Dissecting the State: Towards a Relational Conceptualization of States and State Failure

This article departs from a critique of objectivist understandings of the state as a relatively coherent administrative and coercive apparatus. It argues that objectivist understandings of the state may prevent our ability of seeing politics as it is. On the basis of the fact that institutions only exist insofar as they are systematically activated in social relations, the article provides conceptual tools that seek to capture the context‐specific, relational characteristics of the state. The theoretical arguments are illustrated by examples from both developed and developing countries. In thinking beyond categorical and objectivist understandings of statehood encapsulated in concepts like state capacity and state failure, the article distinguishes kinds and degrees of state failures.