First, interest in stateness arises from growing disquiet about the abstractnature of much state theory (especially its assumption of a ubiquitous, uniWed,
sovereign state) and increasing interest in the historical variability of actual states.
Thus some theorists focus on the state as a conceptual variable and examine the
varied presence of the idea of the state. Others examine the state’s diVerential
presence as a distinctive political form. Thus Badie and Birnbaum ( 1983 ) usefully
distinguish between the political center required in any complex social division of
labor and the state as one possible institutional locus of this center. For them, the
state is deWned by its structural diVerentiation, autonomy, universalism, and
institutional solidity. France is the archetypal state in a centralized society; Britain
has a political center but no state; Germany has a state but no center; and
Switzerland has neither. Such approaches historicize the state idea and stress its
great institutional variety. These issues have been studied on all territorial scales
from the local to the international with considerable concern for meso-level
variation.
Second, there is growing interest in factors that make for state strength. Intern-
ally, this refers to a state’s capacities to command events and exercise authority over
social forces in the wider society; externally, it refers to the state’s power in the
interstate system. This concern is especially marked in recent theoretical and
empirical work on predatory and/or developmental states. The former are essen-
tially parasitic upon their economy and civil society, exercise largely the despotic
power of command, and may eventually undermine the economy, society, and the
state itself. Developmental states also have infrastructural and network power and
deploy it in allegedly market-conforming ways. Unfortunately, the wide variety of
interpretations of strength (and weakness) threatens coherent analysis. States have
been described as strong because they have a large public sector, authoritarian rule,
strong societal support, a weak and gelatinous civil society, cohesive bureaucracies,
an interventionist policy, or the power to limit external interference (Lauridsen
1991 ). In addition, some studies run the risk of tautology insofar as strength is
deWned purely in terms of outcomes. A possible theoretical solution is to investi-
gate the scope for variability in state capacities by policy area, over time, and in
speciWc conjunctures.
Third, recent work on globalization casts fresh doubt on the future of national
territorial states in general and nation states in particular. This issue is also raised
by scholars interested in the proliferation of scales on which signiWcant state
activities occur, from the local, through the urban and regional, to cross-border
and continental cooperation and a range of supranational entities. Nonetheless
initial predictions of the imminent demise of the national territorial state and/or
the nation state have been proved wrong. This reXects the adaptability of state
managers and state apparatuses, the continued importance of national states in
securing conditions for economic competitiveness, political legitimacy, social
cohesion, and so on, and the role of national states in coordinating the state
126 bob jessop