Reaction against the use of the term “State” began early in the twentieth century. It was due to the influence of such social sciences as psychology, anthropology and sociology, as well as biology. It gave rise to the theories of functional and operational systems. Functional approach is derived from sociology and anthropology. It emphasizes the fact that a social or political system is a process, and therefore not something static; secondly, that it has no end or goal, and thirdly, that the activity of one part of a system is related with that of the other. Hence, if one part is affected, the whole system is affected too.
A system is, therefore, an integrated whole, or a structure. It may be noted that the third element is in contradiction to the first two, for an integrated whole is necessarily static: it militates against change. Anyway, this approach is known as functional- structural analysis.
Side by side with the functional approach to politics was the influence of the operational research. The result of functionalism and operational ism was the virtual elimination of the term “State” and its “elements”. Indeed, the “State” was believed to be too complex and too unwieldy a subject for operational research. At this stage came the influence of behaviouralism in the middle of the twentieth century. Behaviouralism was derived mainly from psychology, emphasized the micro processes of politics, especially the decision-making processes. The result of these three influences, viz., of functionalism, operationalism and behaviouralism, was the virtual elimination of the term State and of its elements from political science. “As a result” writes Morton H. Fried, “it is impossible to offer a unified definition of the State that should be of satisfaction to those seriously concerned with the problem.” Instead, they prefer to use the term “political system”. Let us now see how these political scientists refute and reject the “content” or elements of the State.
(i) Territoriality:
As defined above, the term “State” consists of four elements, viz. government, territory, people and sovereignty. The third element, people, cannot be eliminated at all from any political organization. Government is so essential an element in the concept “political scientists attack the remaining two elements, namely territoriality and sovereignty. Although territory is an essential “element of the modern State, it is not found in the simple societies of the primitive times, such as the tribal or kinship societies of the past and present times.
In the past ages, nomadic tribes used to wander all over the earth without being bound to any particular place or territory. We may further add that in the medieval kingdoms and empires in Asia and Africa, and in pre-Columbus Americas, although the concept of territory was known, but the idea of well defined borders or frontiers did not exist; they constantly shifted from place to place, with the result that whole districts, or territories, wee sometimes regarded as part of one or the other kingdom or empire. The same was the case in Feudal Europe. It was with the rise of the modern States in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, that the concept of clearly well-defined borders first arose. When the European States acquired colonies in Asia and Africa, they imposed well-defined frontiers on their colonial possessions. Accordingly, the behaviour a lists and some other present-day political scientists reject the concept of territoriality as too ambiguous for purposes of political analysis.
(ii) Sovereignty:
Modern political scientists attack the concept of sovereignty also. According to them, there are various levels of administrative power of decision-making in a political system. In the kinship societies, the decision¬making power was both customary and parochial, without any supreme authority in them. In the modern States, there is a supreme authority. But it exercises no absolute, unlimited and unconditional sovereign authority over the lesser administrative units. Instead, its function is to maintain channels of communication between various levels of authority in the State. Accordingly, the emphasis should not be on sovereignty but on legitimacy of authority, which makes people to accept it as rightful and legitimate.
The result of these attacks is that the concept of “State” is virtually discarded by some political scientists in the present times. But its repudiation has led to a strange phenomenon. What these political scientists have thrown out from the front door, they bring back through the backdoor. So the term “State” is sometimes used by them, although half-heartily. They define it in circumlocutory manner. For instance, Robert A. Dahl, a behaviouralist political scientist, first defines government and then equates political system with the State. He says. “The Government is any government that successfully upholds a claim to the exclusive regulation of the legitimate use of physical force in enforcing its rules within a given territorial area.” He thus recognises the physical force, enforcing its government’s rules. But this is really what sovereignty stands for, and exercised over a given territorial area, Which is territory.
He then adds, “The political system made up of the residents of that territorial area and the Government of the area is a State.” Thus, the behavioural political scientists also recognise the “State”, though in a roundabout manner. According to them, State = political system = government + residents (people) + territorial area + exclusive regulatory power. Obviously, this is what the State is, as defined by the earlier writers. The advantage of the new definition of the State is one: it can indicate when the State will begin to vanish. Dahl writes, “We can be reasonably sure of one thing.
When large numbers of people in a particular territory begin to doubt or deny the claim of the Government to regulate force, then the existing State is in peril of dissolution”. In Political Science, this condition of a State is known as “cries de regime” or crisis of the regime. It portends the coming revolt or revolution against a particular State. It means that the behaviourist concept of State has made it an operational concept, that is, research in political analysis has become possible. This term “State is again rehabilitated in Political Science, but has been made operational, something which it has lacked in its earlier definition. This enables the political scientists to anticipate political change or development.