SOVEREIGN STATE: FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL-POLITICAL PROJECT OF MODERNITY (2)

In the first part of the paper the conceptual framework of the political science approach to the state is outlined using some key insights of the contemporary political theory of the state. The second part of the paper contains a critical discussion about the scope and the purpose of those insights and puts forward a possible partial reconstruction of the main types of the state as methodological grounds for the developmental and comparative research of the process of the so-called transition. As the methodological basis for a contemporary reconstruction of the theory of the state, the set of basic terms (power, government, authority) - as identified by A. Passerin d'Entreves can be used. A productive elaboration of these basic terms can be carried out by critically looking into the possibilities of combining the systematic approach by Passerin d'Entreves, the genealogical approach by Barret-Kriegel and the historico-political one by Q. Skinner. Also, the author points out how a full reconstruction of the concept of the state is not possible without a parallel reconstruction of the concept of society. The state as the fundamental legal/political project of modernism is possible only as a complementary process to the creation of the civic society as the fundamental politico-economic project of modernism. The state (sovereign) and the society (civic) are modern creations whose raison d'etre is the legal, economic and political subjectivization of the individual. The co-constitutive link between the state and the society - the precondition for the possibility of the genuine process of the individual's emancipation in modernism - is methodologically the central assumption for understanding the state and the logic of sovereignty. This reconstructed comprehensive understanding of the state enables a valid differentiation of the types of states in comparative research. The working hypothesis of this paper is to distinguish two pure types of the (modern) state: the power state (Machtstaat) and the legal state (Rechtsstaat). The reconstruction of the modern concept of the state and its major forms offers the final opportunity to identify the methodological injunction for looking into the logic of transition as the transition in the direction of the sovereign legal state in the fullness of its contemporary definition.