The State and the Citizen: Overview of a complex relationship from a paradigmatic perspective

Notwithstanding the huge literature on state studies, both definition and method have always been subject of intense debate. This debate is still open and equally intense despite two millennia of philosophical and methodological attempts to define what the state is, to describe how the state works, and why does it work. As times, geopolitical contexts, and human action have shaped the historical and conceptual trajectory of polity studies, the theories as well as methodologies have increasingly emphasized focus on individuals, (political) cultures, power, and relationships both between individuals and between individuals and the state. With time, the study of these types of relationships have revealed the complexity of the state, and the dynamics of its change. Though economy and political economy theories of the twentieth century gradually diminished the central role of the state in economy in favor of the free market and individual and company small as well as big entrepreneurship, the increased focus on individuals and individual (inter)action(s) has paradoxically turned into a revival of the state, a reinforcement of its role, as latest neo-statism trends reveal. It was the COVID-19 global pandemics to highlight what people think and expect from the state in the volatile European and global political context of our time. Not only that isolation and social distance conditions have deepened and strengthened the perception of the state as the source of their security and receptor of their highest level of trust but have also revealed that the state studies are about to reach again a turning point in the philosophical thinking about society and polity.