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SFB 597:  Transformations of the State

Subject Area Social and Behavioural Sciences
Term from 2003 to 2014
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5485778
 
The state is one of those institutions in modern industrial societies of lasting effect for societal development. Developments since the latter part of the 20th century point to a far-reaching transformation of the modern nation state in the OECD world. Socially and politically this transformation may be of lasting significance. Nevertheless, attempts to analyse this process, its causes and effects are few. We will examine whether the modern state is subject to a trend of change in the core countries of the OECD world in the second half of the last century. Where do the pressures for change come from? Do these processes of change have a transformative effect?
We will confront the changing nature of the state systematically by looking at the transformation of four dimensions of the modern nation state. Each dimension is institutionally reflected in the history of the modern territorial state and each dimension also is confronted differently with new challenges in the global age:
The "Rechtsstaat" (constitutional state), institutionalised by the "rule of law", may be complemented and partially replaced on a level beyond the nation state in transnational and international politics where nowadays most relevant parameters are set; the "democratic nation state", institutionalised in parliamentary democracies, may become an empty shell as substantial powers move to a transnational level if democracy itself cannot be transnationalised as well; the "welfare state", institutionalised as state-run social security systems, may crumble as it is sandwiched between privatisation and internationalisation; and the "territorial state", institutionalised through the monopoly of legitimate force and the monopoly of resource extraction (mainly taxes), may be faced with a spiralling erosion of its resources, its classical coercive and taxing powers.
We will analyse whether a transformation of the modern state can be observed in a spatial perspective on a national level since the 1970s. We will also determine whether an organisational transformation of the state breaking through the fixed national welfare state patterns takes place in the relation of state and society.
The research outlined until now provides a basis for clarifying if and how the modern nation state is reconfigured in the dimensions considered, whether a post-national constellation is to be expected and if so in which form. Later we will examine the causes and effects of these transformation processes.
DFG Programme Collaborative Research Centres

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Applicant Institution Universität Bremen
Spokesperson Professor Dr. Stephan Leibfried (†)
 
 

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