A territorial unit with clearly defined and internationally accepted boundaries, an independent existence, and responsibility for its own legal system. ‘Most social science has taken state territoriality for granted, equating it with homogeneous bounded space neatly dividing the domestic from the foreign’ (N. Brenner et al., eds 2003). ‘The state thrives through simplification, making social relations legible so they can be controlled’ (Taylor (2007) TIBG 32, 2). B. Jessop (2002) argues for a new state form: ‘Schumpeterian competition replaces Keynesianism, workfare substitutes for welfare, postnational multiple scales are imposed upon the national mosaic, and a governance regime blurs the private–public division that defines the state.’ Wacquant (2001) Eur. J. Criminal Policy 9, 4 argues that neoliberal ideology has brought about the erasure of the economic state, the dismantling of the social state, and the strengthening of the penal state: ‘an integral part in the consolidation of the penal state in France has been the state’s practices that produce spaces.’ ‘Processes of globalization increasingly breach state borders and have led to questioning of the degree to which “fixed” territorial structures of the modern state are adapted to organizing, describing and analysing the contemporary world…The spatial foundations of the state are also undermined by formal international integration processes, most notably those of the supranational European Union’ (Wise (2006) Area 38, 2).

State-theoretic approaches incorporate one or more theories of the state; these include liberal democratic theories, social democratic theories, and critical theories; the first part of Baily (2006) J. European Public Policy 13, 1, 16.