Redux: The State as a Non-Linear Conceptual Variable more

This paper proceeds in two parts.  First, it revisits J.P. Nettl’s 1968 World Politics article ‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, which looked at the variation and institutionalising of what he referred to as ‘stateness’.  Second, the paper offers complexity theory as a further means to argue that the state can only ever be understood as a durable yet malleable aggregated variable. The state is not diminished in importance, instead, any theoretical response to international and indeed, global, politics needs to be aware of the fluidity of this International Relations touchstone.  The implications of this paper is that the state should be understood as a fluid concept that is as much defined by the linkages within the system as it is by the intersubjective actions between the micro and the macro. This is a nod to the interplay between structure and agency. Without slipping too far down the reflectivist slope, some elements within constructivist and historical sociological thought has meaningfully engaged within this particular theoretical space. However, complexity theory offers a new alternative to examine the linkages between the discipline of International Relations and the broader (and often more inclusive) global studies frameworks. In doing so this paper reasserts Nettl’s claim that the state is a ‘sociocultural phenomenon’, but it is one that is bound by the emergent properties associated with the patterned yet unpredictable nature of non-linear dynamics.