On the one hand, Seeley primarily focuses on the “organic state“ (Seeley 1896:
130, 183), the one that originates in a struggle between a society (striving to a common
goal) and a hostile external environment. In fact, the original Seeley law (cited by Al-
mond) concerns a purely domestic level of analysis.
However, Seeley extends it to refer
to the domestic-international interaction implying that while territorial exposure to ex-
ternal dangers causes adoption of universal military service and, thus, internal govern-
ment pressure (as in Germany), the lack of such an external threat causes lack of an uni-
versal service and thus liberty (as in the case of England)(Seeley 1896: 150). His argu-
ment can be expressed in the following table:
Table 4: Seeley’s argument
Independent variable=external
environment
Dependent variable=form of the state
1. hostile (Germany)
1. universal military service/absolutist state
2. moderate (Britain, USA)
2. no universal military service/liberty state
On the other hand, Hintze suggests that state organization reflects military organ-
ization, and focuses specifically on the existence of the standing army rather than univer-
sal military service as such (Hintze 1975[1956]: ch.5).
His independent variable is sim-
ilar to Seeley’s: while “sea power is allied with progressive forces, whereas land forces
are tied to conservative tendencies“ (Hintze 1975[1956]: 214). But his dependent vari-
able concerns the standing army or its absence (navy and militia). For him, furthermore,
the development of a standing army in the feudal state goes along with the rise of a more
conservative, militarist state (Hintze 1975[1956]: 214), while the development of a navy
tends to be accompanied with a more liberal state. In this context, he considers Prussia as
a “classic example of the militarist state“ (Hintze 1975[1956]: 201). His causal argu-
ment, then, can be expressed as follows:
Table 5: Hintze’s argument
Independent variable=external environment
Dependent variable=form of the state
1. hostile/landpower (Germany)
1. standing army/military interest/conservative state
2. moderate/seapower (England)
2. navy/industrial interest/liberal state
Thus, we can combine Seeley’s and Hintze’s arguments, which is shown below:
23
Seeley delivered his lectures in 1885. He asserts that the degree of government is directly proportional
and the degree of liberty-inversely proportional to the degree of pressure (Seeley 1896: 131).
24
Later Hintze is considered a founder of a unified theory of state-building (as mentioned in Tilly, 1975).
29
Convention