New York i London Washington, D.C.

NEW

 YORK I LONDON  WASHINGTON, D.C. 

W. W. Norton & Company  American Political Science Association 

ology of understanding the state than with the applicability of the concept. 

33 

· There are severa! reasons, and they have more to do with the method 

proved so difficult to use the concept of the state in analysis? 

key component of economic and política! development. So, why has it 

able to make and implement public policies has long been considered a 

Weber. The existence within a given territory of a state apparatus that con centrates violence, coordinates regulation, and possesses a government 

bedrock of comparative política! and sociological analysis a la Marx and 

core of modern Western political theory a la Bodin and Hobbes, and it is a 

A state, whether it arises out of or is imposed on civil society, is at the 

actors and agencies in a way that nothing else seems to. 

with the complex of staff, governmental institutions, and nongovernmental 

"The State" captures the combination of centralized, far-reaching coercion 

the efforts to measure the degree of stateness far from satisfactory. Even so, 

Americas, or the antipodes, !et alone the developing world. We have found 

the number of nations without states and the number of states without na tions. We know that the continental European model of the state has lim ited descriptive or theoretical usefulness in understanding Britain, the 

shelving it. We know that the nation-state is a problematic notion, given 

the state is useless as a concept and equally well founded resistance to 

hand, and social capital, on the other. Consideration of the state as a con ceptual variable ebbs and flows; there are good reasons for claiming that 

period of scholarly emphasis on theories of the state, social scientific inter est in the state seems to have taken a back seat to institutions, on the one 

Nettl's words, published more than thirty years ago, resonate today. After a 

phasis and interest of research, the thing exists and no amount of conceptual re structuring can dissolve it. 

(Nettl 1968, 55a) 

state-based decision making. And, of course, the em ty by both policymakers and protesters reflects the col 

ement of the global economy is added to this mix, large corporate decision making appears to be of far greater 

 the state's personnel as growth-enhancing policies. 

onal banking and aid communities, the turn from gov e corruption, cronyism, and inefficiencies that are as 

, Ronald Reagan, and neoliberal economists who em n and laissez-faire have initiated a serious reconsidera ies and taxation levels. In developing countries and 

hat the traditional model of the state seems to imply. 

ced industrial countries, there is also an attack on the 

uals who feel that the state is distant and, more impor tive of their interests, concerns, and values.