The British Journal of Sociology 2014 Volume 65 Issue 3
If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it . . . Further reflections on the ontological status of the state Colin Hay
Abstract In this brief response to Bob Jessop’s probing yet sympathetic critique, I clarify further the ‘as if realist’ political ontology of the state. I suggest that critical realism’s appeal to the ontological stratification of social reality and to the logic of retroduction are the principal stumbling blocks for ‘as if realists’, that the appeal to state power(s) as distinct from the state as real cannot circumvent the ‘as if realist’ ontological objection to the state as real since both remain conceptual abstractions, but that there is a natural affinity between the strategic-relational approach developed by Jessop and others and the ‘as if realist’ ontology of the state that I here elucidate. Keywords: State; political ontology; ‘as if realism’; critical realism; strategicrelational approach; ontological stratification
I am deeply grateful to Bob Jessop for taking the time and trouble to read and comment upon my article on the political ontology of the state published in the pages of this Journal. His observations are characteristically forensic and incisive and it is, of course, impossible to image a better or more informed interlocutor on such matters as him. Indeed, and as he will perhaps appreciate, it was his own reflections on his own supervisor Philip Abrams’ ‘notes of the difficulty of studying the state’ that first prompted me to consider the ontology of this most elusive and perplexing of objects of analysis. The resulting essay, with which he is kind enough to engage, was my own modest attempt to work through, in a relatively systematic way, the thinking those reflections have prompted over the subsequent years. It is dedicated to the memory of my colleague and friend Steven Buckler, but in different circumstances it could just as easily have been dedicated to Bob Jessop himself. Hay (Centre d’etudes européennes, Sciences Po) (Corresponding author email: [email protected]) © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12086
488
Colin Hay
As such I am, more than anything else, relieved to find that, despite some ostensible impressions to the contrary, there remains so much common ground between us. I am also delighted that he finds something in the piece worth engaging with so directly and comforted by the thought that, if it achieves nothing else, its publication will already have served to smoke him out a little more on some of these ontological questions.
Are you, or have you ever been, a critical realist? Bob Jessop’s intervention is an intriguing and a very interesting one – and, at least in part, its content rather surprises me. Its aim would appear to be to convince me that I really am a critical realist after all – or, perhaps more accurately, that if only I had better understood the critical realist theory of the state I would have been able to cut to the chase rather sooner and yet would still have ended up in essentially the same place, with a (critical realist) political ontology of state power as a social relation (rather like his own). That, he suggests, would have been to take a more parsimonious route to ‘solving the ontological puzzle of the state and state effects’ (2014: 482). The implication of this is that I remain, about the state at least, a critical realist in denial. My critical realism might not be real, but it might just be as if real. That intrigues me. For I have danced with critical realism before. I have been told on a number of occasions that ‘of course’ I am a critical realist and, rather more forcefully on others, that I am definitely not a critical realist and that I do not belong within the fold (see for instance McAnulla 2005). And, chastened perhaps by the latter, some time back I vowed to myself that whilst struggling to be as systematic and coherent on questions of ontology as I could be I was neither going to let labels get in the way of articulating the position I felt most compelled towards nor to care too much about how that position was depicted by others. That took me, over time, to ‘as if realism’ – and that brings me here. But now that I am here I find it quite comforting, surprisingly comforting really, that I might all this while have been harbouring some form of unacknowledged critical realism after all. Of course that might in part be because, even if Bob Jessop thinks that I take a rather circuitous path to it, he does none the less seem to think that my ‘as if’-cum-critical realism does help me resolve the ontological puzzle of the state and its effects. Coming from perhaps the world’s foremost theorist of the state that is, indeed, a comforting thought. But, with respect to critical realism at least, I remain stubbornly unconvinced; and Bob Jessop’s intervention helps me understand better why that might be so. Let me try to explain. The key thing here, I think, is the (arguably) stratified nature of social and political reality. It is this, quite rightly I think, that Jessop places at the heart of © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it . . . 489
the critical realist ontology. As he suggests, ‘it [critical realism] posits a stratified world in which real mechanisms generate effects at the level of the actual, evidence for which may exist at the level of the empirical’ (2014: 482). It is this, above all, that I have difficulties with. But, to be clear, it is not that I reject it as wrong or somehow philosophically problematic (as Jessop at times applies). Whilst I choose not to embrace it, I don’t reject it either – I think it is a perfectly consistent position and one that I am very happy for others to hold. Indeed, my own ontological introspection might be a lot simpler were I to succumb to its undoubted appeal. But I find that I cannot; for me it lacks a certain credibility. I am not a believer and, as such, not a critical realist. The reason why is simple. For me, any stratification to which I might feel the need to make reference is not somehow inherent in the nature of reality itself but is a product of how I puzzle, reflect and think about that reality. As such, and from this way of thinking, stratification is an analytical technique or strategy, a sleight of hand, a deceit in a way – a simplifying device that might help me (and others) make sense of stuff, real stuff. And, for me, the concept of the state is rather like that too. I can imagine others making sense of the same set of empirical phenomena by appeal to a different set of concepts and, quite conceivably, without reference to any system of stratification. And the point is that I wouldn’t wish to presume that my account is somehow better than theirs by virtue of my appeal to this or that structure (the state, for instance) or, indeed, by virtue of its appeal to a system of stratification rather than none. It might be objected at this point that, in effect, I am merely invoking the realist distinction between the transitive and the intransitive here – and there are clearly certain similarities. But in the end, I think, these remain different, albeit subtly different, positions, in that there is no pretence in the more modest ‘as if realism’ I prefer to the capacity of retroduction to infer or discern the ‘real’ from an analysis of its (alleged) effects. From the political ontology of the state to the political ontology of state power And what of state power as a social relation? There are, I think, two rather different claims here. First, Jessop seems to be suggesting that, in a sense, I am right (or at least more right) in seeking to challenge the ontological status (the reality, in effect) of the state than I am (or would be) if I focused instead on state power (particularly state power as a social relation). His second claim, which doesn’t quite follow from the first, is that my ‘as if realism’ leads me, albeit inadvertently, in the end to ‘a critical realist as well as a strategicrelational position on the ontological specificities of state power rather than the state per se’ (2014: 485). These are, again, intriguing suggestions and both have a certain intuitive appeal. But here, too, I am not totally convinced. Let me take them in order. British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
490
Colin Hay
With respect to the first, it is not clear to me that one can posit state power as real without first positing the state (at least in certain respects) as also real.1 In that sense I am not sure that it is as easy as Jessop suggests to move from treating the state as, essentially, an analytical heuristic to treating state power (or state powers) as real. And the point is that one does not need to do so from an as if realist stance – for the value of the appeal to the concept of the state and the value of the appeal to the concept of state power rest not on the ontological credibility of the existence of either, but on a judgment as to the value of the analytical insights which might thereby be gained. This position, the position I hold, is one I refer to as a form of scepticism, though Jessop prefers to characterize it as a form of pragmatism. It is actually both. It is sceptical with respect to the ontological question of the existence of the state and, indeed, state power but at the same time analytically pragmatic in that it is happy to continue to make reference to the state and state power as if they were real for as long as it is credible to think that this helps us achieve some kind of analytical purchase or insight. But it is Jessop’s second claim that surprises me more here. I am very happy that he sees my political ontology of the state as perfectly compatible with a strategic-relational analytical perspective. That is certainly how I would like to think of it. But I am not sure that, in this paper at least, I have developed a relational view of state power as he suggests – not least because my focus was on the analytical value of positing the state (not state power) as if it were real. Indeed, for me, what applies to the concept of the state from an as if realist perspective applies equally well to state power – I find it difficult to accept that the two concepts might have a different ontological status. One might even go further – they do not and cannot have a different ontological status in ‘as if realism’ and I am somewhat surprised that Jessop thinks they can have from within his own critical realist ontology. However, the more I think about it, the more I think there is a slight confusion here – one that it is perhaps necessary to clear up. When, from my ‘as if realist’ stance I posit the state as a (potentially useful) analytic abstraction, I do not posit it as a purely structural entity – I think of it as a set of practices above all else. In that sense, the analytic distinction between the state and state power that Jessop draws may be rather starker than that I am drawing here – and that, in turn, suggests that our positions may in the end be closer than I have implied.
Conclusion: the ‘so what’ question So what? Why does any of this matter? For once in such debates I have the privilege of the final word. And I want to use it carefully – to underscore a key difference between the critical realism which characterizes most existing © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it . . . 491
critical scholarship on the state and the ‘as if realism’ which, for reasons I have sought to make clear, informs my own. If, and to the extent that, one accepts that the state is not real (or, indeed, that the question of its existence can never be resolved definitively) then those of us who would have us continue to make reference to it as a conceptual abstraction need to make, and continue to make, a substantive analytical case for the value-added it offers. From such a perspective, it is far from self-evident that we need a theory of state – and if we are to have one we need to show the value in such a theory. Whether sceptical, pragmatic or both, that can surely only be a very good thing. (Date accepted: January 2014)
Note 1. Interestingly, Jessop, to my mind, makes it altogether more difficult to think of the state as real when he asks whether ‘the state can be just one “structural entity” among others’ or whether it ‘comprises a series of such entities’ (2014: 483). It strikes me, very simply, that the state is no longer a
state when it is many things – but that, as an abstraction, it might be understood as the articulation of a series of things. Such a set of reflections merely reaffirms my own conviction that the state is best understood as ‘as if real’ – a conceptual abstraction which may be more or less useful analytically.
Bibliography Jessop, R. 2014 ‘Towards a Political Ontology of State Power: A Comment on Colin Hay’s Article’, British Journal of Sociology 65(3): 481–6.
British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
McAnulla, S. 2005 ‘Making Hay with Actualism? The Need for a Realist Concept of Structure’, Politics 25(1): 31–8.
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it . . . Further reflections on the ontological status of the state Colin Hay
Abstract In this brief response to Bob Jessop’s probing yet sympathetic critique, I clarify further the ‘as if realist’ political ontology of the state. I suggest that critical realism’s appeal to the ontological stratification of social reality and to the logic of retroduction are the principal stumbling blocks for ‘as if realists’, that the appeal to state power(s) as distinct from the state as real cannot circumvent the ‘as if realist’ ontological objection to the state as real since both remain conceptual abstractions, but that there is a natural affinity between the strategic-relational approach developed by Jessop and others and the ‘as if realist’ ontology of the state that I here elucidate. Keywords: State; political ontology; ‘as if realism’; critical realism; strategicrelational approach; ontological stratification
I am deeply grateful to Bob Jessop for taking the time and trouble to read and comment upon my article on the political ontology of the state published in the pages of this Journal. His observations are characteristically forensic and incisive and it is, of course, impossible to image a better or more informed interlocutor on such matters as him. Indeed, and as he will perhaps appreciate, it was his own reflections on his own supervisor Philip Abrams’ ‘notes of the difficulty of studying the state’ that first prompted me to consider the ontology of this most elusive and perplexing of objects of analysis. The resulting essay, with which he is kind enough to engage, was my own modest attempt to work through, in a relatively systematic way, the thinking those reflections have prompted over the subsequent years. It is dedicated to the memory of my colleague and friend Steven Buckler, but in different circumstances it could just as easily have been dedicated to Bob Jessop himself. Hay (Centre d’etudes européennes, Sciences Po) (Corresponding author email: [email protected]) © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA on behalf of the LSE. DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12086
488
Colin Hay
As such I am, more than anything else, relieved to find that, despite some ostensible impressions to the contrary, there remains so much common ground between us. I am also delighted that he finds something in the piece worth engaging with so directly and comforted by the thought that, if it achieves nothing else, its publication will already have served to smoke him out a little more on some of these ontological questions.
Are you, or have you ever been, a critical realist? Bob Jessop’s intervention is an intriguing and a very interesting one – and, at least in part, its content rather surprises me. Its aim would appear to be to convince me that I really am a critical realist after all – or, perhaps more accurately, that if only I had better understood the critical realist theory of the state I would have been able to cut to the chase rather sooner and yet would still have ended up in essentially the same place, with a (critical realist) political ontology of state power as a social relation (rather like his own). That, he suggests, would have been to take a more parsimonious route to ‘solving the ontological puzzle of the state and state effects’ (2014: 482). The implication of this is that I remain, about the state at least, a critical realist in denial. My critical realism might not be real, but it might just be as if real. That intrigues me. For I have danced with critical realism before. I have been told on a number of occasions that ‘of course’ I am a critical realist and, rather more forcefully on others, that I am definitely not a critical realist and that I do not belong within the fold (see for instance McAnulla 2005). And, chastened perhaps by the latter, some time back I vowed to myself that whilst struggling to be as systematic and coherent on questions of ontology as I could be I was neither going to let labels get in the way of articulating the position I felt most compelled towards nor to care too much about how that position was depicted by others. That took me, over time, to ‘as if realism’ – and that brings me here. But now that I am here I find it quite comforting, surprisingly comforting really, that I might all this while have been harbouring some form of unacknowledged critical realism after all. Of course that might in part be because, even if Bob Jessop thinks that I take a rather circuitous path to it, he does none the less seem to think that my ‘as if’-cum-critical realism does help me resolve the ontological puzzle of the state and its effects. Coming from perhaps the world’s foremost theorist of the state that is, indeed, a comforting thought. But, with respect to critical realism at least, I remain stubbornly unconvinced; and Bob Jessop’s intervention helps me understand better why that might be so. Let me try to explain. The key thing here, I think, is the (arguably) stratified nature of social and political reality. It is this, quite rightly I think, that Jessop places at the heart of © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it . . . 489
the critical realist ontology. As he suggests, ‘it [critical realism] posits a stratified world in which real mechanisms generate effects at the level of the actual, evidence for which may exist at the level of the empirical’ (2014: 482). It is this, above all, that I have difficulties with. But, to be clear, it is not that I reject it as wrong or somehow philosophically problematic (as Jessop at times applies). Whilst I choose not to embrace it, I don’t reject it either – I think it is a perfectly consistent position and one that I am very happy for others to hold. Indeed, my own ontological introspection might be a lot simpler were I to succumb to its undoubted appeal. But I find that I cannot; for me it lacks a certain credibility. I am not a believer and, as such, not a critical realist. The reason why is simple. For me, any stratification to which I might feel the need to make reference is not somehow inherent in the nature of reality itself but is a product of how I puzzle, reflect and think about that reality. As such, and from this way of thinking, stratification is an analytical technique or strategy, a sleight of hand, a deceit in a way – a simplifying device that might help me (and others) make sense of stuff, real stuff. And, for me, the concept of the state is rather like that too. I can imagine others making sense of the same set of empirical phenomena by appeal to a different set of concepts and, quite conceivably, without reference to any system of stratification. And the point is that I wouldn’t wish to presume that my account is somehow better than theirs by virtue of my appeal to this or that structure (the state, for instance) or, indeed, by virtue of its appeal to a system of stratification rather than none. It might be objected at this point that, in effect, I am merely invoking the realist distinction between the transitive and the intransitive here – and there are clearly certain similarities. But in the end, I think, these remain different, albeit subtly different, positions, in that there is no pretence in the more modest ‘as if realism’ I prefer to the capacity of retroduction to infer or discern the ‘real’ from an analysis of its (alleged) effects. From the political ontology of the state to the political ontology of state power And what of state power as a social relation? There are, I think, two rather different claims here. First, Jessop seems to be suggesting that, in a sense, I am right (or at least more right) in seeking to challenge the ontological status (the reality, in effect) of the state than I am (or would be) if I focused instead on state power (particularly state power as a social relation). His second claim, which doesn’t quite follow from the first, is that my ‘as if realism’ leads me, albeit inadvertently, in the end to ‘a critical realist as well as a strategicrelational position on the ontological specificities of state power rather than the state per se’ (2014: 485). These are, again, intriguing suggestions and both have a certain intuitive appeal. But here, too, I am not totally convinced. Let me take them in order. British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
490
Colin Hay
With respect to the first, it is not clear to me that one can posit state power as real without first positing the state (at least in certain respects) as also real.1 In that sense I am not sure that it is as easy as Jessop suggests to move from treating the state as, essentially, an analytical heuristic to treating state power (or state powers) as real. And the point is that one does not need to do so from an as if realist stance – for the value of the appeal to the concept of the state and the value of the appeal to the concept of state power rest not on the ontological credibility of the existence of either, but on a judgment as to the value of the analytical insights which might thereby be gained. This position, the position I hold, is one I refer to as a form of scepticism, though Jessop prefers to characterize it as a form of pragmatism. It is actually both. It is sceptical with respect to the ontological question of the existence of the state and, indeed, state power but at the same time analytically pragmatic in that it is happy to continue to make reference to the state and state power as if they were real for as long as it is credible to think that this helps us achieve some kind of analytical purchase or insight. But it is Jessop’s second claim that surprises me more here. I am very happy that he sees my political ontology of the state as perfectly compatible with a strategic-relational analytical perspective. That is certainly how I would like to think of it. But I am not sure that, in this paper at least, I have developed a relational view of state power as he suggests – not least because my focus was on the analytical value of positing the state (not state power) as if it were real. Indeed, for me, what applies to the concept of the state from an as if realist perspective applies equally well to state power – I find it difficult to accept that the two concepts might have a different ontological status. One might even go further – they do not and cannot have a different ontological status in ‘as if realism’ and I am somewhat surprised that Jessop thinks they can have from within his own critical realist ontology. However, the more I think about it, the more I think there is a slight confusion here – one that it is perhaps necessary to clear up. When, from my ‘as if realist’ stance I posit the state as a (potentially useful) analytic abstraction, I do not posit it as a purely structural entity – I think of it as a set of practices above all else. In that sense, the analytic distinction between the state and state power that Jessop draws may be rather starker than that I am drawing here – and that, in turn, suggests that our positions may in the end be closer than I have implied.
Conclusion: the ‘so what’ question So what? Why does any of this matter? For once in such debates I have the privilege of the final word. And I want to use it carefully – to underscore a key difference between the critical realism which characterizes most existing © London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
If it didn’t exist we’d have to invent it . . . 491
critical scholarship on the state and the ‘as if realism’ which, for reasons I have sought to make clear, informs my own. If, and to the extent that, one accepts that the state is not real (or, indeed, that the question of its existence can never be resolved definitively) then those of us who would have us continue to make reference to it as a conceptual abstraction need to make, and continue to make, a substantive analytical case for the value-added it offers. From such a perspective, it is far from self-evident that we need a theory of state – and if we are to have one we need to show the value in such a theory. Whether sceptical, pragmatic or both, that can surely only be a very good thing. (Date accepted: January 2014)
Note 1. Interestingly, Jessop, to my mind, makes it altogether more difficult to think of the state as real when he asks whether ‘the state can be just one “structural entity” among others’ or whether it ‘comprises a series of such entities’ (2014: 483). It strikes me, very simply, that the state is no longer a
state when it is many things – but that, as an abstraction, it might be understood as the articulation of a series of things. Such a set of reflections merely reaffirms my own conviction that the state is best understood as ‘as if real’ – a conceptual abstraction which may be more or less useful analytically.
Bibliography Jessop, R. 2014 ‘Towards a Political Ontology of State Power: A Comment on Colin Hay’s Article’, British Journal of Sociology 65(3): 481–6.
British Journal of Sociology 65(3)
McAnulla, S. 2005 ‘Making Hay with Actualism? The Need for a Realist Concept of Structure’, Politics 25(1): 31–8.
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2014
