Hegel's House, or ‘People are states too’

Are states people too? Yes , they are. In this I agree with Alexander Wendt's contention that the state is an ‘emergent phenomenon which cannot be reduced to individuals’, although I disagree with the methodology (scientific realist abduction) that he uses to make his argument and the consequent implication that the state is a ‘real’ (as opposed, presumably, to a ‘fictitious’) thing. Indeed, I would rather invert the claim that states are people too, and claim that people are states too , inasmuch as both are social actors – entities in the name of which actions are performed – exercising agency in delimited contexts. Instead of trying to ascertain what makes something a ‘person’, we should focus on processes of ‘personation’ in world politics, in order to enhance our understanding of how social actors in general are produced and sustained in the first place. Doing so allows for a much broader catalogue of actors in world politics, and affords the possibility of studying social action in a more consistently constructionist manner.