John Dewey

There is therefore no common interest, no public, and no need nor possibility of an inclusive state.

But only the theory which makes recognition of consequences the critical factor can find in the fact of many states a corroborating trait.

Whatever is a barrier to the spread of the consequences of associated behavior by that very fact operates to set up political boundaries.

Somewhere between associations that are narrow, close and intimate and those which are so remote as to have only infrequent and casual contact lies, then, the province of a state.

The wavering and shifting line of distinction between a state and other forms of social union is, again, an obstacle in the way of theories of the state which imply as their concrete counterpart something as sharply marked off as is the…

There are empires due to conquest where political rule exists only in forced levies of taxes and soldiers, and in which, though the word state may be used, the characteristic signs of a public are notable for their absence.

In determining consequences, they institute publics with different interests, which exact different types of political behavior to care for them.

In spite of the fact that diversity of political forms rather than uniformity is the rule, belief in the state as an archetypal entity persists in political philosophy and science.

Much dialectical ingenuity has been expended in construction of an essence or intrinsic nature in virtue of which any particular association is entitled to have applied to it the concept of statehood.

Equal ingenuity has been expended in explaining away all divergencies from this morphological type, and (the favored device) in ranking states in a hierarchical order of value as they approach the defining essence.

The idea that there is a model pattern which makes a state a good or true state has affected practice as well as theory.

If one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between “facts” and the meaning of facts, let one go to the field of social discussion.