The Rise of the Sovereign State

The first myth one has to debunk in order to assess the relationship between the provision of law and order and the rise of the State is that this political institution is merely a natural and organic outgrowth of political power, as old as the history of mankind or of organized society.

Whether we see its cradle in the Italian system of States after the Peace of Lodi, or in western Europe in the 1600s, one thing is clear: the State "Gradually emerged in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and found its first mature form in the seventeenth."

The second myth we must dispose of is the belief, shared by most historians, that the rise of the State contributed to the general cause of human liberty.

Although we are primarily concerned here with the State provision of law and order, one must not forget that the self-governing communities of the Middle Ages, in northern Italy and central Europe, offer significant examples of a completely different way of guaranteeing peace and security.

The Florentine asserted right at the beginning of his most famous work, The Prince: "All the states, all the dominions under whose authority men have lived in the past and live now have been and are either republics or principalities." And the emergence, in political theory, of the cluster of ideas associated with the State is largely a Machiavellian legacy.

Machiavelli more than any other political thinker created the meaning that has been attached to the state in modern political usage.

The State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land, streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail.

https://mises.org/wire/rise-sovereign-state