Bob Jessop
Encyclopedia
Bob Jessop is a British
academic and writer who has published extensively on state
theory and political economy
. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster.
, elitists/statists and conventional marxists
respectively. Rather, what the state is essentially determined by is the nature of the wider social relations in which it is situated, especially the balance of social forces.
The state can thus be understood as follows: First, the state has varied natures, apparatuses and boundaries according to its historical and geographical developments as well as its specific conjunctures. However, there is a strategic limit to this variation, imposed by the given balance of forces at specific time and space. Thus, second, the state has differential effects on various political and economic strategies in a way that some are more privileged than others, but at the same time, it is the interaction among these strategies that result in such exercise of state power. This approach is called the "strategic-relational approach" and can be considered as a creative extension and development of Marx's concept of capital
not as a thing but as a social relation and Antonio Gramsci
's and Nicos Poulantzas
's concept of the state as a social relation, something more than narrow political society.
Jessop uses the term “time sovereignty” (or “temporal sovereignty”) to stand for a government's right to have at its disposition the time that is required for considered political decision-making. He states that this “time sovereignty” is endangered as governments see themselves pressured to compress their own decision-making cycles so that they can make more timely and appropriate interventions. By comparison, Robert Hassan uses the term in related but slightly different meaning as the government's sovereignty
to decide the future, beyond the immediate present; in this usage, the term stands in analogy to territorial sovereignty; Hassan holds that the legislative is losing “time sovereignty” to the executive.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
academic and writer who has published extensively on state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
theory and political economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster.
Work
Jessop's major contribution to state theory is in treating the state not as an entity but as a social relation with differential strategic effects. This means that the state is not something with an essential, fixed property such as a neutral coordinator of different social interests, an autonomous corporate actor with its own bureaucratic goals and interests, or the 'executive committee of the bourgeoisie' as often described by pluralistsPluralism (political theory)
Classical pluralism is the view that politics and decision making are located mostly in the framework of government, but that many non-governmental groups use their resources to exert influence. The central question for classical pluralism is how power and influence is distributed in a political...
, elitists/statists and conventional marxists
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
respectively. Rather, what the state is essentially determined by is the nature of the wider social relations in which it is situated, especially the balance of social forces.
The state can thus be understood as follows: First, the state has varied natures, apparatuses and boundaries according to its historical and geographical developments as well as its specific conjunctures. However, there is a strategic limit to this variation, imposed by the given balance of forces at specific time and space. Thus, second, the state has differential effects on various political and economic strategies in a way that some are more privileged than others, but at the same time, it is the interaction among these strategies that result in such exercise of state power. This approach is called the "strategic-relational approach" and can be considered as a creative extension and development of Marx's concept of capital
Capital (economics)
In economics, capital, capital goods, or real capital refers to already-produced durable goods used in production of goods or services. The capital goods are not significantly consumed, though they may depreciate in the production process...
not as a thing but as a social relation and Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
's and Nicos Poulantzas
Nicos Poulantzas
Nicos Poulantzas was a Greek Marxist political sociologist. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading Structural Marxist and, while at first a Leninist, eventually became a proponent of eurocommunism. He is most well known for his theoretical work on the state...
's concept of the state as a social relation, something more than narrow political society.
Jessop uses the term “time sovereignty” (or “temporal sovereignty”) to stand for a government's right to have at its disposition the time that is required for considered political decision-making. He states that this “time sovereignty” is endangered as governments see themselves pressured to compress their own decision-making cycles so that they can make more timely and appropriate interventions. By comparison, Robert Hassan uses the term in related but slightly different meaning as the government's sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
to decide the future, beyond the immediate present; in this usage, the term stands in analogy to territorial sovereignty; Hassan holds that the legislative is losing “time sovereignty” to the executive.
Major works
- The Capitalist State: Marxist Theories and Methods, Oxford: Blackwell 1982
- Nicos Poulantzas: Marxist Theory and Political Strategy, London: Macmillan 1985
- Thatcherism: a Tale of Two Nations, Cambridge: Polity (co-authors—Kevin Bonnett, Simon Bromley, & Tom Ling) 1988
- State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in Its Place, Cambridge: Polity 1990
- The Future of the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity 2002
- Beyond the Regulation Approach Putting Capitalist Economies in their Place (co-authored with Ngai-Ling Sum) Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2006. Winner of the Gunnar Myrdal Prize awarded given by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy for the best book published in 2006 broadly in line with its aims and objectives.
- State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach, Cambridge: Polity 2007