Defining the state

Introductions to the state tend, unremarkably, to begin by addressing the question of definition. All too frequently, however, they fall short of providing an answer. The importance of defining the state is all the greater given that, as Dunleavy and O’Leary note, the state is not a mate­rial object; it is a conceptual abstraction (1987: 1).

That may sound fine in principle, yet the question of definition raises particular problems for a theoretically pluralistic volume such as this. Indeed, it is sorely tempting, in a text which makes something of a virtue of the diversity of theoretical resources we have on offer to interrogate the role of the state, to suggest that this is a question for each distinct approach to the state - and to leave it at that. And as already indicated and at the risk of sounding trite, the state does indeed mean a variety of different things in a variety of different perspectives. Yet we cannot quite leave it at that. For whilst the state may, and indeed does, mean different things to different authors, the commonality between seemingly diverse definitions should not be overlooked - and cannot be allowed to provide an excuse for a failure to consider the ontology of the state - what the state is. In order to help us achieve this, and to offer some historical context for the chapters which follow, we consider first the genealogy of the concept of the state before turning to by far the most influential definition of the modern state - that offered by Weber.

Before doing so, however, it is first important to say something about the development of the modern state itself - or, at least, the development of the political institutions now generally held to characterize the modern state (for a far more extensive treatment see Gill 2003). For, unremarkably, our conception of the state has not developed in isolation from the develop­ment of the institutions we associate with the state. We cannot consider one without the other.