"Studying the state" in State in Society: Studying How States and Societies Transform and Constitute One Another, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001

Abstract

Over the course of the twentieth century, comparative political scientists’ core questions have changed very little. From Weber and Gramsci to Almond, Verba and Skocpol, their concerns have centred on why people obey and on what sorts of structures and cultures facilitates obedience and conformist behaviour. The elements that political scientists have singled out for investigation as the key to understanding obedience and conformity have included the usual suspects: parliaments, Bureaucracies, governmental leadership, courts and law, and police and military. These form the constituent part and parameters of that complex and somewhat elusive structure called the modern state —the mountain that all political scientists sooner or later must climb.