mechanisms (Zeitlin and Trubek 2003 on Europe; and Slaughter 2004 on the world
order).
Interest in governance is sometimes linked to the question of ‘‘failed’’ and
‘‘rogue’’ states. All states fail in certain respects and normal politics is an important
mechanism for learning from, and adapting to, failure. In contrast, ‘‘failed states’’
lack the capacity to reinvent or reorient their activities in the face of recurrent state
failure in order to maintain ‘‘normal political service’’ in domestic policies.
The discourse of ‘‘failed states’’ is often used to stigmatize some regimes as part
of interstate as well as domestic politics. Similarly, ‘‘rogue states’’ is used to
denigrate states whose actions are considered by hegemonic or dominant states
in the interstate system to threaten the prevailing international order. According to
some radical critics, however, the USA itself has been the worst rogue state for
many years (e.g. Chomsky 2001 ).
10 An Emerging Agenda?
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There is a remarkable theoretical convergence concerning the contingency of the
state apparatus and state power. First, most approaches have dethroned the state
from its superordinate position in society and analyze it as one institutional order
among others. Marxists deny it is the ideal collective capitalist; neostatists no
longer treat it as a sovereign legal subject; Foucauldians have deconstructed it;
feminists have stopped interpreting it as the patriarch general; and discourse
analysts see it as constituted through contingent discursive or communicative
practices. In short, the state is seen as an emergent, partial, and unstable system
that is interdependent with other systems in a complex social order. This vast
expansion in the contingency of the state and its operations requires more con-
crete, historically speciWc, institutionally sensitive, and action-oriented studies.
This is reXected in substantive research into stateness and the relative strength
(and weakness) of particular political regimes.
Second, its structural powers and capacities can only be understood by putting
the state into a broader ‘‘strategic-relational’’ context. By virtue of its structural
selectivity and speciWc strategic capacities, its powers are always conditional or
relational. Their realization depends on structural ties between the state and its
encompassing political system, the strategic links among state managers and other
political forces, and the complex web of interdependencies and social networks
linking the state and political system to its broader environment.
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