Theoretical Perspectives and New Debates

Abstract

We began with the debate between retreat and state-centric scholars about what was happening to the sovereign state. It was demonstrated how scholars from the two camps tended to paint rather misleading pictures of states either ‘losing’ or ‘winning’ in their contests with other actors. I argued that the idea of ‘state transformation’ was a better analytical starting point. That gets us away from the zero-sum view of states either ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ and opens up the idea that both of these processes can take place at the same time, in complex combinations.