Condition of States Book

How is the state doing? Is it growing stronger, is it becoming increasingly integrated, or is it withering away? Rejecting the view that states may be studies in isolation from one another, this collection of essays employs both comparative method and an international perspective to assess what is happening to the chief political form of our time. In doing so, it questions recent major approaches of both European and American scholarship which have tended to view the state as a formation serving capital interests or classes. The approach of these essays is legal and constitutional, highlighting the changing nature of political communities and changing patterns of government. The authors argue that attention to the nature and scope of governmental powers and how they are impinged upon, by foreigners as well as citizens, is vital to any understanding of the modern state. The book argues that the issues of outsiders and insiders both defines the state and sets its relations with other states; and that political theory and international theory are part of a single continuum.Read More