The changing role of the state: The state as a mirror of the individual?

Abstract

If the topic of the workshop is the continuity and discontinuity of the state and law, it is possible to tackle the subject of the changing role and nature of the state itself. This change can be perceived from many perspectives and some of them are already almost traditional from a lawyer’s or political scientist’s point of view like the state and globalization, the transformation of the state (typically, post-communist transformation), the state and (European) integration, the shift from state governance to (non-?)state governance, the changing role of the public sector (vis-a-vis privatization, public-private partnership) and so on.1 Some perspectives are “hot topics” waiting to be elaborated deeply in the near future, e.g. the role of the state in the current fi nancial crisis, the possibility of establishing a “world government” (given that currently states are too weak to solve the problems of “too big to fail” companies); others can be seen as topical in the future–or maybe not.2 But here I do not want to write about these complicated issues, instead, I’ll focus on two abstract speculations I have on my mind. The fi rst speculation has been infl uenced by the famous statement of Carl Schmitt, namely, that all concepts of modern state theory are secularized theological concepts.3 From Schmitt’s perspective, thinking about the state was infl uenced by thinking about God (e.g. Hobbes’ “Leviathan” was an attempt to create an earthly or