ABSTRACT
Theories of the state date to classical times and became especially prominent with the emergence of political economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For political economists like Ricardo Wolff, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and others, the state was one of the most important features, and their views weigh heavily on contemporary understandings of public life and how to shape it. This chapter focuses on historical conceptions of the state while concentrating on theories that have evolved over the past centuries, then offers a sketch of contemporary theoretical directions, and also focuses on issues of state theory. The liberal democratic state evolved from classical thinking and in recent times has become part of the experience of industrial capitalism. Hegel recognized the state as separate from civil society, but he believed that the state moderates and resolves the conflicts that emerge in civil society.
