Second-Order Condensations of Societal Power Relations

Second-Order Condensations
of Societal Power Relations:

Environmental Politics and the
Internationalization of the State from a
Neo-Poulantzian Perspective1
Ulrich Brand
Institute of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria;
ulrich.brand@univie.ac.at
Christoph Görg
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany;
christoph.goerg@ufz.de
Markus Wissen
Institute of Political Science, University of Vienna, Austria;
markus.wissen@univie.ac.at
Abstract: This article develops an understanding of the internationalization of the state which
draws on materialist state theory, regulation theory and the scale debate in radical geography.
It introduces the concept of “second-order condensations of societal relationships of forces”
which aims at advancing Poulantzas’ state theoretical approach and applying it to the analysis
of international state apparatuses, their functions and their relationship to state apparatuses on
other spatial scales. The empirical and political relevance of the theoretical considerations is
elucidated with examples from international resource and environmental policy.
Keywords: state theory, internationalization of the state, scale, regulation and hegemony,
international environmental regulation, biodiversity politics
Introduction
The current debate on climate and energy policies reveals a rather
contradictory picture. On the one hand, the relationships between
society and nature are still shaped by a neoliberal and neo-imperialistic
version of global capitalism. Fossil-based norms of production and
consumption, as well as orientations towards economic growth and
wage labour, are deeply rooted in most national societies. Environmental
policy initiatives up to now have only had a limited capacity to
change these norms and orientations. On the other hand, however, these
dominant forms along with their economic and political regulations
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are increasingly challenged. Conflicts about the direction of societal

development have emerged among dominant actors as well as between
ruling and subaltern groups, acting on different spatial scales from the
local up to the global. Moreover, conflicts between different countries,
and between state apparatuses responsible for environmental policy and
economic development and management within countries, have made
it evident that global capitalism is full of tensions and that (nation)
state policies are not homogeneous. Rather, they reproduce societal
conflicts in their internal structure, some of them internal to the logic
of capitalism, but others not. Finally, despite the fact that international
regulations have become more important the current disputes show that
societal power relations and hegemonic orientations in state apparatuses
are institutionally condensed on different spatial scales.
What can be seen here is that conflicts over societal relationships with
nature are closely interlinked with spatio-institutional transformations
of the state. Taking this observation as our starting point, this article
first reflects on the “internationalization of the state”, seeing it as a
new form of the institutionalization of societal conflicts and power
relations, and second, tests the argument in a case study on biodiversity
politics. Our aim is to advance the critical debate on these issues from
a Poulantzian perspective. Nicos Poulantzas has conceptualized the
state as the “material condensation of societal power relation”. The
question which will be addressed in the following is how this approach
can be applied to a changed scalar configuration and thus improve
our understanding of the internationalized state. We intend to show
that a Poulantzian perspective can highlight aspects which up to now
have remained underexposed in the debate on the internationalization
of the state, especially the persisting importance of the national state
and its relationship to the emerging “new state spaces” (Brenner 2004).
Nevertheless, there are theoretical shortcomings in Poulantzas’ work
which can, in turn, be overcome by combining the latter with insights
from theories of hegemony, regulation and scale. We will introduce the
concept of “second-order condensations” of the societal relationship
of forces as a central category and analyze how it allows us to
deal with multiscalar socio-economic developments, (non-)hegemonic
constellations, societal power relations and struggles, as well as with
the structures and modes of institutional politics.
In the first part of the paper, we deal with some of the challenges posed
by, and shortcomings present within, critical social science approaches
to (international) political economy concerning the concept of state
and state theory. In the second part, having discussed central aspects
of the work of Poulantzas, we introduce our understanding of the
internationalization of the state and our central category of “second-
order condensations”. In the third and last part, the political relevance
of these theoretical considerations will be tested in a case study on

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international resource and environmental politics, with special reference

to biodiversity politics. We will concentrate on the question of how
societal power relations and hegemonic orientations are inscribed into
the structures and processes of state policies in the course of neoliberal-
imperial globalization and what this means for emancipatory struggles.
The State in Critical Approaches to (International)

Political Economy
The process of neoliberal-imperial globalization has underlined the
significance of critical social science approaches. The politicistic
narrowing of international relations to questions of explicit political-
institutional regulations (eg in regime theory or cosmopolitan
orientations; cf Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger 1997; Held and
Koenig-Archibugi 2005 respectively), not only falls short of addressing
the inner constitution of the capitalist economy, but also suffers from a
simplified state concept. In these approaches, state, international politics
or global governance is conceptualized in such a way that it comes to
embody a kind of world society rationality to solve cooperatively global
problems caused, for instance, by the economy or by the environmental
crisis. However, certain critical approaches also suffer from under-
theorized concepts of the state, which we shall illustrate with reference
to some prominent examples. Here, the challenge consists of coping
with the reality of institutionalized domination in the form of the state,
without falling into statism or overestimating the extent to which the
state is the subject of societal developments.
The Neo-Gramscian Approach

In recent years, neo-Gramscian approaches to international political
economy, with their focus on hegemony and social forces, have become
very prominent (Cox 1993; Gill 2003; overview and critique in Bieler
and Morton 2006). Despite differences within these approaches, the
focus on civil society processes leads scholars to privilege analytically
classes vis-à-vis states: “Subverting the neorealist paradigm, for
an understanding of international relations, states are conceptually
subordinated to the international processes of class formation” (Scherrer
1999:27, our translation). The interests of these classes, who are
seen to be the central actors of international politics, are largely
predetermined by their position in the production process and are
mainly made apparent by intellectuals. Thus, we can identify a tendency
towards a double functionalism concerning the state in neo-Gramscian
approaches. On the one hand, the internationalization of the state
is considered to complement the internationalization of production,
which—especially in the work of Robert Cox—represents primarily

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an ideological consensus and a coherent institutional form. On the

other hand, despite the important focus on social forces and particularly
classes, international political institutions and organizations are more or
less understood as an expression of the ruling classes and their strategies
(and are defined as nébuleuse, too; see Baker 1999:79–80). Leo Panitch
(1996:89–96) correspondingly criticizes the underestimation of the
state, as well as an outside-in approach, through which international
processes have effects on national ones and the state becomes the victim
of international developments. As a result, the active role of the national
state and its internal social struggles are underestimated.
The Transnational State

William Robinson, who formulated a second important theoretical
approach, close to the Neo-Gramscian one, argues that a transnational
capitalist class or a “new global ruling class”, respectively, has emerged
as an organized minority which disposes over strong networks and
enough resources to realize its projects (2004:33ff). The transnational
classes are able to organize themselves and express their class power
in transnational state (“TNS”) apparatuses (2004:87). The transnational
state does not replace the national state but the latter is reorganized
according to the world market and its related forces. The “TNS
apparatus is an emerging network that comprises transformed and
externally-integrated national states, together with the supranational
economic and political forums and that has not yet acquired any
centralized institutional form” (Robinson 2001:166). Its major function
is the institutional safeguarding of the dominance of the transnational
capitalist class.
Robinson highlights important issues: the transnationalization of
social relations, the growing importance of international political
institutions and the transformation of national states through
globalization. However, there are three problems with his approach.
First, he refers mainly to classes as social forces and thus lacks a more
comprehensive understanding of domination which also includes gender
and racialized relations or societal relationships with nature. Secondly,
Robinson’s concept of the state shifts between acknowledging the
state’s character as a social relation and vearing towards a functionalist
account. Thus, on the one hand he argues that the TNS is “a particular
constellation of class forces and relations bound up with capitalist
globalization” (2004:99). On the other hand, he emphasizes the state’s
role as an instrument to realize transnationalized class domination.
Accordingly, he sees its main function in creating and maintaining
the preconditions for the valorization and accumulation of capital in
the global economy (2004:101). Third, the national state in Robinson’s
approach merges into the transnational capitalist state:

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The function of the nation-state is shifting from the formulation

of national policies to the administration of policies formulated
through supranational institutions . . . National governments serve as
transmission belts and filtering devices for the imposition of the
transnational agenda (2001:166, 188).
Asymmetric power relations between different national states, which
manifest themselves for example in an unequal distribution of the
opportunities to influence the shape of international institutions, remain
underexposed in this perspective. This is due to the centrality of the
transnational in Robinson’s approach. International political institutions
are understood as the institutionalization of transnational class relations
but not, additionally, as the material condensations of power relations
among national states. As we will argue below, the latter is crucial for
an adequate understanding of the contradictory character of capitalist
globalization and its societal regulation.
Empire
A third approach in critical international political economy to be
discussed here is the Empire thesis as elaborated by Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri. The Empire is the (bio)political and economic regime of
contemporary capitalism, as it emerged after 1989. It means the “order
of capital as a whole” (Negri 2001:23, our translation), which comprises
not only the political sphere as such, but also the whole political,
economic, cultural and subjective constellation of domination. And this
order is increasingly uncoupled from the nation state (Hardt and Negri
2000:309). According to Hardt and Negri, in the post-modern Empire
national states will still exist but they will become largely insignificant
for the enforcement of domination and as terrains for making social
compromises. Many functions of the state and constitutional elements
are transferred to other levels. Hardt and Negri argue that the autonomy
of the political sphere no longer exists because state and capital have
merged and state functions are integrated in the command mechanisms
of transnational corporations on the global level. Thus only a few
functions of the state remain important on the level of the national state,
especially those concerning disciplinary and redistributive policies. The
state no longer needs civil society in order to mediate antagonisms and
legitimize domination. The idea of the decline of the national state,
as well as the idea of power centralization, implies that competition
among national states is no longer an essential element of the dynamics
of (world) society. Capital is not considered to be a social relation, while
competition and the internal dynamics which are central in historical-
materialist theory are not taken into account (see also Panitch and Gindin
2002; Wissel 2002). Along with these shortcomings, Hardt and Negri
have no interest in societal institutions, how they are constituted as a

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condensation of societal power relations, how they interlink and compete

with each other. Accordingly, political disputes can only be conceived
of as emerging in opposition to, but not in or around, institutions.
International organizations, like the World Bank, the IMF or the WTO,
are, in functional terms, reduced to being the coordination instruments of
the transnational corporations, which, furthermore, organize the means
of imperial domination. The politically problematic conclusion of Hardt
and Negri is that, in this constellation, there is no longer any basis for
reformist strategies and societal compromises (2000:118ff). With their
understanding of Empire, an elaborated concept of institutions might
even be an obstacle to them since they would have to consider the
contradictions inside and among the dominating institutions as well as
the (im)possibilities of institutional politics.
The Scale Debate

A much more sophisticated approach to the changes in the spatial scale
of politics and economy in the course of capitalist globalization is that of
the “scale” debate. It originates in Anglo-American radical geography
(Smith 1984; Taylor 1982) and has been further developed by other
social scientists (Brenner 2004; Jessop 2002: ch 5; for an overview of
the debate see Herod and Wright 2002; Keil and Mahon 2008; Sheppard
and McMaster 2004). This debate’s starting point is the critique of the
“pervasive naturalization of the nation scale of social relations” (Brenner
1998:31; cf Brenner et al 2003), which has prevailed for a long time even
in critical social science approaches. A central argument is that scale
cannot be treated as simply given, but that it is socially produced and thus
changeable. In the words of Erik Swyngedouw (1997:141), “(s)patial
scales are never fixed, but are perpetually redefined, contested, and
restructured in terms of their extent, content, relative importance, and
interrelations”. Furthermore, one scale of political and socio-economic
organization can never be understood in isolation but only as part of a
multiscalar configuration. The scale approach thus is a relational concept
in a double sense. First, scale is not analyzed in the singular—that is,
as a certain spatial level like the national state, a city region or the
European Union. Rather, the focus is on the relationship between scales,
on “their changing positionalities in relation to other geographical
scales and scaling processes” (Brenner 2001:603). Up to this point
there are considerable similarities between the scale debate and the
multi-level governance concept in political science which addresses the
“dispersion of authoritative decision-making across multiple territorial
levels” (Hooghe and Marks 2001:XI; see also Bache and Flinders 2004).
However, whereas the multi-level governance approach is rather state-
centric and analyzes mainly the interaction of various levels of decision-
making, the scale concept addresses social struggles and the production

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of scale. This is the second relational aspect of the concept and at the
same time one of its essential contributions to an understanding of recent
processes of social transformation. Scale is conceptualized as the spatial
manifestation of social power relations or, as Neil Smith puts it, as “the
geographic organizer and expression of collective social action” (Smith
1995:61). The focus of the analysis thus is less on scale “as such” but on
the social struggles through which scale is produced (Schmid 2003:222,
our translation):
scale (at whatever level) is not and can never be the starting point for
sociospatial theory. Therefore, the kernel of the problem is theorizing
and understanding “process” . . . The ontological priority for a process-
based view . . . refuses to tackle global-local interplays in terms of a
dialectic, an interaction or other mode of relating a priori defined
things . . . A process-based approach focuses attention on the
mechanisms of scale transformation and transgression through social
conflict and struggle (Swyngedouw 1997:141; see also McMaster and
Sheppard 2004:16; Smith 2000:725).
The crucial merit of the scale debate is that is has introduced an
important spatial dimension into materialist accounts on recent societal
transformation processes. However, from a state theoretical perspective
there remain two problems which have not yet been sufficiently
addressed. The first is connected with the scale debate’s focus on the
production of scale through social conflict. Even if this is a crucial
methodological advantage which inhibits a reification of scale, it has
somewhat distracted attention away from an analysis of the structuring
effects of scalar configurations. To quote Neil Brenner:
[a]n investigation of the contextually specific conditions under
which scalar structuration . . . generates sociologically or politically
significant social, spatial and scalar effects remains a crucially
important, if largely neglected, research task (Brenner 2001:606).
Thus, the successful methodological struggle against spatial reifications
has led to an analytical neglect of the ways scale can actually be
taken for granted, or conversely, challenged by social actors. In other
words, the focus on social struggles has left the role of institutions
underexposed. Second, the scale debate has convincingly challenged
the “ontological fixation of the national state” (Schmid 2003:233, our
translation). Without contending that the national state is disappearing,
it has emphasized the necessity of taking a multiscalar perspective
both theoretically and empirically. However, the question remains
unanswered whether the scalar shape of the capitalist state is historically
more or less accidental or if the “relativization of scale” (Bob Jessop)
only refers to certain state functions whithout affecting the essentially
national character of the state in capitalism (see also Callinicos 2007

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and the contribution of Hirsch and Kannankulam in this issue). What is

thus required is a clarification of the relationship between state rescaling
and the role of the national state and the international system of states.
To sum up, critical approaches to (international) political economy
have highlighted the emergence and transformation of classes and
state apparatuses beyond the national scale. Their crucial merit lies
in overcoming a state-centric view in international relations as well as
the assumption that the national state is the primary scale where social
conflicts take place and compromises are negotiated. Nevertheless, there
is a demand for further research and clarification in at least two respects.
First, the focus on class alliances and social struggles has distracted
attention from the role of institutions. It has left unexplored how exactly
(transnational) social power relationships are translated into new state
configurations and to what extent the latter are able to process social
antagonisms. In short, there is a lack of a materialist understanding
of (international) state institutions. Second, the relationship between
international state apparatuses, on the one hand, and the national
state as well as the system of national states, on the other, remains
underexposed in the approaches discussed above. Even if all (perhaps
with the exception of Hardt and Negri) agree with the fact that the
national state still plays a significant role they still run the risk of
considering it almost accidental as to which state functions are settled
on which spatial scales. Thus, the task remains to work out the structural
differences between state apparatuses on different spatial scales and to
clarify the relationship between various state spaces. In the following
section we shall address these issues from a Poulantzian perspective on
the state and state transformations.
The Internationalization of the State

The debate about the reconfiguration of political domination connected
with ongoing capitalist globalization shows the need for an improved
understanding of the state, while avoiding the pitfalls of methodological
nationalism, of statism and functionalism. It is our central argument
that such an understanding can be provided by referring to the work of
Nicos Poulantzas, though a reformulation of his approach is required. We
elaborate this, first, by outlining some major “Poulantzian” arguments.
Second, we sketch somewhat schematically our understanding of the
“internationalization of the state” and combine it with the concepts
of hegemony and regulation. Third, we develop our central proposal,
which is to understand international politics and the internationalization
of the state as “second-order condensations of societal relationships of
forces”. We conclude this section with some remarks on the relationship
between the state and nature from our theoretical understanding.

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The State as a Social Relation

Nicos Poulantzas (1936–1979) influenced the state-theoretical debate
decisively in the 1970s with his argument that the state has to be
conceptualized as a social relation. Of utmost importance was, and still
is, his book State, power, socialism (1980; we refer here to the German
edition).2 The starting point is the theoretical statement—broadly
accepted in state theory—that the state is institutionally separated from
the rest of society, disposes over specific and impersonal means of power,
fulfils certain functions and materializes in apparatuses. According to
historical-materialist approaches, the institutional separation of the state
from the rest of society is the specific form of bourgeois domination.
For Poulantzas the state is part of the social division of labor and the
latter constitutes the basis for the appropriation of the surplus value by
some members of society ([1978] 2002:45, 92). Social forces and their
strategies, political and social struggles as well as the relations of forces
are constitutive of capitalist societies and therefore provide an adequate
understanding of the state. Thus, the state is not simply given but must be
reproduced permanently through struggles and the contested functioning
of capitalist social structures and, more generally, production relations.
At the same time, the state is constitutive for different social
relations, especially (re-)production and class relations as well as
ideology.
The state as a social relation and as a specific institutional and
discursive ensemble, Poulantzas argues, is the “material condensation
of societal relations between different forces” ([1978] 2002:159),
that is, the state condenses the various societal contradictions and
conflicts—especially class relations and class conflicts—and makes
them processable. Struggles and compromises of the past are inscribed
in the state—that is, its apparatuses; the state gives the relations of forces
a particular form and is part of the struggles. As an institutional ensemble
the state is central to the exercise of political power and has a strategic
meaning for societal struggles. But, again, it is important to note that
the state is not pre-existent to social relations like class relations but
constituted through them. The state is a processing condensation and
has a “statist” (etatisierend) effect on the multitude of social relations
(Demirović 2007:238).
In this condensation, dominant societal interests (like the securing of
capital valorization or the protection of patriarchal domination) play a
crucial role, although not only these interests are materialized. Thus,
the state is an arena for social conflicts, in which various social forces
fight for the generalization of their interests and values, as well as for
the recognition of their social identities (as owners of assets, religious
groups, migrants, homosexuals etc). These generalizations take place
in the form of laws, jurisprudence, the ways in which resources are
mobilized or through discourses.

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Accordingly, a certain institutional permanency of state apparatuses

evolves. However, as far as they represent a materialization of
antagonistic societal conditions, these apparatuses—administrative,
ideological, repressive—do not constitute a homogeneous block, but
stand in a contentious relationship to each other (one may think of
the relationship between a ministry of economics and a ministry for
international development cooperation). Although state apparatuses as
condensed relationships of forces develop different “state projects”
(Jessop 1990:315f), from their contentious relation a hegemonic state
project might emerge—as happened historically with the Keynesian
project or, nowadays, with the neoliberal-imperial project—which
represents a kind of common reference point.3 Despite all the differences
and conflicts between apparatuses and societal forces like industrial
lobby associations, trade unions and others, a certain coherence can
emerge. This coherence is based on the relative autonomy of the state
apparatuses vis-à-vis societal forces.
Poulantzas has shown that the state is neither a neutral and rational
authority for the solution of societal problems nor the “instrument” of
the ruling class(es). Rather, it is the specific and material condensation of
societal power relations. In order to comprehend the internationalization
of the state, however, we cannot directly draw on Poulantzas’ state
theory. Poulantzas is still attached to notions of a classical Marxist
critique of political economy. His premise is that the mode of production
is determinant in the “last instance” and that the contradiction between
capital and labour is the predominant societal contradiction. This
perspective neglects other social forces and contradictions. Furthermore
it does not take into account societal relationships with nature.
Notwithstanding the importance of conceptualizing the state as a
social relation, Poulantzas’ understanding of the state has a tendency
towards a certain functionalism because the relative autonomy of the
state is limited to the following functions: the organization of the
dominant class(es) and the disorganization of the dominated ones
([1978] 2002:84; see also Wissel 2007). Alex Demirović (2007:69)
emphasizes that Poulantzas cannot explain how the diverse interests
of the bourgeoisie converge to a coherent class interest and why the
latter assumes a political and state character.4 Thus, understanding
the internationalization of the state requires us to combine Poulantzas’
state theory with other approaches, especially those on hegemony and
regulation.
State, Hegemony and Regulation

On a general level, the internationalization of the state can be understood
as a complex process of transforming the state and the state system
which is associated with neoliberal-imperial globalization. The term

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“internationalization of the state” was introduced in the 1980s by Robert

Cox (1987) and advanced amongst others by Sol Picciotto (1990) and
Joachim Hirsch (1997, 2003) as well as, from a feminist perspective,
Birgit Sauer (2003).5 Sabah Alnasseri (2004) proposed using the term for
a theorization of peripheral states, and Jan Drahokoupil (2008) applied
it to the developments in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989.
The core significance of the concept lies in three dimensions. First, in
the course of the globalization of the capitalist mode of production, the
“integral state”—that is, state and civil society, the latter consisting of
firms, media, non-profit organizations—is being internationalized, and
with it also “Western” production and consumption norms, behavioural
attitudes, culture and so on. This leads to stronger competition under
the overall hegemony of the world-market oriented faction. These
processes do not necessarily mean a global homogenization; rather,
they often imply diversity or fragmentation. They go hand in hand with
an internationalization of social structures, especially class structures.
The capitalist class was enhanced enormously through the dynamics at
play in the so-called emerging economies like China and India and it
transnationalized itself (Plehwe et al 2006).
Second, mediated by neoliberal-imperial globalization, a
transformation of the national state takes place. More than 10 years
ago, Joachim Hirsch defined such a process as a development towards
the “national competition state” (Drahokoupil 2008; Hirsch 1995), and
Bob Jessop outlined a transition towards a “Schumpeterian workfare
regime” (Jessop 1997:73). This process deals with the “interiorization”
(Poulantzas [1973] 2001:24, 27f; cf also Jessop 2004:66) of real and
alleged “external constraints”. During capitalist restructuring since the
1980s, external capital repositioned itself in a dominant way in the
power bloc. Therefore, neoliberal globalization is fostered by certain
forces and interest groups, although overall control remains beyond
their grasp. Interiorization means that the “material constraint of the
world market” (Sachzwang Weltmarkt) (Altvater 1987) is recognized
in the discursive and material practices of social and public-political
actors as placing limits on their capacity to think and act; and these
limits are materially anchored in the institutions. It is an uneven
process. Especially in the South-Eastern Asian countries in the 1990s
and today in China, a strong interventionist state is important. Part
of the transformation of the national state is the growing inter-state
competition, which is partly mediated through international political
organizations, networks or informal mechanisms.
Third, with the growth of transnational social processes, international
political-institutional structures have become more important. Jessop
(2002:195ff) has referred to this process as the “denationalization of
the state”. One can refer to inter- and supranational institutions like
the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the EU as international state

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apparatuses which are emerging or whose importance is increasing.

These apparatuses do not correspond to the centralized modern national
state, which—at least in principle—has the monopoly of the legitimate
use of violence. Nevertheless, they inherit certain state functions, like
the establishment of law and order, the protection of property and the
political regulation of societal conflicts. In this paper, we are especially
interested in the functioning of these international state apparatuses
and their relationship with other spatial political-institutional scales—
especially that of the national state.
The internationalization of the state is a presupposition of neoliberal-
imperial globalization. At the same time, it is a medium through
which the contradictions posed by the latter are processed (in fact,
often more or less stable regulation and hegemony do not occur). It
does not, however, imply the emergence of a centralized international
state because the fragmentation of the world system into different
spaces of reproduction is an essential condition of the global capitalist
order. Social compromises and strategic alliances are formed under the
conditions of territorial fragmentation shaped by global political and
economic competition. In other words, the successful regulation of the
structural contradictions of capitalist societalization essentially rests on
the fact:
that the classes which face each other in the context of global
valorization and accumulation are in themselves politically separated
through the existence of competing states. The capitalist class
relationship is modified through the state system in such a way that
the members of classes—wage earners and enterprises—who stand
in competition to each other are bound together at the level of the
state and thus brought into opposition with the corresponding classes
beyond the state territory. It is particularly for this reason that, at
the level of the single state, the possibility emerges of forming class-
spanning coalitions in order to secure common competitive advantages
on the world market (Hirsch 1995:32, our translation, emphasis in the
original; see also Alnasseri et al 2001).
Due to the specific mode of integration into the world market, the
compromises and alliances which can be found in advanced capitalist
countries differ from those in developing countries.
The processes of regulation and hegemony—as well as the structures
and power relations connected with them—take place in very different
spheres of society: in everyday life relations and orientations, or, more
generally, in the ways of living of both capital owners and wage earners;
in the forms of internal organization of companies and competition
between them. Regulation is a process without center but the strategies of
different actors as well as learning processes are important. The concept
of hegemonic projects—which then in a complex process aim to become

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state projects—helps us to shed light on the fact that specific social

forces might be able to universalize their world views and interests.
The central task or function of the internationalized state consists
of making the antagonistic societal conditions firm and permanent.
Thus, the main focus of supranational and international institutions
is on the minimization of risk for foreign investors by assuring them a
comprehensive legal order, property protection, predictable legal rules
and favorable macro-economic policies. Hence, the internationalization
of the state is a project of the ruling forces—and here especially the
project of classes and class alliances—through which they try to impose
and to strengthen their interests. Correspondingly, international political
institutions cannot only be interpreted as a result of the routinization
of behavior, but also as a result of strategies and projects and as a
condensation of changing societal power relations.
Safeguarding the conditions of reproduction in favor of dynamic
capitalist development has become a core function of international and
supranational politics. This concerns the complex relationship among
the patterns of regulation and accumulation, as well as the connected
social structures on various spatial scales. Functional problems of
reproduction become explicit as manifold phenomena of crisis or
conflict, and they are transformed into the mode of political conflicts
of interests and strategies for problem-solving. Nevertheless, these
functions can only be theoretically determined to a certain degree,
because in their concrete expression, in their historical concreteness,
they evolve in the course of struggles. Accordingly, the extension of
economic state functions can lead to tensions inside the hegemonic
block and their withdrawal can provoke social protests. Therefore,
certain functions, in their concrete expression, may not necessarily
be functional in the sense of bringing about a successful societal
stabilization. The contradictory character of the capitalist process of
accumulation prevents this kind of functional co-ordination of society
as a whole.
The Concept of “Second-Order Condensations”

In order to grasp the role of international political institutions
more precisely, we have proposed the notion of the “second-order
condensation of societal relationships of forces” (Brand 2007; Brand
and Görg 2008; Brand et al 2008; Görg and Wissen 2003). Herewith,
we aim to provide an analytical instrument which helps to reflect
the interrelation between societal power relations and the processes
of institutionalization in all its complexity, while taking into account
the relationship between the national state and other state spaces.
While most approaches to institution theory do not develop any
concept of social forces and of their relationships with each other,

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historical-materialist approaches, as seen above, often underestimate

processes of institutionalization. The concept of “second-order
condensation” tries to fill this gap. A basic assumption is that the
generalization of interests more and more condenses itself materially in
multi-scalar institutional configurations. But this is neither functionally
given, nor necessarily successful. Moreover, the concept of condensation
emphasizes the fact that through their condensation societal relations and
forces are themselves shaped: that is, the state structures the relationships
of social forces through specific forms of materialization. Poulantzas’
argument that the state is a condensation of societal relationships
of forces means that international state apparatuses also deal with
manifold societal contradictions and conflicts—not exclusively but in
overlapping ways. Different state apparatuses may deal with problems
in contradictory ways: one apparatus may promote growth and the use
of fossil energy, whereas another apparatus attempts to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions by reducing the use of fossil energy. In general,
international state apparatuses: create a terrain on which to deal with
conflicts; are an objective of different strategies; carry out policies and
search for compromises; and seek to stabilize or shape relationships
of forces. They do not just “mirror” societal relations, strategies and
struggles but shape them through the process of condensation. A specific
mode of international politics is the diplomatic or intergovernmental
one in which the condensations of power relations are performed on the
international scale and shaped by the latter.
The term “second order” refers to the fact that the strategies of
national states, as central actors in the international realm, are already
the expression of condensed national power relations. International
institutions are thus concepetualized as the condensation of the
power relationship between competing “national interests” which are
themselves shaped by domestic social struggles and compromises.
However, this notion has to be differentiated in two respects. First,
on the international level actors other than national governments
play an important role, especially transnational class actors (such as
those analyzed by Neo-Gramscianism: Gill 1990; Plehwe, Walpen
and Neunhöffer 2006), internationally acting NGOs and knowledge
communities, the mass media as central elements of an international
public sphere, and trans-local actors and coalitions (Jasanoff 2004),
for example those of indigenous peoples and grass-roots movements.
These actors try to influence international institutions directly, too, and
not (only) through the representatives of national states.
Second, the term “second order” does not stand for a linear
relationship. National governments indeed have to formulate a “national
interest”—that is, a compromise on the national level—in order to be
able to act in bilateral as well as in multilateral negotiations. Thus, power
relations, condensed in national strategies, are decisive for the character

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of international institutions. However, international institutions, along

with the configuration of compromises and hegemonic projects on
the international level, affect the national relation of forces and,
therefore, the formulation of “national interests”. The restrictions and
incentives created by them are interiorized by actors on the national
scale and become materialized in the institutions of the national state.
Additionally, a “national interest” can just emerge by way of bilateral
and multilateral negotiations and rules. For example, the establishment
of the stability criteria for the European Economic and Monetary Union
can be interpreted as a strategy of the national ministries of finance
and the national central banks in order to introduce, through the back
door of the EU, a monetarist austerity policy, whose introduction
otherwise would have faced the resistance of other national state
apparatuses and of important social actors. In this case, the formulation
of the “national interest” in monetarist politics did not precede the
multinational negotiations (at least not in every EU member country),
but was rather promoted through the supranational institutionalization of
monetary constraints. Many political processes which occur within the
national state are more or less internationalized. The state is not external
to these processes; indeed the state is where the different interests and
strategies of societal actors may condense into hegemonic projects. They
are made durable, armored with state authority.
Far from referring to a necessarily linear or hierarchical
relationship among different spatial scales, the concept of second-order
condensations denotes a complex relationship among condensations
over various spatial scales. Furthermore, it aims to overcome the
rigid dichotomy between national and international processes (and
also subnational ones) without running the risk of losing sight of
the centrality of the national state or, more generally, the necessary
fragmentation of capitalism in discrete territorial units.
The relationship between the internationalization of the state and
the persistent importance of the national scale can be grasped as
follows. First, many internationally developed policies have to be
implemented and put into practice by national states and governments.
International institutions do not always possess their own financial
resources. Furthermore, they lack coercive power. The “monopoly of
legitimate physical violence” (Max Weber) is still substantially rooted
in the national state—with a few exceptions like the tendencies towards
the internationalization of law and the transfer of coercive power to the
UN Security Council or to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. However,
even these levels of control are fundamentally determined by national
states and existing power relations. Thus, international institutions are
incapable of providing continuity and stability to hegemonic projects
on their own, and even less if a large number of conflicts require the use
of repressive legal measures or even of violent, military measures.

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Second, one strength of international institutions (for example the

World Bank, see Goldman 2005) is based on the enforcement of
hegemonic projects like that of neoliberalism. As Paul Cammack has
pointed out:
international organisations will be better able to address the
contradictions inherent in global capitalism if they are able to adopt
a system-wide perspective which is not identical to the concerns of a
particular state or set of states, or particular private capitalist interests
(2003:40f).
However, there seem to be structural limits to the hegemonic capacities
of international institutions. The lack of liberal-democratic procedures,
which in many countries balance the structural contradictions of
capitalist societies by transforming them into negotiable competing
interests, helps powerful national states and capital factions to pursue
their interests more directly on the international scale. According to
Jens Wissel (2007:130ff), the relative autonomy of international state
apparatuses is weaker and the structural selectivities inscribed in them
are stronger compared with state apparatuses on the national scale.
Thus, the quality of international institutions as material condensations
of social power relations differs from that of the national state. On
the one hand, this is an advantage from the perspective of dominant
social forces and national government representatives. By materializing
their interests in international institutions they may strengthen their
position in their respective national arenas or vis-à-vis other national
states. In this way, national social compromises may be broken up and
national as well as international power relationships may be shifted.
This seems to be a major reason for the increasing institutionalization
of power relations on the inter- and supranational scale as opposed to
the national or local scale since the crisis of Fordism. On the other hand,
however, weaker actors may also try to pursue their interests by shaping
international institutions. As will be shown in the case study below, this
may result in competing regulations on the same subject matter, with the
institutions where subaltern interests are better represented acting in the
shadow of those that are dominated by powerful interests. Furthermore,
strong structural selectivities prevent subaltern actors from successfully
articulating their positions and negotiating compromises which reflect at
least partially their interest positions so that these actors have to pursue
their interests beyond the existing institutional terrains or to politicize the
latter. As a result, international institutions may become dysfunctional
from the perspective of the forces that have shaped them, giving rise to a
search for other forums and scales of negotiation (Wissen 2009). It is in
the face of this structural hegemonic deficit of international institutions
that the role of the national state comes into play. The institutional shape
of many national states is the result of a long history of social conflicts

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and compromises which reflect the power not only of capital but also of
social movements. Against this background, the national state remains
a principal scale for processing societal contradictions.
State and Nature

Societal relationships with nature are an important element in the
internationalization of the state. They are not only condensed in
social institutions and scalar configurations, but also in networks
and technologies. As shown by actor-network theory and other post-
structuralist approaches (Latour 1993; Haraway 1991), nature is shaped
and government exercised not only through institutions but also through
networks of human and non-human actors like technological artifacts,
which are not just instruments of human intervention into nature but also
significantly shape our perception and our material practices vis-à-vis
nature. In focusing on issues of scale, institutions and hegemony we
thus do not deny the importance of networks and “actants” (hybrid
characters which are constituted through the relationship between
human and non-human actors within networks). However, we would like
to emphasize the materiality which social power relations gain through
their institutionalization—an issue which from our point of view has
been somewhat neglected not only in the approaches discussed above
but also in recent debates on networks and critiques of the scale debate
(Marston et al 2005; for a combination of Marxist and post-Marxist
accounts on nature see Castree 2000; early studies on the relation of
state and nature are given in Lipschutz and Conca 1993).
Analyzing societal relationships with nature from the perspective
of a materialist state theory can provide important insights into
the transformation of the state. As shown by Erik Swyngedouw
(2004), this applies particularly to the scalar dimensions of the state.
Swyngedouw has analyzed, from a scalar perspective, the conflict
over the management of water resources in Spain. Traditionally, water
resources had been managed along political-administrative boundaries.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, there was an
attempt to introduce the river basin as the primary scale of water resource
management. From the perspective of the driving forces of this project
(a new elite of engineers), this was not just a measure to enhance the
efficiency of water resource management, but also a means to weaken
the position of the traditional elites which dominated institutions on
the local, provincial and national scale and which opposed societal
modernization. If water resources had been managed on a river basin
scale, the control over them, which was crucial for socio-economic
development, would have been reorganized in favor of the modernizers.
This example demonstrates the close interrelation between politics of
scale and the production and transformation of nature. As Swyngedouw

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puts it (on scale and nature, see also Bulkeley 2005; Köhler 2008;
McCarthy 2005; Smith 1984):
nature and environmental transformation are also integral parts of
the social and material production of scale. More importantly, scalar
configurations also produce new sociophysical scales that shape in
important ways who will have access to what kind of nature, and
the particular trajectories of environmental change (Swyngedouw
2004:132).
The value of analyzing state transformations from the perspective
of societal relationships with nature is also emphasized by Whitehead,
Jones and Jones when they argue “that a careful analysis of the various
historical and territorial relationships between states and nature can
provide key insights into the nature of modern power and the requisite
imbroglios of politics and ecology” (2006:50).6 In their own case
study on the changing forms of state intervention into the natural
environment of the West Midlands region (UK) they stress not only
the role of institutions but also the importance of knowledge for the
social production of nature (2006:56). In recent times socio-ecological
interactions have been monitored in a detailed manner by means of
digital knowledge which is accumulated by the state in order to be able
to define the environmental problems to be dealt with and to influence
socio-ecological interactions in a more immediate and pinpointed way
(2006:59ff; on the role of knowledge and power in environmental
politics, cf Kütting and Lipschutz 2009).
The close relationship between state transformation and the
production of nature which these approaches reveal also applies to the
internationalization of the state. The constitution of the environmental
crisis as a problem to be dealt with politically has essentially taken place
on the international scale; the UN conferences in Stockholm 1972 and
Rio 1992 as well as the accumulation of knowledge on the environmental
crisis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or
the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA 2005) being important
examples (cf Parks, Conca and Finger 2008). This has to do with the
fact that the environmental crisis is caused by social structures and
constellations of social forces which are transnational or international in
their character—although important conflicts through which the crisis
is politicized and alternatives are developed are local. Furthermore,
its effects and manifestations—climate change, for example—can be
felt globally, although concrete vulnerabilities are mediated through
place-specific social relations. However, it would be a functionalist
mistake to explain the increasing number of environmental regulations
(environmental regimes and the environmental implications of trade
agreements) as well as the environmental knowledge gathered on
the international scale only with reference to the global character

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of the problems to be dealt with. Instead, one has also to take

into account the changing technical and economic conditions for
the valorization of capital which fostered struggles over new spatio-
institutional forms of environmental regulations. In the following case
study we will thus conceptualize international environmental regulation
as condensations of dominant knowledge and power relations through
which the environmental crisis is defined and the conditions of access
to nature are reorganized. The material and symbolic production and
transformation of nature through environmental regulations are an
important medium for exercising, or challenging, social power and
processing the contradictions of societal relationships with nature.
State Functions Today: Neo-Imperial Globalization and

the Regulation of Societal Relationships with Nature
In contrast to assumptions that environmental measures, and in particular
multinational environmental agreements (MEAs), are tools to protect
nature against their exploitation and destruction in the process of
neoliberal globalization, it is vital to note that, since the 1980s, a
paradigm of neoliberal valorization of nature has been inscribed into
the MEAs as well. The new paradigm has been implemented with the
participation of national states, important international organizations
like the World Bank, relevant international class actors, some private
companies and also some NGOs. These environmental agreements as
such do not contradict the economic state function of securing capital
accumulation, but contribute to guaranteeing this function in a new
way. Nevertheless, these agreements should not only be explained in
functional terms—that is, starting from their specific function to secure
the capitalist mode of production—but the contingencies and conflicts
which shaped them should also be taken into account.
Since the 1990s, a tendency to create and protect global markets
of genetic resources can be detected in biodiversity policy, beginning
in the context of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) which was
signed in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. Genetic resources are the
hereditary characteristics of plants, microorganisms and animals and
provide the input for the new so-called life sciences industries in the
pharmaceuticals and seed sector. Thus, the protection of nature—that is,
biodiversity—also secures and regulates biological resources important
for expanding the capitalist way of production. The CBD, however,
is not simply functional in this expansion, but continues to embody
contradictions inherent to international regulation. On the one hand, it
provides some basic conditions for the creation of global markets—
for example, it raises expectations in relation to the economic value
of biodiversity and genetic resources and implies provisions regarding
ownership and distributional aspects. On the other hand, questions of

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ownership and property rights are, in particular, highly controversial

issues, as the regulations inscribed in the CBD are shaped by other
interests—conservation concerns as well as the rights of local actors
such as indigenous people or small farmers. This has led to continuing
internal conflicts within the CBD regarding the regulation of ownership
and distribution (see the conflicts over the regulation of access and
benefit sharing, ABS, within the CBD; cf Brand et al 2008), but also
to external conflicts with other MEAs where other relationships of
societal forces are inscribed. In particular, the relationship with the
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPS Agreement) within the WTO, which deals with the issue of
private property necessary for the capitalist mode of production in
the life sciences industries, represents one of the most controversial
issues in international environmental politics. Both agreements can
be interpreted as specific material condensations of global power
relations, while their content, as well as their relationship to each
other, is an object of negotiations. International political institutions
can be accepted as arenas of international regulation (they can also
be rejected as such, as the critique of the TRIPS Agreement by
governments of powerful southern countries like India or Brazil shows).
As instances of regulation, they possess their own specific density,
which, however, can itself become a matter of conflict in the course
of scale-jumping or forum-shifting strategies: national states like the
USA shift from the TRIPS Agreement to other forums like the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in face of the politicization
of the former; local actors like indigenous peoples organizations
use international forums like the CBD to strengthen their positions
against their national governments. Furthermore, bilateral agreements
continue to be a strategy of political regulation (especially regarding the
protection of intellectual property rights).
From this perspective, international political institutions form part
of a global constitutionalism (Gill 2003; cf Bieling 2007)—that is,
the emergence of a bourgeois political and legal framework at the
international scale—and shape the access to important resources and
to global markets. However, subaltern claims and interests are also
condensed within these institutions, for example issues of benefit sharing
with respect to the profits drawn from the commercialization of genetic
resources, or even fundamental resistances, for example against the
patenting of genetic resources. While the first remains inside the logic of
capital valorization, protests against patenting oppose the valorization
of natural resources in monetary terms and, hence, the expansion of
capitalist accumulation. These conflicts are increasingly fought out in
the context of “new state spaces” through politics of scale: the regulation
of biodiversity takes place at the local, national and global scale, and the
power relations between these different political scales are themselves

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part of the struggles. The geographical scale for solving environmental

problems and, thus, the institutional condensation of social conflicts,
becomes itself an element of these conflicts and the question of the
relative power of specific levels of regulations against other—national
against international, local against national and/or international—gains
particular weight.
Contrary to naturalistic interpretations, the answer to the question of
whether a certain problem has a global, national or local character is by
no means predetermined. Conversely, the constitution of environmental
problems is as such a contested social process, which includes the precise
definition of the scale of the problem at hand. This definition will also
structure the corridor of its “solution” and the distribution of adaptation
costs and so on. Thus, through the constitution of environmental
problems societal power relations can shift. And these shifts can express
themselves in the production of new spatial scales of state politics or
the revaluation of existing apparatuses (see the European Commission’s
Environment Directorate-General vis-à-vis the national Ministries of
Environment). Thereby the fundamental power relations underlying
state politics, inscribed in specific parts of national governments, remain
more or less stable. However, new conflict lines develop, for example
between international state apparatuses concerned with environmental
policy and powerful states like the USA, or between the former and
international state apparatuses for trade policy like the WTO. All these
conflicts also affect the political and social disputes on other spatial
scales. The extent to which national states are actually weakened or
strengthened through state-rescaling thus does not only depend on the
process of rescaling as such but also on the power relations within and
between national states. These relationships determine the ability of
individual states to shape the process of rescaling according to their
interests, to escape possible dysfunctionalities of scalar configurations
or even to exploit the latter to their own advantage.
A second-order condensation in new spatio-insitutional
configurations changes the conditions for emancipatory struggles.
Although environmental policy as such is not external to the horizon
of the capitalist logic of valorization, it offers a certain space for
emancipatory strategies. On the one hand, various actors and social
movements continue to place their concerns (at least partially) in
international political institutions and thus to improve the conditions for
their resistance. Corresponding examples are the translocal networks of
indigenous peoples, which, in their confrontation against the capitalist
logic of valorization, can indeed register some positive results on the
international level (Görg 2005). Precisely because their practices and
their existence are threatened by the politics of their respective national
governments (see for example the exploitation of the Amazon area;
cf Roberts and Thanos 2003), their achievements on the international

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scale are relevant. Here the relationship between the scales is again of
great importance. Nevertheless, beyond this, it is necessary to achieve
what, more than three decades ago, Herbert Marcuse (1972:65) targeted
as the dialectical aim of a “radical reformism”: pushing forward
environmental protection to an extent that it can no longer be contained
inside the framework of capitalism. Transcending the logic of capitalist
production and reproduction represents a political goal which today
can only be discussed in the multi-scalar frame of global societal
conditions.
Outlook
Understanding the internationalization of the state as the second-order
condensation of societal relationships of forces opens a new theoretical
perspective for the analysis of international politics. By this means,
considerable differences can be detected concerning concrete political
processes. The ways in which multi-scalar structures and processes are
condensed in different fields of conflict, is not determined a priori and
thus cannot be theoretically deduced. The reflections contained in this
article should be read as proposals for a research programme and not as
a conclusive theory. On the theoretical level, attention still has to be paid
to the interplay of scales, especially below the national one. And the
relationship between rescaling processes and the persisting importance
of the national state has to be further elaborated. We are conscious
of the fact that it is here, beyond the aforementioned difficulties,
that the concept of second-order condensation faces further obstacles.
Future debates, will have to consider how rescaling over several, not
clearly predefined scales can be conceptualized theoretically without
falling back behind the insights of materialist state theory. Further
open questions and problems emerge concerning political diagnoses.
For example, the role of the USA, as a very specific and decisive variant
of condensation on the national level, has to be investigated in more
detail with respect to second-order condensations. For example, to what
extent does the USA continue to be the central political actor of the
international order? And, if so, in which ways: as a “diving eagle”
(Wallerstein 2003) or still as a central hegemonic power (Panitch and
Gindin 2003)? There is much evidence that the USA will go on playing
the central role in the process of second-order condensation because,
more than any other actor, they are able to practise scale-jumping and
forum-shifting (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000:ch 24).
Still, it is far from clear how Europe, the present main political rival,
and China, the possible future main rival, will influence the power
relations of internationalized statehood. The relatively high degree of
political institutionalization in the EU represents a particular case, which
has to be specifically investigated.

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All this implies considerable challenges for emancipatory politics,

which has to be multi-scalar in order to undermine the dominant
spatio-institutional configurations. With this, the question of “counter-
hegemonic” scales arises—that is, of political organization and
alternative discourses and practices which exert pressure on the
dominating institutions. This becomes partly evident—although in
different terms—in sites of critique and exchange of alternative
experiences, such as those found at the World Social Forum and its
regional counterparts.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers of Antipode and to Armin Puller
for their useful comments as well as to Michael Heinrich, Bob Jessop and Daniela Tepe
who have commented on a previous version of this text in a workshop organized by
the International Studies Association (ISA) in March 2007 in Chicago. Furthermore,
we wish to thank the participants of a conference of the Assoziation für kritische
Gesellschaftsforschung (AKG) [Association for Critical Social Research] on “State
theory facing new challenges” in Frankfurt-on-Main.
Endnotes
1
Translated by Marı́a del Carmen Garcı́a Mareco and Stefan Armborst.
2
Before the upheavals of May 1968 in Paris he published his book Pouvoir politique et
classes sociales (published in English in 1978) which sold several thousand copies and
brought him immediate fame. At this time he became a professor at the reform University
Paris VIII Vincennes. He wrote about fascism in Greece, the internationalisation of
capitalist production relations and the composition of classes, and developed more and
more his theory of the state. Additionally, he engaged critically with the work of the
intellectual star at that time, his colleague at Vincennes, Michel Foucault. Poulantzas
was highly criticical of the developments in countries of “really existing socialism” and
promoted cooperation between different forces on the left, for example at the end of the
1970s between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party in France. In the second
half of the 1970s he was more oriented towards social movements. His books were
soon translated into various languages and in the Anglo-Saxon world his debate with
Ralph Miliband became well known (cf Aronowitz and Bratsis 2002; especially Barrow
2002). However, after his suicide in 1979 Poulantzas’ work was overshadowed by post-
structuralism and, in general, state-theoretical debates—both Marxist and general—
became less intense.
3
The “essential theoretical function [of the concept of state project] is to sensitize us
to the inherent improbability of the existence of a unified state and to indicate the need
to examine the structural and strategic factors which contribute to the existence of ‘state
effects’” (Jessop 1990:9). Poulantzas saw this aspect but did not give the same amount
of attention to it as Jessop did later.
4
Furthermore, Poulantzas’ concept of societal forces, and especially of societal class
relations, which he develops from the societal division of labor, remains amorphous. It is
analytically and politically important, however, to consider how to address theoretically
the structured terrains of struggles. Thus, it makes sense to combine Poulantzas’ seminal
understanding of the state as the materially condensed arena of social struggles with
Marxist form analysis (cf Hirsch 1983; Hirsch and Kannankulam 2006). Poulantzas did
not elaborate any concept of the necessary reification of societal relations—particularly
of the commodity and capital relation—which represents a condition for the existence
of capitalist socialization and decisively configures societal practices (Marx 1988:85ff;

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1974:822ff; Heinrich 1999:306ff). In further investigations on the internationalization

of the state, such an interrelation needs to be taken into account more strongly.
5
Martin Shaw (2000) introduced the concept of the “Western-global state” which
focused from a neo-Weberian perspective on the means of physical force.
6
See also McCarthy and Prudham (2004:275) who emphasize the link
between neoliberalism, environment and regulation: “neoliberalism and modern
environmentalism have together emerged as the most serious political and ideological
foundations of post-Fordist social regulation”.
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Second-Order Condensations of Societal Power Relations

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Second-Order Condensations

of Societal Power Relations:

Antipode C 2010 Editorial Board of Antipode.

are increasingly challenged. Conflicts about the direction of societal

international resource and environmental politics, with special reference

The State in Critical Approaches to (International)

The Neo-Gramscian Approach

an ideological consensus and a coherent institutional form. On the

The Transnational State

The function of the nation-state is shifting from the formulation

condensation of societal power relations, how they interlink and compete

The Scale Debate

and the contribution of Hirsch and Kannankulam in this issue). What is

The Internationalization of the State

The State as a Social Relation

Accordingly, a certain institutional permanency of state apparatuses

State, Hegemony and Regulation

“internationalization of the state” was introduced in the 1980s by Robert

apparatuses which are emerging or whose importance is increasing.

state projects—helps us to shed light on the fact that specific social

The Concept of “Second-Order Condensations”

historical-materialist approaches, as seen above, often underestimate

of international institutions. However, international institutions, along

Second, one strength of international institutions (for example the

State and Nature

of the problems to be dealt with. Instead, one has also to take

State Functions Today: Neo-Imperial Globalization and

ownership and property rights are, in particular, highly controversial

part of the struggles. The geographical scale for solving environmental

All this implies considerable challenges for emancipatory politics,

1974:822ff; Heinrich 1999:306ff). In further investigations on the internationalization

and I Stützle (eds) Poulantzas lesen. Zur Aktualität marxistischer Staatstheorie

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