What is

The State?

Bob Jessop Córdoba Lecture 1

 Lecture 1: What is the State?
• How can we define the state in ways that support a
scientific analysis of its past and present and offer
strategically useful analyses of its present and future?
• I begin with the Continental European tradition of
state theory, while noting its Eurocentric nature and
other limitations
• How can we build on this by highlighting the role of
political imaginaries, contingencies of its primary and
secondary features, its spatio-temporal features, and
its links to other features of wider social formation?
• I provide one slide on the history of primary state
formation (i.e., the independent genesis of the state
as a form of the territorialization of political power)
 Outline
• What exactly is the
state?
• Six approaches to
studying states
• The national state and
nation-state
• Historical formation:
the origins of the state
 Problems of Definition
• All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically
concentrated defy definition; only something which has no
history can be defined (Nietzsche GM 1887/1994: 53)
• It is hard – some would claim impossible – to give a clear
definition of the ‘state’ when it has such a long history, has
assumed so many forms, and continues to change
• Even to assume that there is some ‘it’ to which the
concept and state theory might refer is problematic
• Thus the state concept is often dismissed as ambiguous,
opaque, vapid, fetishistic, empty, and so on.
• “The state does not exist”! “Nor should the concept!”
 A provisional entry point
• For Continental European state theory, statehood
involves territorialization of political power:
• a territory controlled by the state,
• an apparatus that makes collectively binding decisions, for
• a resident population subject to state authority
• There is no state in general, hence no challenge to the
state: different forms of state rest on different forms
of territorialization (plus apparatuses and populations)
• Major forms of political power are non-territorial
• World market (or world society and spaceship earth)
generate crisis-tendencies and pose problems that
exceed the capacities of many territorial states
 State Territory State Organ State People
(Staatsgebiet) (Staatsgewalt) (Staatsvolk)

Special staff with

Defining A bordered territory division of labour A settled population
subject to control by exercising general on which state
Features state authority and specific material authority is binding
and symbolic powers

Similar “Nation”, subjects,

Frontiers, borders, Apparatus, machine,
residents, denizens
Concepts borderlands, limes dispositive
Constituent power

External Exclaves, colonies Recognition of state Aliens, refugees,

Claims to extra- sovereignty by other exiles, stateless
dimension territoriality states persons
Approach Focus Key Themes Disciplines

Territorialization of Archaeology,
Primary state formation
political authority anthropology, history,
Historical Later evolution of states
Core features of the state military science,
formation Genealogy of diverse organization studies,
State crisis, failure,
elements of the state public administration
revolution

Isomorphism Historical materialism,

State as a form of
Form versus function international relations,
Formal domination
‘Relative autonomy’ law, policy sciences,
composition Types of state /regime
Democracy and political science, state
Internal organization theory
dictatorship

Relation among Institutional

branches of state isomorphism or Historical, organizational,
Institutional network, and sociological
The state (system) as complementarity
analysis institutionalism in various
institutional ensemble Path-dependency and
disciplines
Institutional design path-shaping
 Historical Formation
• Territorialization of political power and its genealogy (e.g., the
complicated history of the Westphalian state)
• State formation is not a once-and-for-all process; the state
does not originate at one place/time – multiple inventions
• There are many types of state: city-states, small states, client
states, empires, etc.
• There are also forms of political power that are non-statal
• No convincing general theory of origins (Marxian, military
conquest, priesthood , patriarchy, political imaginaries)
• Do not assume unity of state apparatus (institutions,
organizations, etc) – so include state projects in analysis
 Historical Formation and Polymorphy
• Different axes or principles of societal organization:
• Capitalist state (‘wealth container’)
• Military-political regime (‘power container’)
• Nation-state (‘cultural container’)
• Representative state (democratic or citizenship regimes)
• Theocratic state (primacy of religion)
• Security state (primacy of domestic national security)
• ‘Racialized’ state (primacy of ethnic divisions, e.g., apartheid)
• ….
• There can also be hybrid forms, based on combinations of
principles in shadow of one; and some principles may
conflict with others (e.g., apartheid vs capital accumulation)
The ‘Pashukanis Question’ on Form
‘Why does the dominance of a class
take the form of official state
domination? Or, which is the same
thing, why is not the mechanism of
state constraint created as the
private mechanism of the dominant
class? Why is it dissociated from the
dominant class -- taking the form of
an impersonal mechanism of public
authority isolated from society?'
(E.B. Pashukanis, Law &
Marxism,1951: 185).
 The Limits of Form Analysis
• Form analysis is best for the capitalist type of state and less
useful for societies where some kinds of capitalist relations
exist but there is no capitalist type of state
• Historical constitution approach may be more suitable than
formal analysis for some theoretical purposes
• Form analysis identities tendencies linked to capitalist type
of state insofar as the latter itself is reproduced, which is
not guaranteed
• For other types of state and political regimes, may be
better to use figurational or strategic-relational analysis ...
• ... especially where another crystallization of state power
prevails together with another mode of societalization
 Institutional Analysis
• Less demanding than historical or formal analyses (where
form is often uncritically taken as given) and more suited
to specific apparatuses, issue areas, policy fields, , etc.
• Facilitates comparison and cumulative analysis of cases
across time and space but must offer more than simple
descriptive context for rational choice modelling
• Useful, even necessary, to link macro-level to meso- or
micro-foundations in organizational or individual agency
• A critical institutionalism must be historical, sensitive to
structural contradictions and strategic dilemmas, crisis-
tendencies, struggles, institutional failures, etc.
 Bertrand Badie, Pierre Birnbaum
Distinguish political systems with a centre and a state
(France), a state but no centre (Italy), a centre but no
true state (Britain, USA), and no centre or true state
(the Helvetian Confederation). In the first two cases,
the state dominates and tries to organize civil society
through a powerful bureaucracy (with France the ideal
type). In the last two cases, civil society can organize
itself and a strong state and bureaucracy are not
needed (with Britain the ideal type) (1983: 103-4).
 Limits of Institutional Analysis
• Ignores fundamental social relations and roots of crisis-
tendencies rooted in overall nature of social organization
• Contradictions and crisis-tendencies explain the necessity
of institutional and spatio-temporal fixes and the always
temporary, partial, and provisional nature of their effects
• Even well institutionalized and complementary sets of
institutions cannot stop conflicts from overflowing them
(primacy of agency, logic of power and resistance)
• Continuing – but failure-prone – efforts are needed to
reproduce the institutions, institutional separations, and
institutional complementarities that enable accumulation
 State managers + other
state agents, political
Agent-centred
actors and behaviour,
institutionalism
acting in specific
institutional settings
“State and Society”
Figurational
“State and Civilization”
analysis (Elias)
Social embeddedness
Governmentality Governance techniques:
and/or critical disciplines, normalization,
governance governmentality, meta-
studies governance, collibration
State concept, “state as
State semantics, idea”, philosophies and
political discourse theories of the state and
the state system
Leadership, decision-
Actor-network
making, political
theory, historical
calculation,
institutionalism, policy
institutions,
studies, sociology
institutional design
State in context, Comparative politics,
historical cleavages, geography, history,
base-superstructure, historical sociology,
societalization political economy
Microphysics of Discourse analysis,
power, anatomo- dispositive analysis,
politics, biopolitics, public administration,
strategic codification policy studies
State projects, political Conceptual history,
imaginaries, policy critical discourse
narratives, ethico- analysis, cultural
political, hegemonic studies, political
visions Ideologiekritik philosophy and theory,
 Agent-Centred Institutionalism
• As an ensemble of power centres and capacities that offer
unequal chances to different forces within and outside the
state, the state itself doesn’t exercise power
• Its powers (plural) are activated by changing sets of
politicians and officials located in specific sites, acting in
specific conjunctures, with specific horizons of action
• Despite their key roles, these ‘insiders’ typically refer to a
wider balance of forces within and beyond the state.
• To talk of the state or its managers exercising power is a
convenient fiction that masks a more complex relations
that extend beyond the state system and its capacities.
 Figurational Analysis
• Study past and present state formations as distinctive
polymorphous (changeable) crystallizations of state power.
• There are competing axes of societal organization: states
(along with the rest of a given social formation) vary with
the dominance of one or another axis
• General higher-order crystallizations vs more specific
conjunctural crystallizations (e.g., during wars or periods of
economic emergency)
• Same power networks can crystallize differently according
to dominant issues in given period; but shifting principles
can also transform state power and social orders
 Michel Foucault
If the state is what it is today, it is precisely thanks to this
governmentality that is both external and internal to the
state, since it is the tactics of government that allow the
continual definition of what should or should not fall
within the state’s domain, what is public and what
private, what is and what is not within the state’s
competence, and so on. So, if you like, the survival and
limits of the state should be understood on the basis of
the general tactics of governmentality (2008: 109).
The Panopticon
Gramsci on Lo Stato Integrale
• Focused on modalities of
state power rather than its
specific institutional means
• Looked beyond the juridico-
political state apparatus to
state power as distinctive
social relation
• Lo stato integrale = “political
society + civil society” or
‘hegemony protected by the
armour of coercion’
Antonio Gramsci
 More on Lo Stato Integrale

• State = ‘the entire complex of practical and theoretical

activities with which the ruling class not only justifies
and maintains its domination but manages to win the
active consent of those over whom it rules’ (Q15§ 10)
• Force = use of coercive apparatus to align popular
masses with needs of a specific mode of production
• Hegemony = ruling class mobilizes and secures ‘active
consent’ of dominated groups via intellectual, moral,
and political leadership to create a ‘collective will’
• Inclusive hegemony <–> passive revolution <–> force-
fraud-corruption <–> open war
 Integral State
State

Civil
Society
 Statehood
Statehood = territorialized political power

The core of the state apparatus comprises a relatively

unified ensemble of socially embedded, socially regularized,
and strategically selective institutions and organizations
whose socially constructed and accepted function is to define
and enforce collectively binding decisions on the social
agents in a given territorial area in the name of the general
will or common interest of a more or less inclusive imagined
political community identified with that territory

All terms in italics are contested

 State Territory State Power State Population
Failure of state
State Invasion, occupation, capacity, crisis of Demographic
Crisis Insecure borders legitimacy decline
Government-in-exile
Forcible removal,
State Military defeat Administrative
genocide, civil war,
Loss of territorial failure, loss of
Failure dual power, or
sovereignty legitimacy
divided loyalties

One-sided Neglect of space of State is reduced to a Methodological

flows; articulation of
analysis mafia-like machine nationalism
place, scale, network

Not same as terrain, Do not reduce to Not same as

terrestrial, telematic organized force. nation, citizenship
Remarks May be disjointed Can be multi-level Subjects may be
(enclaves, exclaves) or multi-tiered corporate too
 Six Dimensions of State (Power)

Formal Aspects Strategic Aspects

1. Different forms of
representation
2. Overall institutional
architecture
3. Different forms of state
intervention
1. Social bases of state
apparatus and power
2. State projects to unify
state and its powers
3. State strategies for
ordering society
National State
A sovereign territorial state
constituted on the basis of
its successful claim, internal
and external, to exercise a
legitimate monopoly of
organized violence in its
territory and to use this to
govern its population

Not all national states are

nation-states
 Nation-State
A territorial state constituted on
the basis of an actually existing
form of (imagined) nationhood
and/or that is seeking to
legitimize territorialization of
political power on the basis of (a
self-constituting claim to
imagined) nationhood.

Not all nation-states are national

states
 Volks- Kultur- Staats-
nation nation nation
Simple
Imagined People united by Constitutional
Ethnos
Community shared culture patriots

Basis of
Blood ties or Assimilation, Test of political
Inclusion in
naturalization acculturation loyalty
community

Nested political
Multi-ethnic Multi-cultural
Limit form loyalties in multi-
social formation social formation
tiered state

How it may Dual state in a

“Melting pot Postmodern play
decompose given territory or
society” of identities
rise of diasporas
 Origins of the State
• Nomadic groups had recognized roaming territories (but
with ill-defined outer boundaries)
• Simple and complex chiefdoms:
• hard to control territory over 12 hours distant by foot
• low political division of labour, so delegating authority to
distant officials risks creating a potential rival chief
• Primary state formation:
• First cases of state formation in a given region, without
contact with other states (e.g., Mesopotamia)
• Involves centralized bureaucratic administration that can
overcome these spatio-temporal and administrative limits
• Subsequent state formation, including empires.
 The Challenge
• Demystify, radically unmask the state, demonstrate that
the state as a unitary entity does not – cannot – exist
• This opens space to analyse the always provisional and
partial efforts to impose some temporary unity on the
state system and to create coherence across official
policies in different fields of political action
• This also requires critique of the state-idea (state projects)
and its hold over actors on the political stage
• Only if one abandons reified notion of ‘the state’ can one
seriously study of the state-system in all its complexity as
well as develop a serious critique of different state-ideas