Introduction

In a book about the development of the state, Göran Therborn wrote, from a neo-Marxist point of view, that “[i]n the historical development of this social dynamic a number of temporalities affect the organization of the state” (1978: 45). Neo-Marxists are not the only ones who have recognized that temporalities affect the organization of the state. In a standard text about the state, written from a neo-Weberian angle, Gianfranco Poggi wrote that “the particular course taken by the Western state was a highly contingent affair” (1990: 105) and that the development of particular states has to be understood with the emphasis being put upon contingency (ibid. 99–100).

While agreeing on the importance of temporality and contingency, Therborn and Poggi have different temporalities and contingencies in mind. For Therborn, as for other neo-Marxists, the differences between particular states have to be understood with reference to social classes and, specifically, to the different rhythms of two politicized class struggles: one between feudal lords and the capitalist bourgeoisie, and the other between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (cf. Mann 1993: 45). For Poggi and the neo-Weberians, it is, rather, the temporalities of the state system and the availability of state models that provide the key to understanding the course taken by particular states.