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.STATEI have emphasized the role of the state.Since the 1970s, political sociologyhas placed increased emphasis on what the state does as well as who itserves (Alford and Friedland 1985; Mann 1984; Evans, Rueschemeyer, andSkocpol 1985; Lehman 1988; Campbell, Hollingsworth, and Lindberg1991).We have moved from an emphasis on the kinds of decisions that thestate makes, as debated by the pluralists and power elite theorists in the1960s (Mills 1956; Dahl 1961, 1967; Domhoff 1967), to an agenda thatemphasizes state functions like legitimation and accumulation (Offe 1972;Offe and Ronge 1975; O Connor 1973), to a focus on the organizationalcapacity of the executive branch (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985;Skowronek 1982; Skocpol 1980).However, political sociology may be entering a new stage in its view ofthe state, especially in terms of its relationship to the economy.At the heartof this new perspective is an agenda that asks how the relationship betweenstate and economy is historically constructed, focusing on the legal defini-tion of that relationship (Campbell, Hollingsworth, and Lindberg 1991;Creighton 1990; Fligstein 1990; Sklar 1988).The boundary between stateand economy is a set of distinctions and definitions about the rights, entitle-ments, and responsibilities that people have relative to production anddistribution, that is, to property.Private property means that the state willC O N C L U S I O N 277enforce the rights of individuals (including corporate individuals) to ac-quire, control, and dispose of productive facilities and the goods therebyproduced without accountability to anyone except those directly involvedin the act of acquiring, controlling, and disposing, that is, those supplyingcapital.An owner has the right to use his or her property with wide discre-tion, limited by the relatively weak restrictions of zoning laws and pro-hibitions on harm to others.He or she is entitled to the fruits of using theproperty, and has responsibility only to those from whom the property isacquired, those who enter into agreements about using the property, andthe state itself.Public property means that the state itself has rights to ac-quire, control, and dispose of productive facilities and the goods therebyproduced.At a time when the boundary between public and private isbeing actively reconstructed in former communist states, it is not surprisingthat social scientists are discovering the historical roots of a boundary onceconsidered natural and inevitable (Campbell, Hollingsworth, and Lind-berg 1991; Block 1990; Maier 1987).Two propositions logically follow:(1) There is no such thing as a noninterventionist state; property underliesall social and economic relationships and is defined and enforced by thestate.(2) In addition to the content of law, the scale and scope of the stateapparatus influences the scale and scope of such organizational offshoots aslarge corporations.1.There is no such thing as a noninterventionist state; property under-lies all social and economic relationships and is defined and enforced by thestate.Thus even when the state is not actively regulating or administeringeconomic activities through the executive branch, it is creating the condi-tions within which economic activities take place.This defines a very differ-ent relationship between state and economy.Initiative for particular eco-nomic activities may arise outside the state.The state may not dictate theuse of any particular resource or the content of any particular contract butindirectly defines the kind of social relationships within which economicactivity can take place.An economy in which individual owners are liablefor all debts of companies they hold title to, in which owners have the rightto veto liquidation of assets, and in which one company cannot exerciseownership rights of another is very different from one in which the ownersbear little responsibility for the actions of a company, in which assets canbe sold if some of the owners agree, and in which companies can own othercompanies.The conception of property found in recent economic and political soci-ology (Horwitz 1992; Campbell, Hollingsworth, and Lindberg 1991;Calhoun 1990), which emphasizes the positive rights, entitlements, and re-sponsibilities that the state enforces, contrasts with a more conventional po-litical philosophy conception of property that pits property rights againstthe state (Ryan 1987).Property rights are seen as a form of freedom ashield against government intrusion into private life.In this conception,the stronger the property rights, the weaker the government.A more socio-278 C H A P T E R N I N Elogical perspective would go beyond the individualistic assumption that theonly theorized interaction is between the individual and the state to con-sider how the state affects the way that different people interact with oneanother.Thus my perspective, along with other recent sociological work on therelationship between state and economy, places much greater emphasis onthe law (Fligstein 1990; Creighton 1990; Campbell, Hollingsworth, andLindberg 1991; Berk 1990).I have emphasized statutory law, especially atthe state level, rather than the more common focus on national judge-madelaw.While legal scholars for at least the last century have recognized thedifference between the law in the books and the law in reality (Horwitz1992), the law in the books does set limits on the law in reality [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]