Hi Ron,
Years ago I read an SF book that made the off hand comment that institutions are problem creating constructs that allow people to have fun by trying to solve these problems. It's sort of an inverted logic but, I must admit, it really caught my attention.
Are states a solution looking for a problem? I suspect they are, and that is more "true" (in the probabilistic sense) within states that have a democratic form as politicians and other groups vie for selling problems to the populace. One really good article that I have used as a text in a number of classes is by Joel Best Rhetoric in Claims-Making: Constructing the Missing Children Problem, Social Problems, Vol. 34, No. 2. (Apr., 1987), pp. 101-121.
Other state forms seem to be much more "stable" - certain types of theocratic governance structures for example (e.g. the Temple States in Sumeria). The trick, however, seems to be in distinguishing what institutions actually make up a "state", and then focusing on them. Just as a quick example, there is a key, institutional difference between a constitutional monarchy / parliamentary democracy and a republican form in the institutional relationship between the head of state and the head of government. In many republics, the two are melded to a fairly large degree, which in parliamentary democracies they are quite separate (that allows for concepts like a "Loyal Opposition", as well as the reality of being able to dis your hed of government without dissing your head of state).
Not being a polisci type (hey, I got kicked out of intro to polisci for beating my prof in an election!), I tend to look at it more along organizational and institutional lines, coupled with the "lived experience" factor.
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