贝兰特认为,古希腊城邦缺乏“传统”国家定义所说的对内强制力量、明确分化的阶级和政府机构,因而不具备国家资格,而是人类学所说的“无国家的社会”。汉森、格里宁以及范德弗利特等学者针锋相对,认为希腊的城邦机构复杂有序,司法机制和公民参与较为突出,是民主制的早期国家或公民国家。这场关于希腊城邦国家资格的争论,实际上折射了古典史学界以及人类学界在理论和方法上的某些分歧。 Belett argues that the ancient Greek city-states lacks the “internal” force and the clearly differentiated class and government agency as the “traditional” state defines and thus does not possess the national qualifications but anthropology states that “there is no state society”. Hansen, Grinning and van der Flut and other scholars tit-for-tat, that the city-state institutions in Greece are complex and orderly, judicial mechanisms and citizen participation is more prominent, is an early democratic state or citizen countries. This debate on the qualifications of Greek city-states actually reflects some of the theoretical and methodological differences between classical historians and anthropologists.