Beyond Relative Autonomy: State Managers as Historical Subjects

Abstract

Neo-Marxist analyses of the state and politics now centre on the vexed question of the 'specificity of the political'. What is the degree to which politics and the state have independent determining effects on historical outcomes? Can the state or the people who direct the state apparatus act as historical subjects? The questions are critical because without a clear set of answers, it is impossible to develop a consistent theory of the state.