O0PP 2035 - Comparative political sociology of the state

What happens to the state? Does the nation state still make sense? Does the state become a policy state? Do governments govern? Do large firms and globalised mafia control/influence states and public policies? Does the climate crisis and the Covid crisis strengthen the governance capacity of states or do they show the limits of the limited state? Are states and policies transformed by a form of neo liberal governmentality? Does the reconfiguration of states (multi-level governance) suggest the shrinking role of political regulations and democracies? Do policies change states and structure politics? The class is not about the historical construction of the state but rather deals with the development of the capacity of the state to govern with analysis and cases from different parts of the world. The idea is to use the question of the contemporary reconfiguration of the state in the light of different approaches for instance the constructivism of Quentin Skinner (ideas in context), the Foucauldian approach of timothy Mitchell, Beatrice Hibou or Mitchell Dean, the neo institutionalism of Theda Sckocpol, James Mahoney or Kimberley Morgan, the political economy (neo Marxist or not) of Bob Jessop, Neil Brenner, Cornelia Woll, Peter Hall or Wolfgang Streeck, the STS work of Sheila Jasanoff, K.Breckenbridge, or P.Carroll, the Weberian legacy of Charles Tilly or Michael Mann. The question raises conceptual issues about “what is a state” and how to analyse it on the one hand but also a range of methodological issues that will be addressed in relation to the different conceptualisation. Special guests : Pr Desmond King, from Nuffield College Oxford, comes in for the class on the unsustainable American state. One session is left opened to be organized in relation to the interests, either theoretically or geographically, of the students

Some thematic content and discussion of the papers

Discussion of the text during the class. One paper (4000 words) at the end

Two papers a week, some books to check out