Bringing What State Back In? Neo-Marxism and the Origin of the Committee on States and Social Structures

• Author: Rafael Khachaturian
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912918804450
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918804450

Political Research Quarterly

2019, Vol. 72(3) 714 –726

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918804450

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Article

The 1980s saw a revival of interest in the study of the state

(Farr 2008). Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and

Theda Skocpol’s (1985a) edited volume Bringing the

State Back In did not initiate this movement, but it remains

the most influential and representative work of this intel-

lectual turn. This volume came out of the Committee on

States and Social Structures, an interdisciplinary collabo-

ration sponsored by the Social Science Research Council

that was planned between 1979 and 1982, and which oper-

ated between 1983 and 1990. By advancing a broadly neo-

Weberian framework against “societally reductive”

approaches like pluralism, structural functionalism, and

Marxism, the Committee reasserted the state as a key con-

ceptual variable for the study of political and social

change, defining the parameters of state-centric research

in sociology and political science for later scholarship.

The Committee originated from the “second wave of

historical sociology” (Adams, Clemens, and Orloff 2005),

but it soon influenced political science research on topics

like social revolutions and regime transformations, the

development of welfare states, and social capital (Skocpol

2008). It ensured that “the concept of the state was brought

firmly back into the mainstream of U.S. political science”

(Dryzek and Dunleavy 2009, 7), and also spurred

meta-theoretical discussions about the state as an object

for social inquiry (Almond 1988; Bendix et al. 1992;

Mitchell 1991; Nordlinger, Lowi, and Fabbrini 1988). At

the same time, it left an ambiguous legacy. One objection

had to do with its critique of pluralism, either that the

Committee misrepresented these accounts (Almond

1988), was derivative of an earlier conflict between plu-

ralism and statism (Gunnell 1995), or was merely counter-

intuitive to the views of most American political scientists

(Dryzek 2006). Another line of criticism questioned its

novelty. Theodore Lowi (Nordlinger, Lowi, and Fabbrini

1988, 885) argued that the state was never forgotten but

“only overshadowed” between the 1930s and 1950s, while

Ira Katznelson (2003), a former member of the Committee,

later argued that post–World War II political science was

already concerned with the relationship between liberal

democracy and state institutions.

804450PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918804450Political Research QuarterlyKhachaturian

research-article2018

1University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Corresponding Author:

Rafael Khachaturian, Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of

Democracy, University of Pennsylvania, 133 S. 36th Street,

Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.

Email: rafkhach@sas.upenn.edu

Bringing What State Back In? Neo-

Marxism and the Origin of the

Committee on States and Social

Structures

Rafael Khachaturian1

Abstract

This article examines the interdisciplinary movement to “bring the state back in,” advanced during the 1980s by the

Committee on States and Social Structures. Drawing on the Committee’s archives at the Social Science Research

Council, I show that its influential neo-Weberian conception of the state was developed in dialogue with earlier

neo-Marxist debates about the capitalist state. However, its interpretation of neo-Marxism as a class reductive and

functionalist variant of “grand theory” also created a narrative that marginalized the latter’s contributions to the

literature on the state. This displacement had lasting consequences, for while neo-Marxist approaches had provided

a critical perspective on the relationship between the social sciences and the state, the Committee’s narrative had a

depoliticizing effect on this subject matter. Reconstructing this moment both recovers the forgotten influence of the

New Left and neo-Marxist scholarship on postwar political science and sociology, and elaborates on the contested

history of the state as a political concept.

Keywords

state, political science, Marxism, New Left, liberalism