ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a question: why are the state, and a separation between the economic and political spheres, necessary in capitalist economies. The practical involvement of the national as a pivotal regulatory space and of the national state in regulating national economies has been recognised for many years by social scientists. The forms of selectivity that emerge are linked to modes of governmentality, to ways of conceptualising both the objects and processes of governance and regulation. As a result of locating in these spaces firms are able organise processes of co-production to their advantage, to structure relations between capital and labour and labour processes and control of labour in particular ways, constructing the workplace as an “exclusionary space”. However, the establishment of a mode of regulation is a political process, involving a “representational struggle” as to the most appropriate way of coupling consumption and production.
