Week 2: ROLE OF THE STATE

“It is undeniable that the state influences many different aspects of our lives (Olsen and Marger 1993) through what Michael Mann (1988, 1993) identifies “as infrastructural power, or the ability of the state to penetrate civil society.
The state can assess and tax our income and wealth at source, without our consent … (which states before 1850 were never [emphasis Mann’s] able to do); it stores and can recall immediately a massive amount of information about all of us; it can enforce its will within the day almost anywhere in its domains; its influence on the economy is enormous; it even directly provides the subsistence of most of us (in state employment, pensions, in family allowances, etc.). The state penetrates everyday life more than did any historical state. Its infrastructural power has increased immensely. (Mann 1993: 315) 

Similarly, the state has the power to regulate (Skrentny 2006) the most intimate aspects of our lives including whom we can marry, which sex acts between consenting adults are permissible,1 and how parents may discipline their children. A functioning state, regardless of type, has the ability to restrict anyone under its jurisdiction. The state is a political institution because it wields power and for that reason is a focus for political sociologists.