Transformations of the State?

"The influence of the state on human lives is more comprehensive and sustained than that of any other organizational construct. It steers the economy, fights crime, provides education, sustains democracy, enters wars, guarantees social welfare, collects taxes, and deploys some forty percent of the gross national product. Transformations of the State? defines the multi-faceted modern state in four intersecting dimensions: resources, or control of the use of force and revenues; law, or jurisdiction and the courts; legitimacy, or the acceptance of political rule by the populace; and welfare, or the facilitation of economic growth and social equality. The twentieth-century nation-state blended those dimensions and turned the post-WWII era into the golden age of the state. What has become of that state and its functions and what is its future? Political scientists, lawyers, economists and sociologists have examined a sample of OECD nation-states in the search for answers to these questions."

Part I. A New Perspective on the State: 1. Reconfiguring the national constellation Michael Zürn and Stephan Leibfried; Part II. The Modern Territorial State: Limits to Internationalization of the State's Resources: 2. The monopoly of legitimate force: denationalization, or business as usual? Markus Jachtenfuchs; 3. Globalization and the transformation of the tax state Philipp Genschel; Part III. The Rule of Law: Internationalization and Privatization: 4. Is there an emerging international rule of law? Bernhard Zangl; 5. Free trade: the erosion of national, and the birth of transnational governance Christian Joerges and Christine Godt; Part IV. The Democratic Nation State: Erosion, or Transformation, of Legitimacy: 6. Is there a legitimation crisis of the nation state? Achim Hurrelmann, Zuzana Krell-Laluhová, Roland Lhotta, Frank Nullmeier and Steffen Schneider; 7. National and transnational public spheres: the case of the EU Bernhard Peters, Stefanie Sifft, Andreas Wimmel, Michael Brüggemann and Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw; Part V. The Intervention State: The Shifting Welfare Component: 8. Welfare state transformation in small open economies Herbert Obinger, Stephan Leibfried, Claudia Bogedan, Edith Gindulis, Julia Moser and Peter Starke; 9. The changing role of the state in healthcare systems Heinz Rothgang, Mirella Cacace, Simone Grimmeisen and Claus Wendt; Part VI. The TranState Research Centre; Index.

The influence of the state on human lives is more comprehensive and sustained than that of any other organizational construct. Here political scientists, lawyers, economists and sociologists examine a sample of OECD nation-states to answer questions about the changing nature and function of the nation-state and its future.