STATE FUNCTIONS AND THE FUTURE OF THE STATE

A typology of states classified as either enforcement or service states leads to further distinctions among regulation, laissez-faire, planning, welfare, revolutionary and adaptive states. The typology provides a base for speculations about the long term future of the State. STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF THE STATE It is useful to distinguish the state and the political system. The state can be seen as a combination of two basic functions, each of which must rely on three structural elements. The first of the two basic func-tions is the enforcement state, which I shall call State A. Its three ma-jor structural elements are, first, its enforcement machinery, that is, the armed forces and the police with material appendages, buildings, and equipment, which were the well known apparatus of force of interest to Marxist writers. The second, or decision-making part, con-sists of the high-level decision makers, legislators and rulers in full-time roles, because a machinery that is capable of enforcing must know what to enforce, and this, of course, will change with differing situa-tions. The third or implementing part of this enforcement state con-sists of the middle-level civilian managers and decision makers in the service of directly enforceable legislation, administration and coordina-tion. State A is the enforcement state/decision state that produces enforceable decisions, or those decisions which are expected to be enforceable. Talcott Parsons used to call them &dquo;binding&dquo; decisions. The second basic function characterizes what I shall call State B, the service state, producing desired goods and services. These include the many millions of public employees working in the modern states today. In many countries these persons are involved in the building and management of roads and railroads, run postal services, conduct at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 4, 2016ips.sagepub.comDownloaded fro