What can sociologists of globalization and development learn from Nicos Poulantzas?

I Introduction

The broad and interrelated topics of globalization, development and state formation are the pillars of sociological theorizing. When thinking of such theories, several crucial components come to mind. One is the study of the state’s institutional structure and the ways in which power is exerted by and through its constitutive elements. What factors either drive or impede social, economic and political development, and whether the nation-state is the relevant level of analysis for answering such questions is also a common interest. Unfortunately, the ideas of the once ubiquitously discussed Nicos Poulantzas are nearly absent from current theorizing on such important issues. This lacuna is particularly noticeable in US sociology, as a quick search through the American Sociological Association’s main generalist and theory journals confirms. ¹ In tandem with growing anti-Marxist and anti-Left tendencies in politics and the social sciences in the 1980s, ‘Poulantzas was all but forgotten soon after his death’ (Gallas et al., 2011: 13; see also Khachaturian, 2018; Manza and McCarthy, 2011: 168–70). When Poulantzas’ ideas are not absent from sociological theorizing, they are often attacked for being irredeemably structuralist and/or functionalist, subsequently dismissed as unessential relics of the past. This longstanding neglect and dismissal is regrettable but not inevitable.

As we are now at the half-century mark from Poulantzas’ first major contributions to state theory, this article urges sociologists of globalization and development to revisit his foundational ideas along with a small-but-growing community of scholars crafting a neo-Poulantzasian framework. ² It shows the value addition of using these analytical concepts to promote innovative research on globalization, the political economy of development and theories of the state and its corresponding apparatuses in the (semi-) periphery. Offering an exposition on several influential theories in the aforementioned areas allows us to bring to bear (neo) Poulantzasian concepts that would be of use for scholarship in these domains by seeing how they can be reconciled with the relevant ideas discussed in this article. Subsequently, I outline several key ideas of Poulantzas that have been dismissed by or missing from much sociological theorizing. In particular, I highlight his sustained relevance of his conceptualization of the state as a social relation and illustrate how his discussion on the internationalization of capital and nation-states remains useful for contemporary theorizing on the re-scaling of governance and power structures. Finally, I point towards recent innovations in theoretical and applied approaches to global political sociology/economy, which are suited to incorporate neo-Poulantzasian insights. This includes scholarship on natural resource extraction, collective action and equitable development in the (semi-) periphery.

Altogether, this article puts US sociologists in dialogue with largely European-based developments in neo-Poulantzasian scholarship and also introduces developments by non-sociologists to the field of sociology, promoting a transdisciplinary research agenda. Thus, this article is a theoretical intervention, appraisal, critique and proposal for future theorizing. If successful, this article will convince its readers that there is value in reconsidering the ideas and legacy of Nicos Poulantzas for sociological studies on globalization, governance and development.

II The world-system, the state, development and commodity studies: An appraisal and critique

Although Poulantzas himself did not explicitly engage with the ideas of world-systems analysis (WSA), he did discuss the international division of labour, imperialism and capital penetration in the global South—critical elements of the WSA perspective. ³ WSA theorizes a single worldwide division of labour with a tripartite composition. Core regions are industrially/technologically advanced, produce manufactured goods and have stronger states. Peripheral regions tend to export raw materials, are less technologically/industrially advanced and have weak state capacities. The semi-periphery falls between the aforementioned poles, possessing a mixture of characteristics inherent in both core and peripheral formations (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1977; Sanderson, 2005). The world system operates through a system of unequal exchange (see Emmanuel, 1972), which emphasizes the alleged transfer of surplus from peripheral to core regions because of different methods of production being used in their respective location within the world system (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1977).

This approach received early critiques from Marxists and Weberians alike (for overview see Goldfrank, 2000), and, by the turn of the century, even sympathetic scholars were unsatisfied with WSAs attempts to understand development and the restructuring of the world-wide division of labour (Robinson, 2002; see also Sanderson, 2005). One obstacle for studying development and state power from a world-systemic perspective is exemplified through Wallerstein’s rejection of analysing nation-states as social formations (i.e., the concrete articulation of multiple modes or forms of production in a region) within the world system, which he casually dismisses as a vacuous and ‘flimflam’ approach (Wallerstein, 1984: 2). Alternatively, Wallerstein (2001: 118–9) himself has offered seemingly functionalist and teleological accounts about development being ‘thrust upon’ regions, rather than being attributable to national-level policies, and scholars sympathetic to WSA have routinely found it tending towards teleology, reification and unsatisfying conceptualizations of culture, hegemony and the state (Arrighi, 1998; Benton, 1996; Mueller and Schmidt, 2019; Sanderson, 2005). ⁴

Many world systems analysts have used the contested concept of Kondratieff cycles (i.e., ‘k-waves’) to explain conjunctural social change and technological innovation. K-waves are said to be the ‘pulse’ of global capitalism, and every 40–60 years, we are to observe theoretically predictable ‘cycles of expansion and stagnation’ (Wallerstein, 2004: 95). However, an early in-house assessment declared that ‘the clear association we would expect to find between political struggles and the pulses of the Kondratieff remain unsupported, while those between such conflict and the hegemonic sequence are somewhat tentative’ (Chase-Dunn and Grimes, 1995: 411). Since then, major figures within WSA have been sceptical about the links between k-waves and directly capitalist phenomena, and urge us to consider alternative ways to understand hegemony and conjunctural social change (Arrighi, 1998, 2010; Babones, 2015). Whether world-systemic scholarship will stay the course or part ways with the k-wave analysis remains unclear, but regardless of such proclivities, a comprehensive conjunctural analysis must be receptive to a greater degree of agency, contingency and multiple levels of struggle within existing social formations. A neo-Poulantzasian framework can help us with this task and will be discussed shortly.

WSA also made an impact in the domain of commodity studies. Although the earliest conception of a commodity chain focussed on raw material extraction and commodity production while maintaining the world system as the unit of analysis (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1977), the emergence of global commodity chain (GCC) and global value chain (GVC) approaches propelled commodity studies to a broader audience (see Bair, 2005). The GCC approach examines inter-firm networks that connect the multifaceted contracting and manufacturing processes of commodity production on a world scale, whereas the GVC approach examines how industries across the globe can promote competitiveness, add value in the production process and develop governance techniques for non-market-related aspects of coordinating production. These perspectives offer useful insights on the spatial elements of development processes, but their focus on inter-firm relationships and circuits of production often pay a short shrift to the state form and functionality while offering an altogether unsatisfactory framework for understanding the social classes who win/lose after the alleged value-chain upgrading takes place (Bair, 2005; Neilson et al., 2014). Demands to historically contextualize commodity analyses while considering the ‘concrete geographical and social form’ of the locales in which commodity extractive/productive processes occur are needed innovations (Bair and Werner, 2011: 992; Topik, 2009) can be embedded in a neo-Poulantzasian approach, and will be addressed later.

Finally, we should briefly address popular state theoretical perspectives. The Social Science Research Council-supported Committee on States and Social Structures—formulated from 1979 to 1982; active from 1983 to 1990—had a profound influence on state-theoretical research in US sociology and political science (Khachaturian, 2018). This coterie of scholars broadly critiqued Marxism and ‘grand theoretical’ attempts to explain the relationship between states, capitalism and development. Thus, political sociology had its Weberian moment when Committee-affiliated scholars demanded we ‘bring the state back in’ (BSBI) to the study of political and economic institutions and structures (see Evans et al., 1985). These scholars stressed the potential for autonomous state and institutional actions that worked against the interests of the dominant class, acting as the neutral arbiter of social problems and offering some levelling of the political arena for the masses. This approach not only ‘depoliticize[d] the state by treating it as one operationalizable variable among others’, but de-radicalization the state-theoretical perspective by ‘turn[ing] the language of state autonomy … to a means by which state institutions could regulate capitalist social relations to maintain the postwar social democratic order’ (Khachaturian, 2018: 2, 8; see also Cammack, 1989).

Besides shifting the theoretical agenda for studies on core regions, a Weberian and institutionalist push also unfolded within scholarly debates on developmental prospects in the (semi-) periphery. Much of the early developmental state literature took statist and autonomist positions (see Routley, 2012), and BSBI proponent Peter Evans (1989, 1995) himself pioneered studies on institutional capacities in (semi-) peripheral states. His landmark comparative analysis of predatory and developmental states introduced us to the concept of embedded autonomy (Evans, 1995). According to Evans, autonomy is achieved when bureaucrats perceive there to be sufficient long-term incentives within institutions to the point where they believe particularistic interests will not override the bureaucracy’s strategic agenda. However, this state must not be so isolated as to preclude civil society from negotiating with it (i.e., the embeddedness). Accordingly, ‘[a]utonomous states completely insulated from society could be very effective predators’ (248). In contrast to a healthy developmental state, a predatory state has ‘a dearth of bureaucracy’ and lacks an agenda for broader socio-economic development, feeling ‘threatened by the potential agendas of civil society’ (12, 47). By the 1990s, there was a new internationalization of firms, which ‘clearly complicate[d] the politics of state involvement’, problematizing the opportunities for developmental-state embeddedness and autonomy (205, 206). ⁵ More recently, Evans (2010: 52, 44) has warned us that, if ‘capture[d] by capital’ or ‘[c]aptured by an elite with an agenda of dispossession, the state becomes the instrument for wiping out those incentives’. As it stands, the conceptual framework still allows for theorizing a state that could be completely insulated from society, engaging in predatory behaviour that has a life external to the demands of social forces within the society.

The influence of Evans’s work is immense (see Routley, 2012), and much innovative research on developmental states occurs within a theoretical framework indebted to his ideas—themselves a product of grappling with the ideas of Max Weber and Karl Polanyi, among others (Evans, 1995: 18). The accomplishments of Evans and colleagues notwithstanding, there are some lingering concerns with current trends in developmental state research. Much new research on development is borrowing concepts from the ‘new economic sociology’ (see Convert and Heilbron, 2007) and it correspondingly focus on micro- and meso-level socially constructed processes. For example, Schrank (2015: 39) calls for a ‘new economic sociology of development’ that moves away from ‘grand paradigms’, instead directing its focus towards the domains of social embeddedness and social networks, among other issues. ⁶ Paying attention to organizational-level social and cultural processes is well warranted, but these approaches can lose sight of the unique dynamics of capitalism as a historical social system and mode of production, thus reducing our ability to uncover factors that facilitate the fetishization and reification of materially mediated social relations (Arrighi, 2001; Jessop and Sum, 2018). As development scholars continue pursuing the analytical tools of Weber, Polanyi and new economic sociology, we should kindly encourage them to remain in dialogue with Marxist state-theoretical literature. There is ample room to address socio-cultural processes and state-institutional configurations that do not eschew Marxist and Poulantzasian insights (see, inter alia, Jessop, 1997, 2015, 2016). ⁷

This section briefly highlighted several dominant perspectives within political–sociological approaches to the state theory, global political economy, commodity extraction and development; all of which may benefit from entering in dialogue with Poulantzasian scholarship. Broadly speaking, these areas have methodological and theoretical issues to consider, pertaining to (a) questions of how to periodize historical and conjunctural social change, (b) locating the appropriate level(s) of analysis for studying the political economy and sociology of development, and (c) how the state and its corresponding apparatuses/bureaucracies relate to social forces within and beyond these terrains of struggle. Later sections will elaborate on ways to place this body of work in dialogue with neo-Poulantzasian analytic strategies, but, for now, we move on to the ideas of Nicos Poulantzas himself.

III The contributions of Nicos Poulantzas to political sociology, political economy and state theory

Nicos Poulantzas made substantial contributions to the areas of political sociology and social theory more broadly. His last book (Poulantzas, 1978) was considered ‘startlingly ahead of its time’ (Thomas, 2000: 205) and a ‘modern classic’ (Jessop, 2011). Poulantzas gained prominence in the Francophone world by the late-1960s for his scholarship on legal philosophy and the 1968 release of Pouvoir politique et classes sociales (Eng.: Political Power and Social Classes) (Jessop, 1985: ch. 1). Major academic recognition in the broader English-speaking world came shortly thereafter, thanks to his critiques of economism, ‘instrumentalist’ Marxists, and most prominently, Ralph Miliband’s approach to theorizing the nature of the capitalist state (see Miliband, 1969; Poulantzas, 1969). According to Poulantzas, Miliband and others over-emphasized the importance of the social backgrounds of members of the state apparatus in relation to the state’s capitalist disposition. Thus, by emphasizing ‘the social origin of the members of the State apparatus and their inter-personal relations with the members of this class, so that the bourgeoisie almost physically ‘corners’ the State apparatus, one cannot account for the relative autonomy of the State with respect to this class’ (Poulantzas, 1969: 74). For Poulantzas (1969, 1973, 1975), the state was more than an instrument to be captured, and more than the sum of its elite constituents; it served as the factor of cohesion between numerous competing fractions of capital as well as the popular classes. ⁸ He studied the state and its apparatuses as a part of a wider social formation—a complex articulation of several modes and forms of production in a particular locale. Social formations are the precise ‘nodes of uneven development of the relationship of modes and forms of production within the class struggle’ (Poulantzas, 1975: 49).

Poulantzas is best known for his discussion on the relative autonomy of the state. Relative autonomy exists under capitalism because, unlike earlier modes of production, the capitalist state is formally separated from the productive sphere. Capitalists as a class are disorganized and do not have a singular interest, and the state organizes different classes and fractions of classes. The disunity of competing fractional interests is what requires them to be organized by the state, albeit in an ‘unstable equilibrium of compromises’ (Poulantzas, 1976a: 71). Therefore, a power bloc represents the unity of several class fractions under the leadership of one hegemonic fraction that attempts to portray their interests as being in the best interests of capital as a whole, if possible. If they gain support from popular classes, they can exert greater influence within the power bloc (Poulantzas, 1975, 1976a, 1978). The state’s autonomy is not against the power bloc precisely because the state is not external to different class fractions, but rather ‘the autonomy is a result of the power blocs being within the State itself, with the contradictory measures they have implemented… [taking] the concrete form of the relative autonomy commanded by a given state branch, apparatus or network vis-à-vis others of its kind’ (Poulantzas, 1978: 135).

In Das Kapital, Marx (2011 [1867]: ch. 33) described capital as a social relation. This means capital is the dynamic embodiment of existing social processes that involve labour, exploitation, time and other variables. It is not a static thing with an intrinsic value, but rather possesses multiple elements that under particular social arrangements bring it to life. Just as Marx recognized capital as a social relation, Poulantzas conceptualized the state as a social relation, or more precisely, ‘the condensation of a relationship of forces between of classes and class fractions, such as these express themselves, in a necessarily specific form, within the State itself’ (Poulantzas, 1978: 132). This is because ‘[j]ust as “capital” already contains in itself the contradiction between capital and wage-labour, so class contradictions always cut right through the state, because the state reproduces these class contradictions within itself by its very nature as a class state’ (Poulantzas, 1976b: 82). Therefore, the state is ‘neither the subject of history nor a mere instrument-object of the dominant class,’ and ‘power is not a quantifiable substance held by the State that must be taken out of its hands, but rather a series of relations among the various social classes’ (Poulantzas, 1978: 119, 257). Since the state represents existing social antagonisms, not only is it rife with conflicts between competing fractions of capital but is also a ‘strategic field that is plowed from one end to the other by working-class and popular struggle and resistance’ (119). This approach differentiates itself from various other Marxist and Weberian perspectives while avoiding a fetishization of the state (Poulantzas, 1978: esp. 127–39).

Poulantzas contests both instrumentalist and autonomist perspectives on bureaucracy. As a social category, state bureaucracies and its agents could have a certain ‘weight of [their] own … not purely and simply “in tow” either to the hegemonic class or fraction, or to the class or fraction from which it originates or to which it belongs’, giving them ‘a specific role particularly within the limits of the capitalist state’s relative autonomy’ (Poulantzas, 1975: 186). Therefore, bureaucrats are not miraculously freed from their class position to become autonomous actors, but they do exist in specific social categories that are not reducible to their class location, given that their role in the society is also influenced by their location in political and ideological structures. The same holds true for understanding the role of the armed forces, which generally ‘reflect and reproduce class contradictions, but…cannot be reduced to the latter’ (Poulantzas, 1976b: 111–2). Altogether, he worked to theorize members of these social categories without reducing them to the point of representing a singular demand of international or national-level capital. Similarly, he also theorized monopoly capital not as a monolithic entity but rather a merger of multiple capitals that had not removed the fractional interests of non-monopoly capital in the continued struggle for power and influence (Poulantzas, 1975, 1978).

As an early proponent of researching the effects of shifting labour and productive relations in an increasingly internationalized world, Poulantzas offered a prescient discussion on the internationalization of national-states and capital (Poulantzas 1974a, 1976b, 1980). He contemplated whether or not the national-state was losing its stature and being replaced by inter-state and supra-state forms of governance, and his work urges analysts to avoid structurally reductionist analyses that conceive of a mere ‘contradiction of mechanistic composition between the base (internationalisation of production) and a superstructural envelope no longer “corresponding” to it’ (Poulantzas, 1974a: 171). Instead, we should focus on understanding ‘the forms which the class struggle assumes in an imperialist chain marked by the uneven development of its links’ (Poulantzas, 1974a: 171; see also Poulantzas, 1976b, 1980). He also explored new developments in core countries undergoing changes in bureaucratic and class structures after World War II, developing his concept of the internal/interior bourgeoisie. Different than comprador (i.e., agents of foreign capital with no domestic base of material power) or national (i.e., indigenous class with material base in their own country) bourgeoisies, the internal/interior bourgeoisie are more complex. As he writes:

Exist[ing] alongside sectors that are genuinely comprador, [and] no longer possess[ing] the structural characteristics of a national bourgeoisie…As a result of the reproduction of American capital actually within these formations, it is, firstly, implicated by multiple ties of dependence in the international division of labour and in the international concentration of capital under the domination of American capital, and this can go so far as to take the form of a transfer of part of the surplus-value it produces to the profit of the latter. (Poulantzas, 1975: 72)

His desire to periodize the historical unfolding of capitalism and imperialism allowed him to elucidate how the penetration of American capital in other core regions had a new and unique influence on class and bureaucratic structures within their social formations. By emphasizing how core and peripheral development is inherently relational—vis-à-vis his discussion on the ‘imperialist chain’ (Poulantzas, 1974a, 1975, 1976b)—he offers a useful way to study the disarticulating effect that the changing international division of labour and internationalization of capital have on all regions of the world economy. This framework accounts for uneven development without reducing peripheral regions to passive objects that exist as a functional necessity of the world system.

Poulantzas applied these concepts in concrete studies of authoritarian states, dictatorships and exceptional regimes in a variety of mid-to-late twentieth-century European states (Poulantzas, 1974b, 1976b, 1978). Conceptually moving between the realms of theorizing a general ‘Dependent type of state’ to the ‘concrete forms that this state assumes’, his analyses unveiled the ‘new organization of the imperialist chain and its associated dependence’ that facilitated the emergence and collapse of dictatorial regimes in Greece, Spain and Portugal (Poulantzas, 1976b: 21, 13). He found that exception states emerge when drastic attempts are taken to ameliorate a ‘crisis of hegemony within the power bloc, and in this bloc’s relationship with the popular masses’, which itself generates new ‘contradictions [that] can only be controlled and contained by means of a veritable partition of the state into “fiefs” whose relations with one another are devoid of all flexibility’ (92–93). These developments within the world economy generated new and unique forms of relative autonomy that social categories—especially the military—possessed in exceptional states, opening room for strategic alliances and power plays among a variety of social actors.

Poulantzas (1978) presciently identified other shifts in the state form and function in core regions, dubbing it the era of Authoritarian Statism. He observed that the most recent phase of capitalism facilitated ‘intensified state control over every sphere of socio-economic life combined with [a] radical decline of the institutions of political democracy and with draconian and multiform curtailment of so-called “formal” liberties’ (203–4, see also 238). Authoritarian statism was carefully distinguished from a fascism and other types of exceptional states, instead representing ‘the new ‘democratic’ form of the bourgeois republic in the current phase of capitalism’ (208–9). This work highlighted the importance of periodization and conjunctural analysis while providing scholars with a framework for understanding emergent state, political and economic crises in the neoliberal era.

An important element of the Poulantzasian framework is its emphasis on conjunctures in history. Conjuncture-based analyses focus on the amalgam of social-class forces at a particular period in history, placing events and policy choices within a bounded realm of possibilities, neither reducible to nor neglectful of structural limitations or agency-guided actions. Regarding class position, he says ‘structural determination of classes…must however be distinguished from class position in each specific conjuncture’ (Poulantzas, 1975: 14). For example, in past historical conjunctures, the national bourgeoisie were able to enter an alliance with sectors of the popular classes in the periphery, forming an anti-imperialist coalition in the quest for self-determination and statehood (Poulantzas, 1975). This approach was part of Poulantzas’ larger demand to periodize state forms and avoid law-like theories of state power.

To avoid economism, Poulantzas recognized that even in increasingly authoritarian states that have centralized power within the executive and state administration, the ‘economic role of the State… is very far from providing a sufficient explanation’ for the state form and functionality (Poulantzas, 1978: 204). Similarly, his intent to avoid class-reductionism allowed him to understand that issues not explicitly rooted in labour relations (e.g., gender relations) are not completely autonomous either. Simply put: ‘Of course, they will still have class pertinency… [but they] are neither a mere consequence nor homologues or isomorphs of that division [of labor]’ (43).

The writings of Poulantzas were heavily influenced by French philosopher Louis Althusser, causing many scholars bracket his work as a type of structural Marxism that was deterministic and unable to account for agency (Bruff, 2012). In a piece on the ‘Neo-Marxist legacy in American Sociology’, Manza and McCarthy (2011: 160) proclaim that such ‘structuralist’ Marxist approaches were found to lack ‘clear mechanisms to account for how relative autonomy could occur over and over’, which they attribute to being one of the main reasons this ‘work came to be seen as both functionalist and ultimately empirically empty’. They follow by claiming Poulantzas’ ‘opaque formulations prove nearly impossible to operationalize’, whereas his theory of relative autonomy is ‘a rather empty formulation that cannot inspire systematic research or generate new insights’ (171). This appraisal encapsulates the broad neglect and dismissal of Poulantzas in US sociology.

Surely, Poulantzas was influenced by Althusser and did in fact aim to study the structural trends of capitalism. However, a dismissal of his work as stodgy structuralism would overlook significant changes that Poulantzas made in his later writings. Numerous scholars point towards Poulantzas’ intellectual shifts over the years, from one of Althusserian-structuralism to a class-analytical and strategic-relational—not to mention anti-functionalist—approach (see Carnoy, 1984; Das, 1996; Gallas, 2017; Hay, 1999; Jessop, 1999). Furthermore, Poulantzas (1976a, 1979, 2017 [1979]) himself criticized his earlier work on grounds of occasionally excessive theoreticism and formalism while providing clarification on where he and Althusser shared similar and divergent theoretical viewpoints. Altogether, the concerns US sociologists have regarding Poulantzas’ theoretical shortcomings are likely overstated, and do not adequately address his extensive work on internationalization or his relational approach to analysing state power. These critiques also miss the emerging neo-Poulantzasian framework that will be discussed shortly.

By now, this article should ameliorate fears of Poulantzas’ framework being overly deterministic and unable to inspire a rigorous and long-term research agenda. To be certain, portions of his work came across as an initial-step and not a comprehensive blueprint, both for a relational approach to state theory and the dynamics of capitalism (see Jessop, 1985: ch. 12) and his grossly underexplored but useful initial insights on gender relations (see Nowak, 2011), among other topics. However, his ideas were original enough to once be considered an ‘obligatory reference-point for all subsequent theorizing on the modern capitalist State’, and, thus, deserve (re)consideration from critical sociologists of development and globalization (Hall, 1980: 61; see also Barrow, 1993). To highlight the continued relevance of these insights, I now discuss several key insights from the small but growing domain of contemporary scholarship refining and updating Poulantzas’ concepts since his death in 1979. This illustrates how a neo-Poulantzasian analysis can enliven sociological theorizing on globalization and development taking place across the world-system.

IV The legacy of Nicos Poulantzas in contemporary social theory

V A brief return to contemporary development theory, method and practice

Studies of the twenty-first century predatory and developmental states in the world system must consider the material preconditions for accumulation without neglecting the discursive elements that emerge, are selected, and are retained by power blocs to facilitate stable regimes of accumulation and governance (see Jessop and Oosterlynck, 2008; Mueller and Schmidt, 2019). Understanding the relationship and co-evolution of politico-economic and discursive elements can help us discern how groups are scapegoated or privileged in one, two or perhaps three-nations oriented developmental projects. These studies also require theoretical frameworks that capture the concrete manifestations that fractions of international capital take in relation to the tentative developmental projects underway in post-colonial states. The issues of ‘class formation, the evolution of indigenous capitalism, capitalism’s articulation with non-capitalist modes of production and the potential for the progressive development of capitalism in Africa beyond a dependent, peripheral form’ were once key elements of the scholarly agenda and deserve to be reincorporated into studies of the (semi-) periphery (Ouma, 2017: 501). A neo-Poulantzasian approach can assist in this endeavour.

Recent meta-appraisals of WSA and the sociology of development emphasize the need for more robust analyses of gender, culture, nationalist ideology and the social bases of support for authoritarian and populist regimes within their studies (Evans and Stallings, 2016; Gates, 2018; Mueller and Schmidt, 2019; Viterna and Robertson, 2015). This dovetails with recent (neo) Poulantzasian insights that are informing studies on gender (Nowak, 2017), culture (Jessop and Oosterlynck, 2008) and resurgent authoritarian and reactionary nationalism (Bruff, 2014; Harris et al., 2017). These types of studies lend themselves well towards comparative and historical approaches, and the neo-Poulantzasian framework that highlights both structural and conjunctural moments would be ideal. In multi-case studies, we can explore what mutually possible forms of development are possible under different regional or international regimes of accumulation, without presupposing a hard worldwide singular division of labour that is ‘fully’ capitalist (see Jessop, 2012). Within WSA, the incorporated comparison technique approaches some of the points outlined above, attempting to offer a holistic and relational comparative-historical framework (McMichael, 2000). However, this approach remains underexplored and may often be cited by WSA scholars in a ceremonial rather than substantive fashion (Baronov, 2017).

Since most neo-Poulantzasian scholarship has been elaborated through studies of core social formations, there is ample room for scholars studying globalization and development in the (semi-) periphery to carve out an agenda for future research. However, we should also avoid forcing rigid, perhaps Eurocentric, state-analytical concepts onto studies of capitalism in non-core regions (see Jessop, 2016: 238–42; see also Poulantzas, 1976b: 130–1). Rather than treating (semi-) peripheral states as capitalist types of states—exemplified in core regions where capitalism has been and continues to be the driving logic of accumulation, embedded in long-term state structures and political ideology—we instead should conceptualize them as states in capitalist society—where capitalist accumulatory logic is more contingent in its institutionalization (Jessop, 2016: 114–7). This places (semi-) peripheral state development within ‘the context of the world market, interstate system, and the emergence of world society as a horizon of action’ (241).

Returning to the Poulantzasian notion of relative autonomy could potentially place theorists of developmental states and global political economy in conversation with transdisciplinary socio-ecological systems and complexity theories, which explore interdependent relations between parts of (sub) systems (see Görke and Scholl, 2006; May et al., 2008; Page, 2015). Not only could this help refine the concept of relative autonomy—that is, degrees of operational autonomy and material interdependence within the state apparatus (see Jessop, 2014a, 2014b)—but it could produce a reinvigorated agenda for research on the relative autonomy of (semi-) peripheral states within the capitalist world system, articulating what ability their governments have to craft anti-systemic developmental policy that challenge the predominant material and discursive tendencies, logics, and ecologies of world-systemic capital accumulation.

Research being done from an applied and practitioner-oriented perspective could also apply the neo-Poulantzasian framework for sociological studies of states and development. Over the past two decades, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) supported multiple initiatives to explore the interactions of structures, institutions and [collective] agents. The point of understanding these ‘drivers of change’ is not just to build theory, but to offer theoretically informed reports on how to build equitable and inclusive democracies while promoting a pro-poor agenda (Department for International Development [DFID], 2004; Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre [ESID], 2013). The European Commission’s (2011) ‘Development Models and Logics of Socio-Economic Organization in Space’ initiative also promoted a theory-informed understanding of pathways to development by emphasizing relationships between Agency-Structure-Institutions-Discourse (ASID) (see also Moulaert et al., 2016). Significantly, the ESID project is now asking ‘what can relational approaches offer?’ to scholars of development and social justice, and the ASID approach also stresses the need for a strategic-relational approach that is amenable to world-systemic and other critical political-sociological frameworks of analysis (ESID, 2018; Moulaert et al., 2016; see also Hickey, 2013). With government-funded initiatives and research centres now coming to these conclusions, the time is ripe to expand our sociological theorizing on such topics with a more robust neo-Poulantzasian framework.

One potential case of interest is Botswana. Although it is often hailed as a miraculous post-colonial developmental success, Botswana is rife with social ills including extreme inequality, an undiversified economy, increasingly repressive anti-labour/union policies and a growing centralization of power within the executive branch (Letsididi, 2015; Mogalakwe and Nyamnjoh, 2017; Survival International, n.d.). A neo-Poulantzasian analytical approach would embed the Botswanan government’s goals and strategies (i.e., state strategy, accumulation strategy, and hegemonic vision) within a world-scale framework. First, it could explore the authoritarian statist-cum-neoliberal conjuncture of the world economy (see Bruff, 2014), where developmental outcomes are mediated in and through ‘chains’ of imperial relations and networks of commodity extraction and production. Then, it must discuss the interest of core and (semi-) peripheral fractions of mining capital (e.g., De Beers, Anglo American plc.) that are major investors in Botswana’s crucially important diamonds sector, unveiling the disarticulating influence this has on sectors of the Botswanan power bloc. This would help us understand the policies and practices that subvert a more robust and diversified developmental agenda. The Botswanan government’s selecting of ‘worthy’ versus ‘unworthy’ workers who should be supported, coupled with their prolonged oppression of the indigenous San population, unveils a political situation that could perhaps be analysed as a three nations discursively and materially articulated developmental project.

This research agenda would surpass some of the limitations found in the resource curse literature (see Sachs and Warner, 2001), which tends to neglect socio-cultural processes while also avoiding discussions of the historical connections between mineral wealth governance and imperialism, colonialism and neoliberalism (McNeish, 2010; Wengraf, 2017). This approach would also be concordant with demands from critical commodity analysts (see Bair and Werner, 2011; Topik, 2009) who call for expanded historical and contextual studies of the commodity production process and its subsequent regional disarticulations; for instance, conducting a case study of a particular Botswanan community within which a diamond reserve sits. Furthermore, it complements the recent re-awakening of scholarly interest in using capital and class-analytical concepts to understanding the disarticulating impact of global capital penetration in post-colonial Africa (see Ouma, 2017; Southall, 2018).

Botswana will inevitably exhaust its subterranean diamond reserves, potentially sparking ‘distributional struggles as different actors in the economy seek to maintain their income’ (Grynberg et al., 2015: 160). This may signal the onset of individual or overlapping economic, political or state crises. There may be stalled capital accumulation, given the significant role that diamonds play in the Botswanan developmental-accumulation strategy. There is potential for a crisis of legitimacy within the Botswana power bloc or its major fraction(s)—a tendency already manifesting in myriad inter- and intra-party squabbles—and between the power bloc and the masses, as the power bloc will come under increasing scrutiny offering political rhetoric regarding diamond-fuelled development that will no longer match the material realities on the ground. Finally, the entire state form may cease to be functional for organizing the power bloc while losing its legitimacy, perhaps resorting to arbitrary violence to quell struggles over increasingly scarce resources. With neoliberalism tottering along as the enduring logic of the capitalist world economy, these crisis tendencies will be heightened for regions whose main accumulation and developmental agendas are linked to core consumption and investment. The spillover effect these potential crises may have within second-order condensations—within which trade agreements and other political-economic phenomena are negotiated as a means of muddling through or ameliorating the structural crises of neoliberalism—will be important to monitor, as what little room negotiators from (semi-) peripheral regions have to manoeuvre in these terrains may diminish for certain sectors while expanding for others.

In summation, the neo-Poulantzasian framework could vivify world-systemic, commodity analytical and developmental-state-based literature on the Botswanan state, mineral wealth governance, the political economy of diamond extraction and much more. At least one ESID-affiliated paper acknowledged Botswana as a case begging for more exploration, helping scholars and development practitioners alike to understand what positive and negative developmental outcomes might be caused by general tendencies of capital and state configurations, and the conditions that produce them (see Routley, 2012). Borrowing from the DFID ‘drivers of change’ lexicon (DFID, 2004: passim), it could conduct a ‘basic country analysis’ of political, economic and discursive rationales that unveil the Botswanan power bloc’s lack of ‘political will’ to: robustly diversify its economy, promote a ‘pro-poor’ economic policy and halt its expulsion of the San. It can also explore the ‘medium-term dynamics of change’ (i.e., conjunctural structuration of strategic action) that impact particular institutions that deal with mining and export policy or that facilitate social mobilization around issues of civil and labour rights. Upon completion, such a study might direct potential donor organizations towards actors and organizations that are working within and at a distance from formal state apparatuses that offer an alternative to the increasingly authoritarian policies emanating from those who have heretofore set the agenda for development in Botswana. Couched in Poulantzasian terminology, it could allow sympathetic organizations to understand the conditions under which popular movements can successfully apply pressure on ‘the internal contradictions of the State’, thus facilitating ‘the spreading, development, reinforcement, coordination and direction of those diffuse centres of resistance which the masses always possess within the state networks, in such a way that they become the real centres of power on the strategic terrain of the State’ (Poulantzas, 1978: 257, 258).

VI Conclusion

For several decades, scholars of various theoretical persuasions studying globalization and development have paid short shrift to the ideas of Poulantzas. This lacuna in scholarly attention is particularly glaring in US-based sociology—disappointing and ironic, given that Poulantzas is considered by most to be a political sociologist. This article has illustrated how his ideas can, in fact, inspire a robust research agenda that avoids structural-determinism while accounting for strategic and collective action occurring on different scales. Rather than trying to proffer a brand new theory to explain global social change and development, my ambition here was more modest: to point towards useful ideas found in the work of Poulantzas, as well as others who elaborate the implicit and explicit themes of his approach to studying capitalism, multi-scalar power relations, and the state, in order to unveil their relevance for sociological studies on globalization and development. Rather than advocating a wholesale acceptance of all of the ideas outlined above, the goal of this article is to put sociologists from a variety of theoretical persuasions in dialogue with (neo) Poulantzasian scholarship.

By promoting periodization and conjunctural analysis, this approach should help us understand what is developing, why it began at a particular historical moment, for whom this development is happening and in which strategic terrains these developments are being brought to fruition. Studying the internationalization of the state and capital relations, along with a region’s position within the worldwide chain of domination and intensified exploitation, should be of interest for world-systems analysts, global commodity and value chain analysts, and global political sociologists/economists. Conceptualizing the state as a social relation with strategically selective institutions can help us understand the socially embedded nature of political-economic phenomena, to the benefit of researchers of past, present and future developmental states. Altogether, a neo-Poulantzasian approach can advance the transdisciplinary endeavour of deciphering ‘the art of the possible’ with regards to statecraft and development (Jessop, 2016: 70). This article encouraged the reader to ponder a simple question: what can sociologists of globalization and development learn from Nicos Poulantzas? Forty years after Poulantzas’ passing, I believe the answer to this question is still: quite a bit.