Rights statement: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article:Jessop, B. (2014), Towards a political ontology of state power. The British Journal of Sociology, 65: 481-486. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12087 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12087 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Accepted author manuscript, 295 KB, PDF document
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Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
| <mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 09/2014 |
|---|---|
| <mark>Journal</mark> | British Journal of Sociology |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Volume | 65 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Pages (from-to) | 481-486 |
| Publication Status | Published |
| <mark>Original language</mark> | English |
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.