State Theory

New state space formation in Morocco: the example of the Bouregreg Valley

by Koen Bogaert

published in Urban Studies (2012), vol.49 (2), pp.255-270.

Most scholars working on the Arab World typically view the state’s power as something congruent with its cartographic... more Most scholars working on the Arab World typically view the state’s power as something congruent with its cartographic boundaries. Power emerges from an institutional core—the regime—which exerts its hegemony over subordinated institutions, spaces and scales. Thus, the regime presents itself as the privileged site of political formation, intervention and inquiry. The result is a body of scholarship that has largely neglected the dynamics of ‘new state space’ formation at the urban scale. Drawing on the case of the Bouregreg project, a massive high-end urban development scheme positioned between the twin cities of Rabat and Salé, Morocco, this paper investigates the dynamics of agency formation implicated in the creation of a new state space and considers what it reveals about state respatialisation and the rise of new governmental arrangements that have been elided by mainstream accounts on the Middle East and North African region.

Urban renewal and social development in Morocco in an age of neoliberal government

by Koen Bogaert

co-authored with Sami Zemni
published in Review of African Political Economy (2011), 38(129): 403-417.

In this article we argue that Morocco has experienced fundamental political change over the past decades. This... more In this article we argue that Morocco has experienced fundamental political change over the past decades. This transition however cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narratives linking economic liberalisation to democratisation. Rather, transition reflects a shift towards authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government. We focus on how political power has been reconfigured into new forms of ‘hybrid’ government where ‘state’, ‘market’ and ‘civil society’ interact in novel ways, by discussing the political dynamics of high-end urban development and the rationales underpinning social development policies to explain how ‘poor people’ are integrated into the realm of the market.

Imagining the state through social protest: state reformation and the mobilizations of unemployed graduates in Morocco

by Koen Bogaert

co-authored with Montserrat Emperador
Published in Mediterranean Politics (2011), 16(2), pp.241-259

This article discusses the transformation of the Moroccan state under contemporary neoliberal globalization, and... more This article discusses the transformation of the Moroccan state under contemporary neoliberal globalization, and considers what this transition means for the ways in which scholars view state-society interplay in Morocco and the Arab world more generally. Specifically, it examines the protest of unemployed graduates in Morocco, suggesting that public demonstrations are not only a means to communicate and mobilize demands, but also a technology to reclaim and reproduce a particular “truth” in public. This truth does not necessarily equate with the reality of the neoliberal state as a dispersed material force. As such, by looking at the case of Morocco, we hope to instigate further debate on the nature of the state and its specific relation to phenomena as globalization, society and social protest.

From Economic Crisis to a 'State'of Crisis?: The Emergence of Neoliberalism in Costa Rica

by Thomas Marois

(2005) 'From Economic Crisis to a ‘State’ of Crisis?: The Emergence of Neoliberalism in Costa Rica.' Historical Materialism, 13 (3). pp. 101-134.

Youth in Revolt: The Plague of State Sponsored Violence

by Henry Giroux

Published in Truthout.org

Commentary on the growing assault by the police on Occupy movement protesters across the United states. Commentary on the growing assault by the police on Occupy movement protesters across the United states.

handbook of administrative italian law

by Luca R. Perfetti

2012, « The Historicity of the Neoliberal State », in Social Anthropology, volume 20, n° 1, pp. 80-94

by Mathieu Hilgers

Debate with Loic Wacquant “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism." Social Anthropology, 20, 1, with responses in the next issue: Jamie Peck, Nick Theodore, and Neil Brenner, Stephen Collier, Daniel Goldstein, Johanna Bockman, Don Kalb...

Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and Marxian poststructuralism. Critical Discourse Studies.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies... more Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

Redux: The State as a Non-Linear Conceptual Variable

by Jonathon Louth

Paper presented to the Global Studies Association conference, Merton College, Oxford University, United Kingdom, September 2-4, 2010.

This paper proceeds in two parts.  First, it revisits J.P. Nettl’s 1968 World Politics article ‘The State as a... more This paper proceeds in two parts.  First, it revisits J.P. Nettl’s 1968 World Politics article ‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, which looked at the variation and institutionalising of what he referred to as ‘stateness’.  Second, the paper offers complexity theory as a further means to argue that the state can only ever be understood as a durable yet malleable aggregated variable. The state is not diminished in importance, instead, any theoretical response to international and indeed, global, politics needs to be aware of the fluidity of this International Relations touchstone.  The implications of this paper is that the state should be understood as a fluid concept that is as much defined by the linkages within the system as it is by the intersubjective actions between the micro and the macro. This is a nod to the interplay between structure and agency. Without slipping too far down the reflectivist slope, some elements within constructivist and historical sociological thought has meaningfully engaged within this particular theoretical space. However, complexity theory offers a new alternative to examine the linkages between the discipline of International Relations and the broader (and often more inclusive) global studies frameworks. In doing so this paper reasserts Nettl’s claim that the state is a ‘sociocultural phenomenon’, but it is one that is bound by the emergent properties associated with the patterned yet unpredictable nature of non-linear dynamics.

Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Violent accumulation: a postanarchist critique of property, dispossession, and the state of exception in neoliberalizing Cambodia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign... more Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE APPROACHES TO THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE STATE IN TURKEY DURING THE 1980S

by Ali Rıza Güngen

METU, September 2005

The prevalent approaches in terms of the restructuring of the state in Turkey during the 1980s grasp the relations... more The prevalent approaches in terms of the restructuring of the state in Turkey during the 1980s grasp the relations between state and society as relations of exteriority. Statist-institutionalist or technicist approaches detach the formation of economic policies from social struggles whereas the critical analyses interpret the implementation of structural adjustment policies as a functional response to the crisis of capital. Instead of these explanations, it seems there is a need for taking into consideration the relations between state and society as internal relations and grasping the restructuring of the state as a form assumed by social struggles and understanding the intervention of the state into the economy as a moment within the process of reproduction of the contradictions. Such a theoretical position has the power of explaining the changing forms of state intervention on the basis of the class character of the capitalist state and in a relational way.

eHealth: Rethinking State-of-the-art Technology for State Theory

by Nicholas Rowland

Actor-Network State

by Nicholas Rowland

Ontology and law in the early Poulantzas

by James Martin

This article reviews the little examined early work of the Greek Marxist and state theorist, Nicos Poulantzas... more This article reviews the little examined early work of the Greek Marxist and state theorist, Nicos Poulantzas (1936–1979). In his first book, Nature du choses et droit of 1965, the young scholar developed a sociology of law culled from the insights of philosophical ontology. The article sets out the central claims of that book and reflects on its place in Poulantzas’s intellectual development. Drawing on Heidegger, Sartre and Marx, Poulantzas proposed a species of Natural Law theory that unified ‘facts’ and ‘values’ by grounding legal concepts in a theory of social praxis centred on material labour. Legal categories were thus irreducible to ahistorical essences but were, rather, expressions of mankind’s struggle to realize its intrinsic freedom. As we shall see, although flawed and in key respects radically at odds with his later anti-humanism, Poulantzas’s legal ontology nevertheless anticipated his mature theory of the state by setting out a philosophical sociology of the political order rooted in an anti-essentialist mode of inquiry.

Economic discipline and global punishment: globalisation and Australian economic policy during the Hawke and Keating years/Tom Conley.

by Tom Conley

Globalisation as constraint and opportunity: Reconceptualising policy capacity in Australia

by Tom Conley

"The Politics of the State in Contemporary Literary Studies"

by Matthew Hart

*Literature Compass* 6/5 (2009).

"Introduction: Contemporary Literature and the State"

by Matthew Hart

Co-authored with Jim Hansen. Introduction to *Contemporary Literature and the State,* ed. Matthew Hart and Jim Hansen. Special Issue of *Contemporary Literature* 49/4 (Winter 2008): 491-513.

"The Third English Civil War: David Peace's 'Occult History' of Thatcherism"

by Matthew Hart

*Contemporary Literature and the State.*  Spec. issue of *Contemporary Literature* 49/4 (2008): 573-96.

Las dinámicas históricas y culturales de ciclos de concentración y dispersión en las sociedades amerindias

by Federico Navarrete Linares

Navarrete Linares, Federico, “Las dinámicas históricas y culturales de ciclos de concentración y dispersión en las sociedades amerindias”, en Los pueblos amerindios más allá del Estado, Berenice Alcántara Rojas y Federico Navarrete Linares, coords., México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, s.f., pp. 169-199.