ABSTRACT
Until the last two decades, the state has been relatively neglected in political studies. Analysts had long referred to the ‘nation-state’, but were much more taken with the nation: the growth of nationalism, national and cultural values, political participation, popular attitudes toward government and society. The state, defined in its Weberian sense as the exercise of sovereign authority within territorial boundaries, was the empty box that structural-functional theorists drew in their political systems graphics, seemingly relegating that box to the sometimes tedious studies of public administration.
