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The Polycentric Republic presents a compelling and innovative critique of modern social contract theory. It reveals how the social contract theory systematically neglects the interests and prerogatives of non-State associations and legitimates an imposing sovereign State that jeopardizes the freedom and integrity of communities and associations under its rule.Drawing on neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, institutional theory, and political history, the author invites us to reimagine civil order in a way that is more friendly to the diverse interests and prerogatives of non-State communities and organizations, from churches, schools, and universities to farming co-ops, businesses, villages, and towns. Building on MacIntyre's diagnosis of the moral and institutional failures of the modern State, this book offers a historically informed and institutionally rigorous critique of the pathologies of sovereign power. In addition, it proposes a novel reinterpretation of federalism as a complex, emergent order created through bottom-up, inter-group cooperation constrained by the rule of law but consistent with a wide variety of independent communities and ways of life.The Polycentric Republic is essential reading for anyone interested in rethinking State-centric approaches to governance and civil order and exploring the merits of non-Statist, pluralist approaches, be they citizens, policymakers, or students of political science, political philosophy, law, or political economy.

A political history exploring the concept of demos in the French government during the period of 1800 to 1850. In his previous book, Demos Assembled, historian Stephen W. Sawyer offered a transatlantic account of the birth and transformation of the modern democratic state. In Demos Rising, he presents readers of political history with a prequel whose ambitious claim is that a genuine demos became possible in France only with the development of government regulation and administration. Focusing on democracy as a form of administration rather than as a form of sovereignty allows Sawyer to explore urban planning, work and private enterprise, health administration, and much more as cornerstones of a self-governing society of equals. Examining the period between 1800 and 1850, Sawyer studies a set of thinkers who debated at length over the material problems of everyday life, sparking calls for political action and social reform in the face of conflict wreaked by deforestation, urbanization, health crises, labor relations, industrial capitalism, religious tensions, and imperial expansion. The solutions to these problems, Sawyer argues, were sought—and sometimes found—not through elections, as one might assume, but rather through the “care for all” promised by modern administrative power, regulatory intervention, and social welfare programs. By studying this profound transformation in governance, the book wagers, we can better understand the origin and meaning of democracy—even when events in our own time have thrown the concept into doubt.

This volume explores the determinants of state power, the strategic options of rising powers, the drivers of conflict in dynamic international systems, and American grand strategy past and present to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the current era of great power competition.Leveraging insights from international relations, history, economics, and political demography, it offers rich perspectives on the competition among newly rising powers and long-dominant leaders in the international system. This book presents novel theories and innovative empirical investigations into the economic and demographic challenges confronting rising powers, along with new inquiries into these countries'capacity to mobilize both their citizens and their militaries. While China's grand strategy has attracted significant attention in recent years, these authors look beyond U.S.–PRC relations by considering the war proneness and strategic repertoires of rising regional powers, including India and Russia. Yet, the possibility of great power war remains a justifiable concern. This book examines the so-called Thucydides's Trap by exploring both its explanatory power in the conflict that inspired its name, the Peloponnesian War, and the possible mechanisms for averting war between the two most powerful countries in the current era. Finally, several challenges confronting the United States are discussed, including climate change, competition over the interpretation of the international Women, Peace, and Security agenda, and the durability of America's commitment to upholding the liberal international order. The Sources of Great Power Competition brings together many of the most influential scholars to engage in lively debates about the current and future international system. It will be of interest to foreign policy practitioners and scholars of grand strategy, the causes of war, alliance politics, norms and narratives in foreign policy, power transitions, and international hierarchy.

Global governance is tightening and foreshadows that world state formation will become a live political issue in this century. Some observers treat it as inevitable amid the urgency of global issues. They foresee a technocratic scaling up of the model of state authority that has prevailed at the national level for over two hundred years. Many critics and members of the public around the world look askance at that prospect. They rightly fear a moral vacuum of authority disconnected from the world's traditions, and a concentration of power that would be damaging to liberty or even dystopian in its upshot. Still, they often merely aim to stand athwart the scaling up of political institutions, rather than actively trying to shape an alternative that can seize the global horizon.The World's Constitution: Spheres of Liberty in the Future Global Order offers a radically different vision of future world order that could work in a global space while shifting the balance of power from state back to society. It draws on older resources in political thought, both Western and non-Western, to upend mainstream notions of statehood and sovereignty that have been taken for granted for too long in the modern era. It offers an original ‘sphere pluralist'framework that can reconcile liberty, tradition, and cosmopolitanism. As a book rooted in the past but mindful of future constitutional and policy challenges, it bridges ideas and real-world implications, with insights that cut across a wide range of topics from migration and social welfare to personal law systems and channels of representation. It opens an exciting debate about global constitutional futures that is likely to become more salient over the next couple of generations.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Caribbean has a global reputation for extending unparalleled hospitality to foreign guests. Yet local citizens express feeling alienated from the Caribbean nations they call home. Here, Natalie Lauren Belisle probes the relationship between these incompatible narratives of Caribbean life. Departing from tourist-centered critiques of the Caribbean's visitor economy, Belisle instead gives primacy to the political life of the Caribbean citizen-subject within a broader hospitality regime. Reading literary, cinematic, and digital texts that traverse the Spanish, Anglophone, and Francophone Caribbean, Belisle interprets citizens'estrangement through misdirected political deliberation and demonstrates that inhospitality is institutionalized through the aesthetic, reproducing itself in the laws that condition belonging and membership in the nation-state. Ultimately, Caribbean Inhospitality recasts the decay of nation/state sovereignty in the postcolonial Caribbean within the contours of neoliberalism, international relations, and cosmopolitanism.

Although a great deal is known about the recognition of states, less is known about the practice of derecognition of states, namely why and how states withdraw the recognition of other contested and partially recognized states. The Derecognition of States offers a global and comparative outlook of this unexplored diplomatic practice. Using original empirical research, it addresses the complex processes, justifications, and consequences of state derecognition. In particular, it provides unique insights into five aspirant states facing withdrawal of recognition: Taiwan, Western Sahara, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo. Gëzim Visoka argues that state derecognition is a highly controversial and unstable practice that has less to do with the unfulfillment of the conditions of statehood by the claimant than with the advancement of the self-interest of the former base state and derecognizing state. The derecognition of states is not a rule; rather, it is an exception in international diplomacy, driven by political expediency and is incompatible with original rationales for granting recognition. Yet, the derecognition of states is far more important than previously recognized in shaping the reversal dynamics of secession and state creation and in influencing regional peace, geopolitical rivalries, and the international order. By analyzing the withdrawal of recognition, the book offers a window into the reversal politics of unbecoming a sovereign state and how the arbitrary beginning and the end of diplomatic relations between states take place.

Contemporary research on the genealogy of human rights and the foundations of international law has brought renewed interest to the study of natural law in the early-modern period. German-born Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694) is one of the eminent thinkers of this tradition, shaping the period's natural jurisprudence. This unique collection of essays edited by historian of political thought Peter Schröder fills in a gap in Pufendorf scholarship, exploring the significance of his contributions to political and legal thought on a broad scale. While many books studying Pufendorf's work are confined to one specific academic area, Pufendorf's International Political and Legal Thought is truly interdisciplinary, and the first book to substantially address the international aspect of Pufendorf's work. Ambitious and accessible, this collection is indispensable for scholars and students of intellectual history, political thought, international legal history, the Enlightenment, and political economy. With its focus on international law, Pufendorf's International Political and Legal Thought is a critical addition to the existing body of work on this renowned philosopher and jurist.

Alex Green argues that states arise under contemporary international law only when two abstract conditions are fulfilled. First, emerging states must constitute'genuine political communities': collectives within which particular kinds of ethically valuable behaviour are possible. Second, such communities must emerge in a manner consistent with the ethical importance of individual political action. This uniquely'Grotian'theory of state creation provides a clear legal framework comprising four factual'antecedents'and five procedural principles, rendering the law of statehood both coherent and normatively attractive.

Lenin's most important and controversial theoretical textLenin's booklet The State and Revolution struck the world of Marxist theory like a lightning bolt. Written in the months running up to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin turned the traditional socialist concept of the state on its head, arguing for the need to smash the organs of the bourgeois state to create a ‘semi-state'of soviets, or workers'councils, in which ordinary people would take on the functions of the state machine in a new and radically democratic manner.This new edition includes a substantial introduction by renowned theorist Antonio Negri, who argues for the continued relevance of these ideas.

This collection of essays describes and analyzes the ways in which government policymakers go about designing police forces and militaries. The author includes both wide-ranging comparative investigations of the dimensions of the state security phenomenon and specific case studies.Dr. Enloe uses the sociological concept of ethnicity to demon-strate how the armed forces in sev-eral nations have capitalized on racial and ethnic diversity to foster their own goals and those of the government and power elites. She examines this idea by focusing on the ethnic factors involved in the evolution of the South African military, the military-ethnic con-nection in Malaysia, and the role of the armed forces in the conflict in Ulster.The author illustrates convin-cingly that not only individual citizens desire security, but that nation-states themselves are en-gaged in the same pursuit. What often passes for or is justified in the name of citizen protection is in fact done to strengthen the state itself. Militaries are recruited in ethni-cally skewed ways, and increasing numbers of police forces through-out the world have military capacities not to enhance the secu-rity of private individuals, but to protect the status quo of the central government and the nation's'es-tablishment.'Dr. Enloe covers an assortment of countries within the framework of her central argument, which is practically as well as theoretically significant. Each chapter can be read on its own, and all deal with currently salient political condi-tions.

Why, and to what extent, are states more or less likely to comply with international law? No overarching state compels compliance, and the international institutional context is thin, yet states seem largely to comply. How do we explain this behaviour? Developed through interviews with eighty State Department senior officials from across five recent administrations, Philip Moremen provides a qualitatively and quantitatively rich study of the extent to which and under what conditions the United States and other countries comply with international law. US policymakers consider legal issues, national interest, and other factors together when making decisions-law is not always dispositive. Nevertheless, international law constrains states. In State Department policymaking there is a strong culture of respect for international law, and lawyers play a highly influential role. In this context, the book concludes by investigating the effect of the Trump Administration on the culture and processes of the State Department.

Lenin's booklet The State and Revolution struck the world of Marxist theory like a lightning bolt. Written in the months running up to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin turned the traditional socialist concept of the state on its head, arguing for the need to smash the organs of the bourgeois state to create a'semi-state'of soviets, or workers'councils, in which ordinary people would take on the functions of the state machine in a new and radically democratic manner. This new edition includes a substantial introduction by renowned theorist Antonio Negri, who argues for the continued relevance of these ideas.

In Constituent Power, Violence, and the State, Dimitri Vouros examines the question of political violence by placing the thought of Georges Sorel, Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt in conversation with contemporary theories of sovereignty and constituent power.Vouros argues that the violence sustaining the modern state inhibits institutional accountability and derails constituent power. The paradox of modern law—which is both the expression of the people's will but also alienated from them—sets the stage for political contestation. For Vouros, the multitude's potentiality is actualized through either organized or spontaneous acts of resistance against state force. Antagonism is therefore a key element of the political and must be included in any theory of political agonism. A strong notion of constituent power ensures the integrity of the public sphere and the expansion of citizens'political agency. Bringing all these ideas together is unique for this field of investigation.Accessible and engagingly written, Constituent Power, Violence, and the State is a must read for researchers in political theory and political philosophy. Critical legal studies scholars and social theorists will also profit from this book.

European Union in the Global Context explores the interplay between the state and state sovereignty, nationalism, European integration and globalisation. It provides essential foundations in these areas, while using stimulating arguments to prompt discussion and provoke interest in the relationships between these processes. It critically analyses the challenges faced by the EU from the contemporary political and economic dynamics of globalisation (IPE), including trading relationships set through the WTO and bilateral relations with emerging markets, especially the BRICS economies.Likewise, pressures from within, such as a resurgence of nationalism, localisation, anti-austerity politics, and Euroscepticism, are examined. While the Union is fundamentally challenged by pressures from above and below, and by its own internal dysfunction, it remains central to the effective management of the international political economy.European Union in the Global Context is a lively, focused and engaging text, incorporating anecdotes and contemporary arguments, and presenting different perspectives on European integration and globalisation. It will be of key interest to students of European Politics, European Studies, European Union Studies, and more broadly, global political economy, foreign and security policy and international relations.

Over the past fifteen years in Mexico, more than 450,000 people have been murdered and 110,000 more have been disappeared. In Sovereignty and Extortion, Claudio Lomnitz examines the Mexican state in relation to this extreme violence, uncovering a reality that challenges the familiar narratives of “a war on drugs” or a “failed state.” Tracing how neoliberal reforms, free trade agreements, and a burgeoning drug economy have shaped Mexico's sociopolitical landscape, Lomnitz shows that the current crisis does not represent a tear in the social fabric. Rather, it reveals a fundamental shift in the relationship between the state and the economy in which traditional systems of policing, governance, and the rule of law have eroded. Lomnitz finds that power is now concentrated in the presidency and enforced through militarization, which has left the state estranged from itself and incapable of administering justice or regaining control over violence. Through this critical examination, Lomnitz offers a new theory of the state, its forms of sovereignty, and its shifting relation to capital and militarization.

Thomas Fröhlich geht in seiner Studie davon aus, daß die von ihm beispielhaft ausgewählten Intellektuellen der Republikzeit Chinas über keinen Begriff des Politischen verfügten. Mit seiner umfassenden Interpretation ihrer Auffassungen zu Staat, Politik und Kultur kennzeichnet er die bisherigen Zuordnungen chinesischer Denker zu Neo-Traditionalismus, Sino-Liberalismus oder Sino-Marxismus als äußerst fragwürdig und bietet damit einen völlig neuen Zugang zu deren Werk. Unveränderter Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 2000

‘Society Despite the State asks why the state endures.... A probing, panoramic analysis that also brilliantly models creative pathways into critical pedagogies and methodologies'Ruth Kinna, Professor of Political Theory, Loughborough University‘An accessible, expansive and beautifully written intervention in critical social theory. It will spur readers to reconsider the “silent statism” in prevailing ways of knowing our shared world'Alex Prichard, Associate Professor of International Political Theory, University of ExeterThe logic of the state has come to define social and spatial relations, embedding itself into our understandings of the world and our place in it. Anthony Ince and Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre challenge this logic as the central pivot around which knowledge and life orbit, by exposing its vulnerabilities, contradictions and, crucially, alternatives.Society Despite the State disrupts the dominance of state-centred ways of thinking by presenting a radical political geography approach inspired by anarchist thought and practice. The book draws on a broad range of voices that have affinities with Western anarchism but also exceed it.This book challenges radicals and scholars to confront and understand the state through a way of seeing and a set of intellectual tools that the authors call ‘post-statism'. In de-centring the state's logics and ways of operating, the authors incorporate a variety of threads to identify alternative ways to understand and challenge statism's effects on our political imaginations.Anthony Ince is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University. Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University.

For the past several centuries of Anglo-American legal thought, law has been paradigmatically understood as the product of the state. The state, operating through the legal and political institutions of its government, imposes law on the people who are its subjects. Over the same centuries, however, the development of international law and constitutional law has made the state itself subject to law. These systems of law for states necessarily work differently. For one thing, law for states must do without a super-state or government standing above the state, capable of creating and enforcing law. For another, the state is a unique kind of legal subject, calling for different behavioral models, moral standards, and regulatory techniques than those developed for ordinary people. It is precisely these differences that have long marked international law as a curious, and in many eyes dubious, form of law. Constitutional law, in contrast, has seldom been subject to the same doubts, or fully understood as different in kind from legal systems run by and through the state. As a result, constitutionalists have lagged their internationalist counterparts in coming to grips with the common project of making the state the subject rather than the source of law. By assimilating constitutional and international law as parallel projects of imposing law upon the state, and by highlighting the peculiarities of the state as a subject of law, this book aspires to close that gap, and to bring focus to Law for Leviathan as a distinctive legal form.

The evolution of the state from earlier forms of political organization is associated with revolutionary changes in the structure of inequality. These magnify distinctions in rank and power that outweigh anything previously known in so-called primitive societies. This volume explains how and why people came to accept and even identify themselves with this new form of authority. The introduction provides a new theory of legitimacy by synthesizing and uniting earlier theories from psychological, cultural-materialist, rational choice, and Marxist approaches. The case studies which follow present a wide range of materials on cultures in both Western and non-Western settings, and across a number of different historical periods. Included are examples from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the New World. Older states such as Ur, Inca, and medieval France are examined along with more contemporary states including Indonesia, Tanzania, and the revolutionary beginnings of the United States.Using a variety of approaches the contributors show in each instance how the state obtained and used its power, then attempted to have its power accepted as the natural order under the protection of supra-naturally ordained authority. No matter how tyrannical or benign, the cases show that state power must be justified by faith and experience that demonstrates its value to the participants. Through such analysis, the book demonstrates that states must be capable of enforcing their rule, but that they cannot deceive populations into accepting state domination. Indeed, the book suggests that social evolution moves toward less coercive rule and increased democratization. Ronald Cohen is a political anthropologist who has taught at the Universities of Toronto, McGill, Northwestern, and Ahmadu Bello, and is on the faculty of the University of Florida. He has carried out field research in Africa, the Arctic and Washington. His major works include The Kanuri of Borno, Dominance and Defiance, Origins of the State, and a book in preparation on food policy and agricultural transformation in Africa.Judith D. Toland is a lecturer at University College, Northwestern University, and the College of Arts and Sciences, Loyola University of Chicago. She is the director of her own corporate and non-profit consulting firm. She has done fieldwork in Ayacucho, Peru and has written widely on the Inca State.

Polarizing images of authoritarian, socialist or culturalist otherness compromise analyses of the Chinese state. Still, such images produce effects beyond academia when they inform performances of the boundaries between state and non-state. This book shows how performative boundary work leads to contrasting judgements that decide about support and access to resources. In an ecological village in Sichuan, citizen participation in food networks and bureaucracy signaled Western liberalism, Maoism or traditional rural culture for different audiences. Attention to the multiplicity of performed state boundaries helps China studies and political anthropology to understand such diverging classifications – and how they sometimes co-exist without causing tensions.

Modern liberal democracy and authoritarian collectivism have known diverse political regimes; autocratic, oligarchic or democratic, they each consist of a mixed, partly oligarchic regime in which plebeian politics are subordinated. With authoritarian collectivism's defeat, a return to modernity has produced one more hybrid configuration.An in-depth investigation of political modernity and how it is differentiated from other forms of society, this book researches its origins and trajectory as a specific dimension of modern civilisation – articulating a renewed critical theory through an analysis of rights and law, politics, state and autonomy, social reproduction, crisis and political change.Examining these diverse aspects, Political Modernity and Social Theory proposes an encompassing and far-reaching approach spanning past and present – stressing radical plebeian democracy and maintaining a strong opening to the future and to possible alternatives to modernity.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

A Theory of De Facto States offers a new perspective on the phenomenon of de facto states — political communities that manifest forms of statehood in international politics but lack international legal recognition — zooming in on two prominent examples, Somaliland and Kosovo.Employing a thorough understanding of classical realist theories of international relations, this book provides a fresh critique of the common ways in which existing research tends to identify the ostensible state features of these communities. In contrast to the prevalent portrayals of such features in terms of international legal, discursive, and/or everyday logics, this book argues that de facto states can be most fundamentally characterised as exceptional polities in international relations.Showcasing how the statehood and sovereignty of de facto states is based in international political crises, this book concludes that these entities function as recurring disruptions of any supposed international political order. A Theory of De Facto States will therefore be of interest to researchers of secession, de facto statehood, and International Relations theory alike.

Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) is one of the most significant German Jewish philosophers of the twentieth century. Published in German in 1920 and now finally available in English for the first time, Hegel and the State is a major contribution to the understanding of Hegel's political and social thought and a profound analysis of the intellectual currents that shaped the German state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Through careful readings of Hegel's early handwritten manuscripts, Rosenzweig shows that Hegel was wrestling with the problem of how to reconcile the subjectivity and freedom of the individual within a community and ultimately the political state. According to Rosenzweig, the route out of this conundrum chosen by Hegel shaped his mature political philosophy, where he saw the relationship between the individual and the state as reciprocal. At a deeper level, the significance of Hegel and the State lies in the way that Rosenzweig explains the failure of Hegel's quasi-communitarian view of the state to emerge, due to the authoritarian direction of the newly unified German state under Bismarck. Anticipating the political and moral disaster that was to follow, Rosenzweig concludes by questioning the very viability of any theory of the state that relies on the pillars of bureaucratic militarism and a government-supported capitalist business culture.With the inclusion of a Foreword by Myriam Bienenstock and a substantial Afterword by Axel Honneth, Hegel and the State is a ground-breaking work of early twentieth-century philosophical and political thought. It is essential reading for students of Hegel, German Idealism, Jewish philosophy, and the origins of critical theory. It will also be of interest to those in related subjects such as the history of sociology, and German and intellectual history.

Kenneth Waltz (1924–2013) is perhaps the most enduringly influential figure in international relations theory of the second half of the twentieth century. He is considered the father of the structural-realist or neorealist school, and his views on core questions, such as the causes of war and the structure of the international system, are foundational to the field today and likely will remain so for decades to come. Waltz's writings on both theoretical and policy-related topics, from the balance of power to the spread of nuclear weapons, continue to fuel debate.This book is a groundbreaking intellectual biography of Kenneth Waltz, shedding new light on the development and significance of his key contributions. Paul R. Viotti draws on extensive, candid interviews with Waltz as well as Waltz's personal files and archival research to provide a nuanced account of the great scholar's life and thought. He traces the intellectual sources and personal experiences that shaped Waltz's work, including an intense Lutheran upbringing; service in World War II and the Korean War; and the academic environments of Oberlin College, Columbia University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Viotti examines the key influences on Waltz's major works, Man, the State, and War and Theory of International Politics, and analyzes their distinctive insights. Engaging with the views of Waltz's critics and featuring reminiscences from his colleagues, this book is a compelling portrait of an intellectual titan.

Devised to legitimize the Republic of China's claim over Inner Asia, the Sinocentric paradigm stems from the Open Door Policy and Chinese nationalism. Advanced against the conquest theory, and rationalized as the pathfinding ecological theory, it is an evolutionary materialist scheme that became the vision of history. Exposing the initial agenda of this paradigm and revealing its fundamental contradictions, The Nomadic Leviathan debunks it as a myth. Resurrecting the conquest theory, and reinforcing it with the idea of extrahuman transportation, this book places pastoralism at the origin of the state and civilization, and the Eurasian steppe at the center of human history; the political emerges as the primary and fundamental order defining the social and economic.

The last twenty years have witnessed a proliferation of radical social and political movements around the world, in wave after wave of struggles against intersecting forms of exploitation, domination, and subalternization. From the International Women's Strike and Occupy, to #BlackLivesMatter and direct action against the climate emergency, a series of common questions have continually re-emerged as immediate and practical challenges. How should radical political movements relate to the state? What makes emancipatory politics fundamentally different from both technocratic and populist models of'politics as usual'? Which forms of organization are most likely to deepen and extend the dynamics that led to the emergence of these movements in the first place? To investigate the goal, nature, method, and organizational forms of radical political engagement against the neoliberal consensus, Peter D. Thomas draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist Party leader and political theorist best known for his ideas about hegemony. Hegemony is a concept that, most commonly understood, describes either the way in which a political system functions from the top down, through a culture of passive consent, or a process of neutralizing cultural and political differences to form unity in a nation state. Interestingly, both the left and right have seized on this idea, but, of course, to different political ends. In Radical Politics, Thomas argues that both of these interpretations are misapprehensions of the radical potential of Gramsci's ideas. Offering a new reading of Gramsci, Thomas contends that hegemony is a process of differentiation in which political culture is always changing, and always with the goal of moving toward expanded freedom. Over the course of the book, Thomas looks at the way in which various theorists have approached the dilemma of how to engage productively in radical politics and explains why hegemony is a method of doing politics rather than an end goal. A distinctive and forceful contribution to ongoing debates about the nature and orientation of contemporary emancipatory movements, Radical Politics provides a counterintuitive interpretation of Gramsci's famous and newly relevant work.

Desde una óptica novedosa en la que se dan cita clásicos y contemporáneos de la teoría política y la teoría organizacional, Ignacio L. Moheno nos ofrece una ruta para entender al Estado moderno. Para ello, propone tres modelos (o tipos ideales): eficiencia, eficacia y legitimidad. El primero encuentra su inspiración en La República de Platón, donde Sócrates hace de la filosofía y el conocimiento experto la clave del funcionamiento del Estado. En su concepción, la justicia consiste en la dedicación de cada quien a aquello para lo cual está dotado. Moheno ve en ello la esencia de la burocracia: un arreglo jerárquico en el que, en aras del bien colectivo, hombres y mujeres altamente capacitados ejercen, con apego estricto a las normas, sus funciones. He ahí la eficiencia, otra forma de comprender a la autoridad. Por su parte, el modelo de eficacia extrae de El príncipe de Maquiavelo su contenido esencial. El ámbito de acción del príncipe es la política, un espacio estrecho reservado a unos cuantos dispuestos a sacrificar su propia suerte, incluso su vida, por el bien de la república, por la preservación del Estado. No importa el juicio que podamos hacer del príncipe tras sus acciones, porque, en asuntos de Estado, en los que los costos no importan si se consigue el fin último, el único juicio válido es el de la Historia. En este sentido, eficacia y política se homologan. La Política de Aristóteles sirve de base al modelo de legitimidad. El modelo es una descripción de la democracia, un régimen en el que la pluralidad ejercida por ciudadanos racionales y encabezada por politicos prudentes, es la fuente de legitimación de la política y del Estado mismo. Moheno nos permite entender cada modelo en sí mismo. En eso consiste su propuesta teórica. Pero sabemos que los tres (autoridad o eficiencia, política o eficacia, democracia o legitimidad) están en interacción constante, como no podría ser de otra manera. En ello reside la complejidad del fenómeno que llamamos Estado. Los podemos imaginar, por lo tanto, en un equilibrio inestable, pero también bajo el predominio de uno de ellos y de ahí inferir si estamos ante un sistema autoritario, uno democrático, otro, en la tradición weberiana si bien prácticamente imposible, carismático, y aun otros a medio camino entre los modelos. La lectora, el lector, podrá sacar sus conclusiones. Como quiera que fuere, Autoridad, política y democracia. Una teoría organizacional del Estado, nos da luces para comprender el fenómeno estatal desde sus componentes.