Crisis and State Capacities 1: Crises and Challenges

Since the end of the so-called Trente Glorieuses, we have become accustomed to policies of marketization, privatization, and (selective) deregulation all aimed at ‘rolling back the state’. These policies were first associated with the New Right but have since become broadly disseminated across the political spectrum. It is at times of crisis that state capacities become most evident. The last 15 years have seen a number of such crises in distinct spheres: the GFC and its aftermath (2007/08-); the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-); global warming, habitat destruction and species extinction; and on-going military conflicts.

This session calls for papers linking political sociology with the sociology of organizations in order to examine changing state capacities and organizational forms through the lens of crises: What do crises tell us about the limits to ‘misarchist’ conceptions of the state as ‘night-watchman’ or as guarantor of a ‘level playing field’ between market actors? Have state capacities in the face of crises been weakened by the policies pursued across nearly half a century within particular organizational structures, or have they remained robust? What capacities do states have to address slower-burning crises such as climate change and degradation of habitat, and how can these question be addressed in terms of both political sociology and sociology of organizations?