ABSTRACT
In developmental state theories, the state appears to be capable of insulating itself from societal forces as an independent organisational entity. The statist exposition
does not attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the political and the economic, the state and capital. Rather it describes the relation between the political and economic as an external relation between intrinsically independent social arenas. In the traditional understanding of the state in Marxist orthodoxy, the dichotomist paradigm appeared to be rejected by defi ning the state as a simple instrument of the ruling class, therefore, as representing, despite its ideological disguise, the interests of the ruling class.
