title: Towards a political ontology of state power: a comment on Colin Hay's article.
abstract: This article offers some critical realist, strategic-relational comments on Colin Hay's proposal to treat the state as an 'as-if-real' concept. The critique first develops an alternative account of ontology, which is more suited to analyses of the state and state power; it then distinguishes the 'intransitive' properties of the real world as an object of investigation from the 'transitive' features of its scientific investigation and thereby provides a clearer understanding of what is at stake in 'as-if-realism'; and it ends with the suggestion that a concern with the modalities of state power rather than with the state per se offers a more fruitful approach to the genuine issues raised in Hay's article and in his earlier strategic-relational contributions to political analysis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, Lancaster University.
authors.forename: Bob
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Jessop
mesh_terms: D006076:Government; D006801:Humans; D011057:Politics; D011209:Power, Psychological; D066269:Social Theory
keywords: Critical realism; fallacy of misplaced concreteness; ontology; state; state power; strategic-relational approach