The Oxford Handbook of Transformations of the State (Oxford Handbooks)

This Handbook offers a comprehensive treatment of transformations of the state from its origins in different parts of the world and different time periods to its transformations since World War II in the advanced industrial countries the post-Communist world and the Global South. Leading experts in their fields from Europe and North America discuss conceptualizations and theories of the state and the transformations of the state in its engagement with a changing international environment as well as with changing domestic economic social and political challenges. The Handbook covers different types of states in the Global South (from failed to predatory rentier and developmental) in different kinds of advanced industrial political economies (corporatist statist liberal import substitution industrialization) and in various post-Communist countries (Russia China successor states to the USSR and Eastern Europe). It also addresses crucial challenges in different areas of state intervention from security to financial regulation migration welfare states democratization and quality of democracy ethno-nationalism and human development. The volume makes a compelling case that far from losing its relevance in the face of globalization the state remains a key actor in all areas of social and economic life changing its areas of intervention its modes of operation and its structures in adaption to new international and domestic challenges.