Western Weberian State 

"The main benchmarks for states remain Weberian notions of a 'monopoly of violence' and that states maintain a bounded territory and sovereignty over this territory. Furthermore, government is said to 'represent' the totality of its people, which is based on the ficticious 'Gesamtheit des Volkes' or totality of a people (Kochler 1985). Most states are, or are striving, or indeed are made to strive for, democracies, which are generally based on a real or simulated will of the people or electorate, which is not always the same.

However, in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific, and elsewhere to other degrees, the Western Weberian state is present only in varying degrees, if at all, even if, or especially when, it seems that it does exist. Chabal and Daloz (1999) draw attention tothis dissonance between Western notions of the state and the reality on the ground in Africa that seemingly at times resembles Western states.

The role of civil society and churches and other fatih-based organisations in providing key services and 'nation building' are underrepresented. For instance, there exist strong global and localised incarnations of how these factions are instrumental in instilling hope through transnational, global-faith-based cosmologies or localised cults."

G. Hoffstaedter and C. Roche

'All the world's a stage': structure, agency and accountability in international aid

2011