system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What do the social sciences have to say about the viability (or the lack thereof) of anarchy?

I'd love to hear more about social science findings that shed light on whether anarchy is a stable way of organising societies (or not).

I think that political discussions are necessarily impoverished when the parties involved lack extensive knowledge of various fields, and this is why I am turning to all the learned scholars here. Thank you in advance for your insights!
gpt
A few thoughts:

Robert Nozick is probably the most helpful. In anarchy state and utopia he argues for the minarchist state. According to Nozick a true anarchist state is impossible because people will band together for protection, leading others to sell protective services. Eventually one group will have exclusive rights to legitimate enforcement, causing that group to become the de facto government. 

Nozick builds off of the literature on the state of nature. 

You may want to look at political philosophy regarding the state of nature. Locke, Rousseau, and of course Hobbes all have different ideas about man in the state of nature, whether it is brutal nasty and short (Hobbes) or communal and moral (Rousseau).  Each explains why states began to form in their own way.

Finally, many IR scholars, like Kenneth Waltz, argue that the international world is in a perpetual state of anarchy (there is no international sovereign).  This is permanent because no state will relinquish sovereignty to another body. This is debated as states sign on to and enforce international laws and organizations.  Also Alexander Wendt argues that anarchy only exists between states because they choose to let anarchy exist and perpetuate anarchy as a norm (anarchy is what states make it).