Understanding States: Making Law, Making Order?

This chapter entails an extended and multifaceted focus on the nature and role of the state. It emphasizes how states take different forms and do not always act or operate in the same way – thus ‘the state’ is a contested entity. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, it is also a part of everyday life and discourse which is assumed and upon which there is often little reflection. This chapter investigates competing definitions of, and different theoretical perspectives on the state – notably pluralist, elite and Marxist theories of the state. It consistently explores how states seek to make social order, not least through law, using concrete examples of the variety of ways in which this task is (or is not) accomplished. It investigates state rule, in relation to borders, violence and hegemony – the latter always involving consent and resistance.