International Studies Compendium Project

Extract

Comment on this article   The “state” is the theoretical and empirical bedrock of IR but is a concept about which few agree and is routinely defined to suit the normative and/or empirical ends of scholars and practitioners. As Held (1983 :1) observes: “There is nothing more central to political and social theory than the nature of the state,” but there is also “nothing more contested.” IR has frequently assumed the existence of a territorially based state as a universal feature outside of time and place. “Social science,” as Taylor (1996 :99) argues, “has been endemically state-centric. Conceived in a world academy dominated by states, the various social sciences have obediently followed agendas in which the ‘society’ they aspire to understand is defined politically by state boundaries.” This essay examines some of the many meanings of “state,” especially the model territorial state central to mainstream IR theory – including ostensibly “timeless” realist and neorealist versions – and briefly traces state evolution and how the model type always differed from actual historical states. It then compares contemporary states with the ideal type that continues to dominate IR scholarship. The elements of the model state are well known. It is a polity with fixed boundaries and exclusive sovereign authority over a well-defined territory, the juridical equal of other states, enjoying ... log in or subscribe to read full text