The state: past, present, future

The State

The State

Past, Present, Future

Bob Jessop

polity

Copyright © Bob Jessop 2016

The right of Bob Jessop to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in

accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2016 by Polity Press

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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Malden, MA 02148, USA

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3304-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-3305-3(pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jessop, Bob.

The state: past, present, future / Bob Jessop.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7456-3304-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-7456-3305-3

(paperback) 1. State, The. I. Title.

JC11.J47 2015

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2015013426

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In Memoriam, Josef Esser (1943–2010)

Contents

Preface viii

Tables x

Abbreviations xi

1 Introduction 1

Part I The State as Concept, Relation, and Reality 13

2 The Concept of the State 15

3 The State as a Social Relation 53

4 Power, Interests, Domination, State Effects 91

Part II On Territory, Apparatus, and Population 121

5 The State and Space–Time 123

6 State and Nation 148

7 Government + Governance in the Shadow of Hierarchy 164

Part III Past and Present (Futures) of the State 187

8 The World Market and the World of States 189

9 Liberal Democracy, Exceptional States,

and the New Normal 211

10 The Future of States and Statehood 238

Notes 250

References 257

Index of Names 290

Subject Index 292

The present book is the latest in an unplanned series on state theory,

states, and state power that reflects changing conjunctures and shift￾ing interests. It differs in three main ways from its precursors. First,

rather than focusing on postwar capitalist states or states in capitalist

societies, it comments on the genealogy of the state, the periodization

of state formation, contemporary states, and likely future trends

discernible in the present (in other words, present futures). Second,

reflecting this broader scope, it offers a conceptual framework for

studying the state that can be used in more contexts, integrated with

more theoretical approaches, and applied from several standpoints.

Third, while it draws on diverse theoretical positions and occasion￾ally provides brief critiques, it is concerned, not to draw sharp divid￾ing lines between them, but to synthesize them – where this is both

possible and productive. Thus, even where I focus on one particular

approach, I also note possible links, intersections, or parallels with

other approaches that are not developed here.

This book draws on many years of intermittent engagement with

questions of state theory and critical investigation of actual states,

above all in Europe. At other times I have been more preoccupied

with the critique of political economy, especially postwar capitalism,

the development of the world market, and their crisis tendencies. This

explains why my analysis often adopts a capital- or class-theoretical

entry point. But, as noted above, this is one of many options, none

of which can be privileged on a priori grounds but only in terms of

its explanatory power for particular problems in particular contexts

(see chapter 3). Many scholars have influenced my understanding of

Preface

Preface ix

the state through their reflections and historical analyses or through

personal discussions with me – and, in several cases, through tren￾chant criticisms! My personal interlocutors know who they are and

their influence is clear in the text and references.

I do want to mention eight sources of continuing inspiration: Nicos

Poulantzas, whom I met only once, but to whose work I return regu￾larly, for fresh insights and stimulation; Alex Demirović, who is a

tireless and enthusiastic source of critical intelligence and theoretical

wisdom; Joachim Hirsch, who has produced some of the best histori￾cal materialist analyses of the state and applied them critically to

Germany; Jupp Esser, who emphasized the importance of rigorous

empirical testing of state-theoretical claims; Martin Jones, who intro￾duced me to economic and political geography, who has been a sup￾portive co-author and interlocutor over many years, and whose

influence is evident in chapter 5 and throughout; Ulrich Brand, who

reminds me that theoretical engagement can be combined with social

and political activism; Michael Brie, who welcomed me at the Rosa

Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin and emphasized the importance of

an emancipatory unity of theory and practice; and, last but not least,

Ngai-Ling Sum, with whom I have been elaborating a cultural turn

in political economy with implications for the state as well as for

economic analysis.

Special thanks are also due to Louise Knight and Pascal Porcheron

at Polity Press for gently nudging and steering this book through the

final stages of writing to submission of the final version in 2015. The

final version of the text benefited from comments by Colin Hay and

three anonymous referees and the knowledgeable and highly profes￾sional copy-editing of Manuela Tecusan.

The writing of this book was undertaken in part during a Profes￾sorial Research Fellowship funded by the Economic and Social Science

Research Council, 2011–2014, under grant RES-051-27-0303.

Neither the ESRC nor the friends and colleagues named above are

responsible, of course, for errors and omissions in this text. Indeed,

the usual disclaimers apply with unusual force.

I dedicate this book to the memory of Jupp Esser, an inspiring

colleague, critical interlocutor, and dear friend, who died too soon

from cancer in 2010.

Den Haag

21 March 2015

1.1 Six approaches to the analysis of the state 6

2.1 Cumulative genesis of the modern state 30

2.2 Aspects of the traditional three-element theory 36

3.1 Six dimensions of the state and their crisis

tendencies 58

4.1 Some key features of the capitalist type of state 108

4.2 Capitalist type of state versus state in

capitalist society 116

5.1 Four aspects of sociospatiality 134

5.2 Towards a multidimensional analysis of

sociospatiality 140

6.1 A typology of imagined political communities

linked to nation-states 152

7.1 Modes of governance 168

7.2 Second-order governance 170

8.1 Three trends and counter-trends in state

transformation 201

9.1 Normal states and exceptional regimes 219

Tables

BC before Christ

DHS Department of Homeland Security

ECB European Central Bank

ESM European Stability Mechanism

EU European Union

IMF International Monetary Fund

KWNS Keynesian welfare national state

MECW Marx/Engels Collected Works,

50 vols (Progress Publishers: Moscow,

Lawrence & Wishart: London, and

International Publishers: New York,

1975–2005)

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation

and Development

Q quaderno (notebook)

SRA strategic–relational approach

STF spatiotemporal fix

TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership

TPSN territory, place, scale, network

Abbreviations

xii Abbreviations

TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment

Partnership

UK United Kingdom

UN United Nations

USA PATRIOT Act Uniting and Strengthening America by

Providing Appropriate Tools Required to

Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (2001)

The ‘modern state’ has been part of the political landscape for several

centuries, if sometimes only faintly visible on its horizon. Yet social

scientific interest has waxed and waned, its foci have shifted, and

approaches vary with fad and fashion. Indeed, here as in other fields,

it seems that social scientists do not so much solve problems as get

bored with them. Interest revives when another generation of scholars

or another epistemic community finds new potential in older theories,

encounters new problems and research opportunities, or adopts

insights, metaphors, or paradigms from other schools or disciplines.

In this spirit, my analysis aims to show the continued relevance of

theoretical work on states and state power and the need to renew

state theory as its referents change. This is reflected in five related

tasks that are pursued in part sequentially and in part iteratively, at

different places in this book. Limitations of space meant that not

all of these tasks are pursued to the same extent or with the same

intensity, but I hope to have written enough about each of them to

demonstrate their respective heuristic values and the benefits of com￾bining them.

The first, initially question-begging, task is to outline six strategies

for analysing states and state power that, if we combine them to

exploit their respective strengths, might offer a powerful heuristic for

addressing the complexities of these topics. This does not commit me

to developing a general and transhistorical theory of the state – an

ambition that I have long rejected for reasons given elsewhere (Jessop

1982: 211–13). It does imply support for (meta)theoretical, episte￾mological, and methodological pluralism in analysing the state and

Introduction

1

2 Introduction

careful consideration of the most appropriate entry points and stand￾points in particular theoretical and practical contexts.

The second, provisionally question-answering, task is to define the

state in ways that capture its distinctiveness as a form of political

organization and support analyses of its institutional and spatiotem￾poral variability. Starting from the continental European tradition of

state theory, which highlights three core elements of the modern state,

I add a fourth one: the sources of its legitimation in state projects.

These four elements can be extended and qualified for diverse theo￾retical and practical purposes. The revised approach also provides a

basis for exploring the multiple pasts and presents of the state and

for speculating about possible futures.

The third, briefer, task is to consider the historical semantics of

the modern state, that is, the emergence and consolidation of a spe￾cialized vocabulary to describe the state – and indeed its role in

constituting, consolidating, reproducing, and guiding the various

institutions, modes of calculation, practices, and imaginaries, whether

in high politics or in everyday life, referred to in this semantic frame￾work. This task matters, even if one maintains that the state, regarded

as a form of political organization, preceded its own explicit concep￾tualization in terms of statehood. The task involves more than exam￾ining the history of ideas, intellectual history, or the history of political

thought: it extends to the links between semantic change and societal

transformation and, in this context, to contestation over the nature

and purposes of the state. It also invites critical reflection on the

language used to describe state-like political authority before the

semantics of the state emerged and on the societal changes that have

prompted the semantics of governance and meta-governance to

describe emergent political institutions and practices that are less

territorially focused than their statal counterparts. The historical

semantics of the state also poses questions about the Eurocentric

nature of state theory and, on this basis, about the relevance of

(Eurocentric) state theory to territorially organized forms of political

authority beyond the centres of European state formation, especially

before the rulers and subjects of these other political regimes encoun￾tered the representatives of European states – as plunderers, traders,

explorers, missionaries, diplomats, conquerors, or in some other

guise. Such reflections can help reveal the historical specificity of

different forms of political organization, political regime, and types

of state.

The fourth task, building on the first three but influencing their

pursuit, is to offer some theoretically informed reflections on key

aspects of the state and state power, especially in advanced capitalist