This work presents and defends an ontological theory of the state. Its basic strategy is to consider the problem of the state in the light of recent and influential developments in social thought and philosophy, and to provide thereby an account of what the state really is – a description of its essential nature.

The very idea of pursuing an account of this kind will undoubtedly strike some readers – perhaps suspicious of ontological or metaphysical inquiry per se, or else doubtful that the state could ever be the legitimate object of such inquiry – as eccentric, anachronistic, even perverse. In fact, my project is intended to be none of these. To the contrary: it purports to uncover and explicate an understanding of the state that is implicit in and that helps to underwrite our own ordinary ways of thinking about politics. It seeks, in other words, to reconstruct a theory to which most of us are already (tacitly and unselfconsciously) committed, and that informs and directs our own engagement in the world of affairs. It thus aims to derive the idea of the state from certain fundamental, though typically unstated, presuppositions of contemporary political life.

The account of the state itself is developed and defended in the three chapters that compose Part III pertaining, respectively, to the activity, the authority, and the internal constitution of the state.