Paper's abstract

Jean Picq, Thoughts about "the history and law of the States": How can one think the State otherwise?
The prevailing view of the State, in France in particular, is focused on what it has become today and sometimes reduced to its dimension of rule enactor, expression of a sovereign power. Thus movements deeply affecting it seriously challenge the conditions in which sovereignty is exerted: globalization, Europeanization, decentralization… This major historical alteration of the transnational and national system of the regulation of power so far mastered by States induces to think State otherwise. On this respect, rereading the advent of States and of their law in European history is revealing. The pluridisciplinary and comparative approach taken by the author in the lectures he has been giving for the last ten years at the Institut d’études politiques is related here and its assets briefly analyzed.


Key Words : State - figure - governmentality
t. 53, 2010 : p. 404-419

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