Max Weber via Josip Dasovic:
Sociologically the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those associations which are designated as political ones: today the state, or historically, those associations which have been the predecessors of the modern state.
Ultimately one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely the use of political force…
…If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, the concept of “state” would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as “anarchy” in the specific sense of this word.
Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state – nobody says that – but force is a means specific to the state.
Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past the most varied institutions – beginning with the sib – have known the use of physical force as quite normal.
Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that “territory” is one of the characteristics of the state.
Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the “right” to use violence. Hence, “politics” for us means striving to share power, either among states or among groups within a state.
Like the political institutions historically preceding it, the state is a relation of men [sic] dominating men [sic], a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be.
LaVa:
El desarrollo de la cumbre del Banco Central Europeo que se celebrará en Barcelona los próximos 2, 3 y 4 de mayo contará con dos centros de coordinación policial distintos, según explicaron fuentes gubernamentales a este diario. La Guardia Civil y el Cuerpo Nacional de Policía contarán con un cuartel general y los Mossos d’Esquadra con otro independiente durante el desarrollo de la mencionada cita internacional. Esta parece ser, hasta ahora, la solución que se ha arbitrado para zanjar los problemas de índole operativo que suponía la designación de un mando operativo unificado tanto para los cuerpos y fuerzas de seguridad del Estado como para la policía autonómica. Al final, se ha optado por la segregación funcional, aunque la dirección política del dispositivo sí recaerá en una bicefalia: la compuesta por el conseller de Interior, Felip Puig, y el secretario de Estado de Interior, Ignacio Ulloa.
EP:
Rosa Díez calificó los presupuestos como “desequilibrados e injustos, además de inútiles para resolver el principal problema que, según el Gobierno, está en el cumplimiento del déficit”.
“Son unos presupuestos malos para España, pero su defensa es aún peor que los propios presupuestos. La forma en la que el ministro los ha defendido acredita en sí misma la enmienda a la totalidad”, indicaba Díez.
Además, la portavoz de la formación magenta señaló que le quedaba “claro que el Gobierno estaba dispuesto a hacer cualquier cosa para no tocar a las comunidades autónomas” a pesar de reconocer que la culpa la tiene ese nivel de la administración.
Al mismo tiempo, se preguntó “qué haría la UE si un estado miembro hiciera, en términos de incumplimientos y de endeudamiento, algunas cosas que hacen algunas comunidades autónomas y algún ayuntamiento”. “¿Darles más dinero?”.
The Queendom of Kalebeul is particularly pissed off that Wert’s education reforms appear focussed on worsening the lives of students and teachers rather than addressing the massive duplication of bureaucracy, text-book production, etc across the 17 statelets; and that when non-regional students are crying out for classes in Spanish or English, fluent, life-long Catalan-speakers are being threatened with dismissal for lack of the relevant language certificate. But will Merkel buy the “Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it” line?
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