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The State and Public Bureaucracies: A Comparative and Historical Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
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In its conventional Weberian version, “the state” is used to refer to human associations that successfully claim the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. In this conception, the state is presumed to have final authority, i.e., sovereignty as first formulated by Jean Bodin. As elaborated by David Easton, such a state is a neutral “transformatory structure” that would be “captured” by elected regimes, and used as an instrument for their own specific political purposes.
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References
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