Like society itself, the social sciences undergo continual change, and it is the mission of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to identify and further emerging research agendas. This volume is the first publication of the council's Research Planning Committee on States and Social Structures. Established in 1983, the committee aims to foster sustained collaborations among scholars from several disciplines who share in the growing interest in states as actors and as institutional structures.

Until recently, dominant theoretical paradigms in the comparative social sciences did not highlight states as organizational structures or as potentially autonomous actors. Indeed, the term “state” was rarely used. Current work, however, increasingly views the state as an actor that, although obviously influenced by the society surrounding it, also shapes social and political processes. There is a recognized need, therefore, to improve conceptualizations of the structures and capacities of states, to explain more adequately how states are formed and reorganized, and to explore in many settings how states affect societies through their interventions – or abstentions – and through their relationships with social groups.

Most of the essays collected here were originally drafted for a conference entitled “Research Implications of Current Theories of the State” held at Mount Kisco, New York, in February 1982. The conference was sponsored by the Joint Committees on Latin American Studies and on Western Europe of the SSRC and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). It brought together an unusually wide range (though certainly not exhaustive set) of scholars who have been at the forefront of theorizing and comparative research on states in societal and world contexts.