Jessop, Bob (2014) Towards a political ontology of state power : A comment on Colin Hay's article. British Journal of Sociology, 65 (3). pp. 481-486. ISSN 0007-1315
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Abstract
This article offers some critical realist, strategic-relational comments on Colin Hay's proposal to treat the state as an 'as-if-real' concept. The critique first develops an alternative account of ontology, which is more suited to analyses of the state and state power; it then distinguishes the 'intransitive' properties of the real world as an object of investigation from the 'transitive' features of its scientific investigation and thereby provides a clearer understanding of what is at stake in 'as-if-realism'; and it ends with the suggestion that a concern with the modalities of state power rather than with the state per se offers a more fruitful approach to the genuine issues raised in Hay's article and in his earlier strategic-relational contributions to political analysis.