Jour Fixe: Theory of the state from a legal-historical perspective: a discussion with Thomas Vesting

In his recently published book Staatstheorie (2018), Thomas Vesting develops a 'cultural scientific theory of the state', and to this end, he draws on the different historical strata that have led to the contemporary modern state. Large sections of his book are dedicated to providing accounts of the early modern territorial state, the bourgeois constitutional state, and the modern welfare state. Both the transformations the modern state underwent and the changes in the descriptions of its various manifestations, according to Vesting, should be at the heart of theories of state and state doctrine—reason enough for legal theorists and legal historians to engage in a dialogue.