Original scientific paper
SOVEREIGN STATE: FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL-POLITICAL PROJECT OF MODERNITY (2)
Dragutin Lalović
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In the first part of the paper the conceptual framework of the political
science approach to the state is outlined using some key insights
of the contemporary political theory of the state. The second part of the paper contains a critical discussion about the scope and the
purpose of those insights and puts forward a possible partial reconstruction of the main types of the state as methodological grounds for the developmental and comparative research of the process of the socalled transition. As the methodological basis for a contemporary reconstruction of the theory of the state, the set of basic terms (power, government, authority) – as identified by A. Passerin d’Entrèves – can be used. A productive elaboration of these basic terms can be carried out by critically looking into the possibilities of combining the systematic approach by Passerin d’Entrevès, the genealogical approach by Barret-Kriegel and the historico-political one by Q. Skinner.
Also, the author points out how a full reconstruction of the concept
of the state is not possible without a parallel reconstruction of the concept of society. The state as the fundamental legal/political project of modernism is possible only as a complementary process to the creation of the civic society as the fundamental politico-economic
project of modernism. The state (sovereign) and the society (civic)
are modern creations whose raison d’être is the legal, economic and
political subjectivization of the individual. The co-constitutive link
between the state and the society – the precondition for the possibility
of the genuine process of the individual’s emancipation in modernism
– is methodologically the central assumption for understanding the
state and the logic of sovereignty. This reconstructed comprehensive
understanding of the state enables a valid differentiation of the types
of states in comparative research. The working hypothesis of this paper is to distinguish two pure types of the (modern) state: the power state (Machtstaat) and the legal state (Rechtsstaat). The reconstruction of the modern concept of the state and its major forms offers the final opportunity to identify the methodological injunction for looking into the logic of transition as the transition in the direction of the sovereign legal state in the fullness of its contemporary definition.
Keywords
state; sovereignty; society; modernity; power of the state; legal state; Passerin d’Entreves; Barret-Kriegel; Skinner
Hrčak ID:
20936
URI
Publication date:
29.3.2006.
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