Description
State autonomy refers to states’ propensity to formulate goals that cannot be subsumed to inputs from societal interest groups. While it is indispensable for scholars working on economic statecraft, state autonomy remains an elusive concept that is notoriously difficult to theorize. This paper advances a Practice State Theory (PCST) and turns reification from a pitfall of ‘state-centric’ approaches into a productive component of state theory. The autonomous state is a reified entity produced by communities of practice and mediated through material artifacts. PCST is illustrated through the deviant case of the EU, a union of 27 nation states with no coercive power that nonetheless pursues economic statecraft. Using original empirical material, I show how the background assumption that ‘Europe has strategic interests’ emerged from industrial policy practitioners in the 2010s and transformed how EU law is interpreted.
