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Currently prevailing notions of the state have been considerably shaped by Max Weber's definition which distinguished the state from other socio-political communities through its monopoly on the use of legitimate violence to enforce its administrative decisions. In order to make this normative claim effective, the state needs to have the necessary coercive instruments (military, police, penitentiaries, etc.) at its disposal. At least in the industrialized nations there has therefore been a linear increase in the strength and reach of the state. This seemingly perennial increase in the ability of the state to engineer social outcomes, if necessary through the use of coercive means, was fuelled by a steady increase in economic production and a corresponding enlargement of the relative share of public spending. The lasting recessions in the aftermath of 1973, however, dramatically altered this overall picture. The end of full employment, seemingly unlimited economic growth, and attendant tax revenue exposed fundamental structural limits of statehood. This set in motion an ongoing academic and public discourse on the appropriate functional scope of a weakening state in an increasingly globalizing world which appeared far less amenable to deliberate political control, given pressures towards greater efficiency, competitiveness, and rationalization.
The ensuing debate led to the re-appraisal of alternative conceptions of statehood which had been common until the early modern era before the onset of the dramatic innovation and concentration of the governmental machinery described by Weber. Even before the creation of the Weberian modern rational corporate state (rationaler Anstaltsstaat), the state possessed a monopoly on legitimate violence. But because it lacked the necessary direct means of coercion, the state generally relied for the delegated enforcement of its decisions on the services of duly authorized private actors.
