The Concept of the State in British and French Political Thought

Abstract

The importance of the concept of state in British political thought has recently been re-assessed, and Dyson's contrast between a continental 'state tradition' and an Anglo-American 'stateless tradition' has been put into question. Yet this paper argues that there remain crucial differences in the way in which French and British political thinkers have understood the concept of state. Focusing on a critical moment in the crystallization of the meaning of 'state', the turn of the twentieth century, and in particular on the anti-statist pluralist school, it analyses how state critics were influenced by national intellectual traditions. French thought has been permeated by the idea of the autonomy of the state vis-à-vis society at large, while British thought has remained committed to an ideal of fluidity between state and society.If we are to believe Skinner's assertion that the concept of the state lies at the heart of modern European political thought (Skinner, 1978, p. 349; 1989, pp. 90-131), why is it that the use of the word 'state' in political theory often provokes bewilderment? In contrast to established political concepts such as obligation, justice, rights, or democracy, the concept of the state today lacks a readily identifiable intellectual pedigree. To most students of politics, such a highly generalizing term would appear to muddle, rather than clarify, issues. Or so it seems, at least, on this side of the Channel. In France, students of the state (l'Etat) are bound to receive more sympathetic responses, even if these are informed by vague cultural resonances rather than by rational associations of ideas. It is this intriguing contrast between French and British understandings of the state that this paper attempts to explore.Such an enquiry seems all the more timely given that the concept of the state has made recent breakthroughs in English-speaking political science as a valuable object of study. The state has become central to that empirical cum theoretical field of politics concerned with the issue of the 'autonomy' of state institutions vis-à-vis society at large. Stimulated by complex social and political developments such as the crisis of the welfare state, the changing nature of power relations in capitalist societies, and the emergence of 'civil society' in post-communist countries, several commentators have sought to 'bring the state back in' (Skocpol, Evans, Rueschemeyer, 1985;Caporaso, 1989;Keane, 1988). 'Theories of the state' has now become a short-hand title for text-books assessing the theoretical and empirical usefulness of, notably, neo-Marxist, pluralist, corporatist and realist approaches to the state (In the process, however, the concept of the state has lost both the normative and the historical density that Skinner's study on the origins of modern political

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