Contemporary Theories of the Origins of the State

The state origins are the perpetual issue in social studies. The contemporary concepts of the state formation differ in multiple ways from the classical theories. State was a result of two interrelated processes - consolidation of society (integrative or functionalist theory) and regulation of structural clash in society (conflict theory). Presently, there are several most popular theories revealing the different ways of the state origin. In this paper, we will discuss several crucial topics, such as foundation of statehood, archaeological features of state, early state, early urbanization, multilinear evolution.