> Our once-Polish colleague has raised Skocpal a few times, and someone else
> raised Poulantzas once or twice, but no one's even taken THEM up... come on
> y'all it seems to me we can do better than these repeated
> pissing-off-a-bridge competitions.
Can I add to the list Suzanne de Brunhoff? Her [1978 (English translation)] 'The State, Capital and Economic Policy' is great. She's kind of Poulantzian but works at a more concrete level, and focuses specifically on economic policy, which, surprisingly, not all that much marxian state theory does.
Regarding Skocpol, Bob Jessop wrote a book directly responding to her (co-edited) 'Bringing the State Back In'. Jessop's is called 'Putting the Capitalist State in its Place'. It's a pretty good intro to the Poulantzian tradition. Jessop has been engaging with a bunch of other traditions lately, especially late Foucault, regulation theory and 'critical realism', it's good stuff. Lately I've been getting into that late Foucault stuff also, only translated into English in the last few years - three series of lectures from the 1970s, which are all very interesting and worth engaging with: 'Society Must Be Defended', 'Security, Territory, Population', and 'The Birth of Biopolitics'.
Another excellent book is 'Paradigm Lost', edited by Stanley Aronowitz and Peter Bratsis [2002]. I know that might put some people off, but it's a good collection of retrospective looks at Poulantzas and Miliband, making the point someone else did here (Jim?) that the distance between them is not as great as it once seemed. Includes some great chapters by Leo Panitch, Clyde Barrow and Jessop.
I was all set to write a snarky one liner back to Chris Doss (with a ;) ) about his comment re: the 'instrumentalist' marxist conception of the state. But I've been surprised by how many of you guys do still think that way.
Cheers, Mike scandalum.wordpress.com