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INTRODUCTION
THE state is a central concept in the study of politics but has had an unstable career in American political science. The concept dominated scholarship when the discipline was founded a century ago in the United States.1 It then slipped in importance during the behavioral revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.2 In the 1980s a movement to "bring the state back in" (hereafter bsbi) attracted many followers but also drew considerable criticism from various quarters.3 Now, two decades later, the status of the state is again ambiguous. Detractors claim that the concept is now "out of fashion."4 Even supporters think it has "become somewhat suspect in mainstream social science."5
This review of the fast-growing scholarship on state formation seeks to place these pessimistic assertions in their proper context. Although the bsbi movement ran out of steam within a few years, there is more continuity between the movement and subsequent scholarship than is commonly recognized. In fact, the movement has recently been given credit for spawning many new research agendas not only among scholars who agreed with it but also among those who disagreed.6
Four lines of work can be seen as being either inspired or provoked by the movement. First are historical institutionalists, who narrow their concerns down to particular state institutions such as welfare or trade regimes.7 This move was made by some leaders of the movement themselves. Rational choice institutionalists, who form the second group, rail against the movement for its exclusive focus on abstract macroprocesses and entities. Rather than focusing on the state, Margaret Levi of this group calls for bringing "people" (that is, "rational" individual actors) back in.8 The third group comprises those who accept that states are important players in politics but criticize the movement for exaggerating state power at the expense of social forces in the developing world.9 This group sponsors the concept of "state in society" to stress the importance of society versus the state.
The fourth and final group, which is the subject of this article, involves those who study state formation in comparative perspective. This group has many special characteristics that set it apart from the rest. First, it shares with historical and rational choice institutionalisms a strong historical focus but differs from them by...