ABSTRACT
Theorists, like others, think that they must assume the enduring presence of the state in order to be realistic. So, there is a double attachment: a normative link, arising from the belief that a well-ordered state is the ideal, and an empirical link, arising from the belief that the state, like the weather, will always be with us. The power of the state is doubly authorized: by its seemingly inevitable presence on the one hand and by the way it embodies sovereign authority on the other. Political theorists, like charismatic peasant leaders, seek only to free the state and bring it back to its true purpose. In binding itself to the state, political theory connects itself to the latter pair, and abandons the former. The most powerful argument for seeing like a state is that the most important political identities in the modern world are the ones produced at the intersection of nationalism with the state system.
