https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/debate-on-democracy-and-peer-governance-part-2-the-role-of-the-state/2006/11/21 Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Mon, 08 Sep 2014 08:38:45 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.14 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/debate-on-democracy-and-peer-governance-part-2-the-role-of-the-state/2006/11/21/comment-page-1#comment-8697 Tue, 21 Nov 2006 09:58:04 +0000 http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=621#comment-8697 I don’t think the issue is wether to want a state or not. States, in some form- if only in the form of mere burecratic inhertia, see Michels and his ‘Iron law of oligarchy’- tend to form as soon as political units get complex enough and/or acquire enough of a history. (Alternatively there is the Smithian view that the state in its most elementary form, i.e. the sovereign exception, preceeds any kind of real political consititution- this is a debated, but to my mind very realistic view.) So what we need to think about is how to design a state that manages to balance its ‘instinctive’ bias towards conservation and inertia with a certain dynamism and opennness towards the democratic process. This, I think is the real problem.

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