Bob Jessop (born 3 March 1946) is a British academic who has published extensively on

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

theory and

political economy Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour ...

. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the

University of Lancaster , mottoeng = Truth lies open to all , established = , endowment = £13.9 million , budget = £317.9 million , type = Public , city = Bailrigg, City of Lancaster , country = England , coor = , campus = Bailrigg , faculty = ...

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 pluralists,

elitists Elitism is the belief or notion that individuals who form an elite—a select group of people perceived as having an intrinsic quality, high intellect, wealth, power, notability, special skills, or experience—are more likely to be constructiv ...

/ 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. One of these apparatuses is state projects, which include a mechanism that Jessop calls ''structural selectivity.'' He claims that state structures "offer unequal chances to different forces within and outside that state to act for different political purposes". 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 privileges some over others, but at the same time, it is the interaction among these strategies that results 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 Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

's concept of capital not as a thing but as a social relation and of Antonio Gramsci's and

Nicos Poulantzas Nicos Poulantzas ( el, Νίκος Πουλαντζάς ; 21 September 1936 – 3 October 1979) was a Greek-French Marxist political sociologist and philosopher. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis Althusser, as a leading structur ...

'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.Bob Jesso
''Globalization: It’s about Time too!''
85, Political Science Series, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, January 2003

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 Ngai-Ling Sum (born 1952) is a British sociologist and political economist and co-director of the Cultural Political Economy Research Centre at Lancaster University. Career Her 2006 book ''Beyond the Regulation Approach. Putting Capitalist E ...

) 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. * ''Towards a Cultural Political Economy. Putting Culture in its Place in Political Economy'' (co-authored with

) Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2014. * ''The State. Past, Present, Future'', Cambridge: Polity 2016.

References

External links

The strategic-relational approach, realism and the state: from regulation theory to neoliberalism via Marx and Poulantzas, an interview with Bob Jessop by Jamie Morgan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jessop, Bob 1946 births Living people Academics of Lancaster University Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences British sociologists Marxist writers