Recent Developments in State Theory: Approaches, Issues, Agendas

Abstract

Marxists led the postwar revival of interest in theorizing the state during the mid-1960s. From their general concern with the form and functions of the capitalist state in Western Europe and North America, state theory then adopted a more institutionalist focus in the late 1970s movement to ‘bring the state back in’.2 Interest in state theory diminished during the 1980s, however, and the more innovative theoretical critiques of the state — Foucauldian, feminist and discourse-analytic approaches — are neither Marxist nor even overtly focused on the state. None the less there are some interesting parallels between these different waves of theorizing. My aim is to explore these and their implications for future theoretical work on states and state power — especially in the light of contemporary changes therein.