• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: The State as a Conceptual Variable
  • Contributor: Nettl, J. P.
  • Published: Project MUSE, 1968
  • Published in: World Politics, 20 (1968) 4, Seite 559-592
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.2307/2009684
  • ISSN: 0043-8871; 1086-3338
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: The concept of state is not much in vogue in the social sciences right now. Yet it retains a skeletal, ghostly existence largely because, for all the changes in emphasis and interest of research, the thing exists and no amount of conceptual restructuring can dissolve it. The present article develops a conceptual approach in which no violence is done to historical or empirical fact, but which offers a means of integrating the concept of state into the current primacy of social science concerns and analytical methods. It is hoped that this approach not only will provide a convenient conceptualization, but will contribute to attacking a substantive problem of some consequence. Since the relevant area is potentially huge, no more than a brushstroke configuration can be attempted.