Politics (1999) 19(2) pp.

109±115

The Strategic-Relational
View of the State
Duncan Kelly

This paper seeks to highlight the main ele- Definitions ± What is the
ments of the `strategic-relational' approach to
(Marxist) state theory, developed particularly
State?
by Bob Jessop. The legacy of Nicos Poulantzas
Jessop locates his work within a broad Marx-
in particular is singled out for its importance
ist tradition. To what extent he accepts the
in laying the foundations for such an
normative implications of such a position is
approach. This is followed by a discussion of
discussed more below, but the terminology
Jessop and his development of many ideas
used, and the method of analysis provided,
bequeathed by Poulantzas, culminating in
evidently owes much to Marx (Jessop, 1990,
various moves toward a strategic-relational
pp. 196±8€.). However, Marxist theorists have
analysis. These moves are then critically
never agreed on a common de®nition or
assessed, with some wider thoughts on the
theory of the capitalist state. Famously, many
approach o€ered in conclusion
positions can be located on one or other side
of the `instrumentalist-structuralist' divide; or,
to use Jessop's terms, class or capital theore-
Introduction tic approaches. Generalising somewhat, the
idea that the state either acts in the (long-
Few areas in the study of politics have proved
term) interests of the ruling class, or in the
so elusive as that of `the state'. Within the
interests of capital, still provides the basis for
Marxist tradition especially, multiple theore-
much Marxist state theory, and one can see
tical positions have been outlined, all legiti-
this in Jessop's reluctance to provide a `®xed'
mately claiming some authority from Marx or
de®nition of the state. He argues that once a
Engels themselves (cf., Jessop, 1990, pp. 24±
de®nition is provided, it must immediately be
48; Hay, 1998). In developing and criticising
quali®ed to take account of the historical and
these approaches Bob Jessop has, over the
contingent circumstances of a state's exis-
past twenty years, attempted to rid state
tence and power. His tentative `cluster' de®ni-
theory of residual `essentialist' explanation,
tion suggests that:
o€ering instead what has been termed a `stra-
tegic-relational' analysis. This represents per-
haps the most theoretically sophisticated the core of the state apparatus comprises a
discussion of the state currently available, and distinct ensemble of institutions and orga-
it is the purpose of this short paper to pro- nisations whose socially accepted function
vide a critical introduction to the central ele- is to de®ne and enforce collectively binding
ments of such an approach. decisions on the members of a society in

Duncan Kelly, University of Sheeld.

# Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 109
Strategic-Relational View . Kelly
the name of their general will (Jessop,
1990, p. 341).
Immediately following this, Jessop suggests
that such a near ideal-type model must be
constantly re-de®ned to take account of the
complexities of actual states. Thus, the means
by which legitimacy is assured are historically
speci®c; there is no strict separation between
state and society; coercion is not the only
sanction available to the state, and so on
(Jessop, 1990, p. 342). Therefore, states are
never ®xed; rather, contradictions and move-
ment are their very essence (cf., Abrams,
1988; Ho€mann, 1988; 1995). The resultant
assumption, that there cannot in fact be a
theory of the state, emerges as a direct result
of Jessop's starting point, which is his
engagement with Nicos Poulantzas' `elliptical
proposition' that the state is a `social relation'.
Background Gramsci and Poulantzas
Within the Marxist tradition, Poulantzas'
work easily constitutes Jessop's major engage-
ment, alongside that of Gramsci (Jessop,
1990, p. x). Inevitably, no claim to complete-
ness can be made of the following thematic
discussion, but some relevant elements can
be highlighted. The crucial point that both
highlight is the interdependence of state and
society. For Gramsci, the state, ultimately, is
`political society + civil society', or `hege-
mony armoured by coercion' (cf., Gramsci,
1977, pp. 243±246, 261±3€.; Anderson, 1977,
pp. 12±44). The concept of hegemony is uti-
lised to explain the continued reproduction
of capitalist social relations in terms of the
moral, political, cultural and ideological lea-
dership of the ruling class, maintained speci®-
cally in terms of a national-popular project
(Gramsci, 1971). This implies that the state
cannot be seen simply as an epiphenomenon
of an ultimately determining economic base;
rather, there is an autonomy of the political.
Adapting Gramsci's focus on hegemony,
Poulantzas argued in his early work Political
Power and Social Classes (1973) that the
main role of the state was `the maintenance
of the unity of the social formation based in
110
Politics (1999) 19(2) pp. 109±115
the last analysis on political class domination'
(Poulantzas, 1973, p. 54). Taking this as a
general starting point, he emphasised that a
theory of the capitalist state was possible if
one can accept such an a priori assumption.
As his position developed, increasingly in¯u-
enced by the work of Foucault on the micro-
physics of power, Poulantzas o€ered his most
explicit theorisation of the state as a `social
relation' in what was his ®nal major work,
State, Power, Socialism (1978). Distinguishing
between any unity the state may have qua
institutional ensemble, and its more general
role as a factor of cohesion, Poulantzas
argued that state power is both relational and
selective. It is relational as state structures and
policies, for example, are historically con-
tingent episodes in a dynamic process of evo-
lution. It is selective in terms of favouring the
dominant class/class fraction of the particular
moment. Thus, class struggle traverses the
very `institutional materiality' of the state; its
mediation develops into policy, or `line[s] of
force'. The state, therefore, becomes a strate-
gic terrain; it is `the material condensation of
a relationship of forces, [and] we must grasp
it as a strategic ®eld and process of intersect-
ing power networks' (Poulantzas, 1978, p.
136€.; cf., Jessop, 1985, pp. 115±131; 1990,
pp. 220±248). Although there are many nuan-
ces in Poulantzas' re¯ections, these are the
main insights that Jessop goes on to develop.
Jessop's critique
Unhappy with Poulantzas' ultimate equation
of class power and state power, Jessop has
attempted to reconcile what he sees as the
problems of Poulantzas' account in the fol-
lowing ways.
(i) Critics quickly pointed out that Pou-
lantzas failed to specify any mechanisms
by which the state would, in the end, act
in the interests of the dominant class or
class fraction (Giddens, 1981). Jessop
(1985, pp. 135±6) goes further, arguing
# Political Studies Association 1999
Politics (1999) 19(2) pp. 109±115
that he failed to resolve a central para-
dox in his discussion of state power. At
the macro level, state power bene®ts the
dominant power bloc. At the micro level,
however, all sorts of struggles and strate-
gies, besides class interests, in¯uence
state policies in various ways.
Therefore, Jessop suggests that we can
make no macro, or general claim on the
nature of state power but he agrees that
the state is a social relation. Accepting
that many other political strategies,
besides economic or class interests,
determine state policy, he makes the
more ¯exible pronouncement that the
state will be more responsive to parti-
cular strategies over others. What this
fairly obvious point means, essentially, is
that the theoretical or political primacy
of either class or capital in any account
is bypassed (Jessop, 1990, pp. 85±94€.).
Nevertheless, the state remains both
structurally and strategically selective; it
has a `structurally mediated bias which
means that particular forms of state pri-
vilege some strategies over others
(Jessop, cited in Hay, 1994, pp. 350±1).
(ii) Given its anchoring in a dense network
of social relations, does the state have a
(relative) autonomy, and if so, how can
that be theorised? For Jessop, this ques-
tion is something of a chimera. He sug-
gests that no element in what we may,
for the sake of simplicity, call the social
world, can count as in any way being
completely or even relatively determining
in some a priori or given sense. This
ascription of invalidity to any theoretical
`prime-mover', so to speak, is the result
of Jessop's critical engagement with
Marxist state theory. The exercise of
state power becomes the di€erentia spe-
ci®ca, which renders explicable state
autonomy. Thus:
state power is capitalist to the extent
that it creates, maintains or restores
the conditions necessary for capital
# Political Studies Association 1999
Strategic-Relational View . Kelly
accumulation in a given situation. It is
non-capitalist to the extent that these
conditions are not realised. This view
radically displaces our theoretical
focus from the search for guarantees
that the state apparatus and its func-
tions are necessarily capitalist in all
aspects to a concern with the many
and varied contingent e€ects of state
power on accumulation in speci®c
conjunctures (Jessop, 1990, p. 354).
One can think of further applications;
state power favours the ruling class to
the extent that it maintains the condi-
tions necessary for their continued dom-
inance, and so on. By abandoning the
`search for guarantees', theory should
become more ¯exible and historically
realistic.
(iii) Any unity that the state may have, either
institutionally or in terms of the exercise
of power, depends upon the relationship
in particular between what Jessop terms
accumulation strategies, state forms and
hegemonic projects (Jessop, 1990, pp.
196±220). This has been thoroughly
misunderstood by such scholars as
Hobson (1997, p. 242€.) who suggest
that Jessop, in asserting that the state,
qua institutional ensemble, has no
power, denies any autonomy to the state
and suggests that it is a cipher for domi-
nant economic interests. As should be
clear, however, Jessop argues that on the
one hand the state is a social relation,
hence its power comes from the parti-
cular political structures and strategies
that both shape, and which in turn are
shaped by the state. Correlatively, state
power is not amenable to theorisation in
the manner that Hobson would wish;
that is, the state is an, a priori, autono-
mous actor (cf., Hobson, 1997; Mann,
1985). Rather, in terms of the capitalist
type of state, policy is best understood
as being moulded around particular
hegemonic projects, as expressed mainly
111
Strategic-Relational View . Kelly
by dominant political parties, whose
relationship to the dominant regime of
accumulation is crucial. Therefore, the
nature of the state form, its particular
structural and strategic selectivity, pro-
blematises its functions. Again, there are
no theoretical guarantees. Power and
policy are executed through various,
contingent mechanisms that form part of
the dialectic of structure and strategy.
The dominant example utilised by
Jessop in discussing this approach is the
case of the West-European `Keynesian
Welfare State[s]', whose origins in the
post-war period centred around the
development of mass welfare provision,
underpinned by a new `Fordist' mode of
growth. The forms taken by particular
national states problematises their func-
tionality for those processes that make
up the ideal type model, such as full
employment, state intervention and so
on; hence the vastly di€ering nature of
the national states subsumed under the
general heading `Keynesian Welfare' type.
(iv) Such theoretical claims are premised on
a particular methodology. Indeed, Jessop
goes as far as to suggest that his work is,
in part, a re¯ection on the methodology
of theory construction (Jessop, 1982, pp.
213±220; 1990, pp. 10±12). The ideas
underpinning this `method of articula-
tion' are captured by the couplet `con-
tingent-necessity'. Such a counter
intuitive description rests upon a parti-
cular development of critical realist phi-
losophy of social science. At the level of
ontology, all events are caused in some
way; they are `necessary'. Accepting this,
Jessop's resultant epistemological claim
is that the causal mechanisms necessary
for an `event' to occur, come together in
a contingent, that is non-necessary way.
Hence, the justi®cation for Jessop's theo-
retical moves away from Poulantzas in
particular, ®nd their ultimate basis in
methodological considerations. An ade-
quate state theory would, for Jessop,
112
Politics (1999) 19(2) pp. 109±115
involve a `dual movement' between the
abstract claim of, say, the state as social
relation, and the complex empirical rea-
lity of the exercise of state power. There
are obviously close links to both Marx in
terms of `rising' from the abstract to the
concrete, and also to Weber, in the con-
struction of quasi-ideal type models
which are then tested historically. How-
ever, such a methodology means that
there is no `best way' of developing
theory. At the theoretical level, there is
indeterminacy; substantively, determi-
nacy. Therefore, Jessop attempts to
`borrow' from other disciplines in order
to develop his approach.
`External' influences
(i) The `systems theory' of Niklas Luhmann
o€ers one way of theorising the auton-
omy of the political. For Luhmann, as
the social system develops, ever increas-
ing amounts of specialisation and `func-
tional di€erentiation' occur (see
Luhmann, 1995). Thus, discrete sub-sys-
tems with their own areas of expertise
become increasingly important. He
adopts the biological metaphor of
autopoiesis to discuss the radical auton-
omy of such systems. For Luhmann, sub-
systems are principally concerned with
maintaining conditions favourable to
their continued reproduction. They will,
therefore, be unwilling to co-operate
with other sub-systems unless in their
own interest. Nevertheless, they have
certain in¯uence upon other, dependent
sub-systems. Such is the `sel®sh' nature
of autopoietic systems.
Jessop doesn't accept that such a total
degree of functional di€erentiation is a
true representation of reality, but argues
that theoretically, Luhmann's ideas o€er
a novel general theory of systemic auton-
omy (see Jessop, 1990, pp. 307±338). In
fact, Luhmann himself argues that in
# Political Studies Association 1999
Politics (1999) 19(2) pp. 109±115
developed societies, or systems, the
economy is the sub-system that has
achieved the greatest degree of func-
tional di€erentiation, and whose impact
is felt on the most other sub-systems.
The problem then becomes one of
empirically proving both the pre-
ponderance of the economy, and also of
assessing the autonomy of the state in
relation to it. These questions are dealt
with in Jessop's engagement with regula-
tion theory.
(ii) Examining regulation theory's focus on
the importance of various non-economic
elements that maintain conditions favour-
able to the continued reproduction of an
inherently crisis prone capitalist econ-
omy, Jessop's state theory is easily inser-
ted (see e.g., Jessop, 1997b). In
discussing the ways in which particular
regimes of accumulation, for example,
require various norms, institutional med-
iation etc. for their continuation, the state
obviously plays a central role. The main
point for Jessop is that the state should
be seen as an `object' of regulation in its
own right, as are particular `modes of
growth', for example. The state plays a
central role in methods of capitalist `soci-
etalization'; that is, `the complex social
processes in and through which speci®c
institutional orders and their broader
social preconditions are secured' (Jessop,
1990, pp. 5, 9). Again, there are no theo-
retical guarantees; instead, a focus on
particular `state e€ects'.
(iii) A third in¯uence has been Jessop's
engagement with discourse theory, parti-
cularly as applied in the study of Ernesto
Laclau and Chantal Mou€e, Hegemony
and Socialist Strategy (1985). Utilising
the idea of `the social' as an open-ended
arena, they discuss the methods through
which various hegemonic, or political
discourses are articulated to provide par-
ticular points of reference in terms of
strategy. It is the always relative nature of
the discourse that Jessop focuses on; it
# Political Studies Association 1999
Strategic-Relational View . Kelly
mirrors his discussion of the partial unity
of the state at any time, constituted by
the con¯uence of various political strate-
gies and, again, the way that form pro-
blematises function.
Criticisms
(i) Methodologically, to what extent is it
possible to theorise contingency as
Jessop supposes? One particularly imma-
nent problem seems to be; how does
empirical research actually alter theore-
tical concepts, as advocated in the dual
movement between abstract and con-
crete? It is not at all clear that the macro
claims made by Jessop concerning state
power, for example, can be veri®ed and
developed given that theoretical determi-
nants such as class are ruled out. When
undertaking substantive work, Jessop
proceeds in more Weberian fashion, set-
ting out at the beginning that the state
has de®nite functions the maintenance of
conditions favourable to capital accumu-
lation and the reproduction of labour
power for instance, and subsequently
examining the changing `forms and func-
tions' of the state in relation to these
ideal-typical initial suggestions (cf.,
Jessop, 1994, pp. 102±3; 1997a). The
contradiction between these proposi-
tions, and the theory already discussed,
namely that there cannot be a theory of
the state, should be clear.
(ii) Theoretically, the seemingly ¯exible ana-
lysis advocated concerning state power
hides a rather more rigid basis. By
arguing that state power is capitalist to
the extent that it maintains the condi-
tions favourable to capital accumulation,
one must implicitly sanction a strict
separation of the political and economic
spheres. If the state is accepted as being
a central arena in terms of shaping the
nature of accumulation at a given time,
then for state power to be non-capitalist
113
Strategic-Relational View . Kelly
in the sense Jessop describes, it would
surely have to sanction explicitly anti-
capitalist policies. That is, it would
represent a fundamental challenge to the
political order. Such an unlikely situation
arises from what we might term Jessop's
`theoretically anti-theoretical' approach.
The interdependence between state and
society, crucial given the state's anchor-
ing as a social relation, remains inade-
quately mediated. Given the obvious
existence of what is commonly called
capitalist society, for state policies to be
anti-capitalist, whilst still maintaining a
capitalist system, suggests a very limited
view of capitalism as a strictly economic
system. The implication, then, is that
either the state can be fully dissociated
from the economy, or that it is fully
functional for capital. Ironically, Jessop
appears to have inverted his own perti-
nent criticisms of Poulantzas back on to
himself. In abstract theory, no macro
level claim on the state's capitalist or
otherwise `nature' can be made, yet in
more substantive discussion de®nite the-
oretical propositions must be put for-
ward. This results in a confusion.
(iii) Politically, Jessop acknowledges his debt
to the Marxist tradition, and indeed still
utilises a Marxist critique of political
economy as a starting point for his ana-
lysis. The emancipatory political ideals of
this tradition, however, are conspicuous
by their absence in Jessop's work. This
is not to expect a detailed strategic blue-
print, rather to highlight the lack of a
normative basis to work that sets itself
up as being broadly Marxist. This is a
result of methodological considerations
obviously; borrowing from other tradi-
tions to highlight the autonomy of the
state, for example. But also at a more
`instinctual' level, Jessop's work seems to
lack any feeling that he is concerned
with the possibility of political, or sys-
temic transformation. Rather, these ideas
more easily theorise order.
114
Politics (1999) 19(2) pp. 109±115
(iv) The focus on `societalization' as the
mechanisms by which particular institu-
tional orders become routinised is also
problematic. Where is the role of
agency? For Jessop, agents have no `free
will'; actions are linked to structural
positions and capabilities (1990, p.
266€.). However, when structures and
systems are overturned, there is an
obvious (historical) role for agency. To
tie action so closely to structural posi-
tion limits the nature of individual
choice, but equally fails to discuss what
is perhaps the dominant structural lim-
itation placed upon agents, namely capi-
talist social relations. Again, this can be
traced to methodological considerations.
Theoretical indeterminacy and empirical
determinacy results in diculty applying
the theory.
Conclusions
Nonetheless, Jessop's state theory has illumi-
nated some of the major problems that arise
in an attempt to move beyond one-sided the-
oretical positions. His development is linked
to the perspicacious challenges to Marxist
state theory that have come from, in parti-
cular, neo-Weberian and feminist camps (cf.,
Mann, 1993; Parkin, 1979; Allen, 1990).
Equally however, and probably not least due
to the style of presentation, his work has
attracted numerous criticisms which seem to
miss the mark. To suggest, as does Marsh
(1994) for example, that Jessop's state theory
cannot explain why the state will normally
intervene in times of economic crises is to
confuse levels of analysis. What seems more
problematic, it has been argued here, is in
fact more immanent.
What is noticeable, however, is that there
has been a convergence in state theory, lar-
gely unacknowledged, between writers like
Jessop and Mann, as both move towards an
open-ended theoretical approach, designed to
take account of the contingent processes of
# Political Studies Association 1999
Politics (1999) 19(2) pp. 109±115
social and political change (see Mann, 1993,
pp. 44±92). This has certainly opened up
state theory from traditionally more reduc-
tionist positions; however, the manner in
which substantive work is carried out by
Jessop, outlining de®nite propositions about
the role of the state, contrasts markedly with
the more abstract discussion of state theory
he provides. This does justify his concern to
provide a set of guidelines, or heuristics,
necessary for generating a theoretically
informed account of the state. Yet, it is not
certain that the tensions which remain either
have been, or indeed can be adequately
resolved. The attempt, though, should leave
few indi€erent to the problems involved.
Notes
1 Thanks to Andrew Gamble, Colin Hay, Mike
Kenny and two anonymous referees for their
comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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