political practice of the welfare state.

The neoliberal State is characterized by defending the de facto historical origin of the State, which is why it is always an imposition to which society must adapt. Secondly, according to this model, the State must guarantee the freedom of the citizens and the administration of justice, private property and the freedom of contracts, in order that they achieve for themselves the welfare, progress and economic growth; in fact, in this proposal the welfare condition is an individual matter. Finally, economic policy consists in letting market forces decide the allocation of resources and in which economic agents act in favor of their individual benefit; while social policy will benefit the most needy population, temporarily, until it obtains the tools that allow it to insert itself into the productive economy and state aid is unnecessary.

Like the welfare state model, the neoliberal proposal has received a series of criticisms from the other models. On the one hand, the dimensioning that it gives to welfare and justice, since the functioning of the free market does not necessarily lead to a greater general welfare or a more just situation. The fact that it is intended to generate sufficient employment for the population and general conditions for entering the labor market does not guarantee that this really happens. The palpable example is that of the countries of the "third world", whose population is not ready to be inserted into the free market economic system, nor is the economy necessarily capable of absorbing all available labor. In this sense, another criticism that can be pointed out in the neoliberal model is that it is so ethical to abandon those who, having tried to compete in the market, have been excluded from all the benefits considered basic in a society. While this possibility is covered by the fact that neoliberalism provides for the possibility of a transitory social policy for these groups: perhaps, should not the State guarantee a certain basic level of life below which no citizen can be found? .

The application of the neoliberal proposal can lead to an enormous social conflict due to the inexistence of an arbitrator that regulates the demands of the different social sectors, which could hinder cooperation and consensus for the achievement of social goals.

### **Source information**

https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/10140/1/Daisy%20Farnham-Honours%20Thesis-2014.pdf

http://users.sussex.ac.uk/~ssfa2/fougnercompstate.pdf

http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/09581.pdf