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The changing faces of the modern state
Author(s) -
Lindvall Johannes,
Rogers Katren
Publication year - 2023
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/gove.12715
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , state (computer science) , perspective (graphical) , government (linguistics) , political science , political economy , sociology , public administration , politics , law , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , artificial intelligence , computer science
This paper describes the changing nature of the English and Swedish states between 1800 and 2020 from the perspective of ordinary citizens. We identify 13 typical life situations and then describe the types of citizens who interacted with the state, the number and types of public officials with whom they interacted, and where those interactions took place. We distinguish among three typical social groups: the poor, the middle, and the rich. We find, among other things, that the poor became objects of government policy much earlier than other groups, but they also remained in a world of parochial poor relief even as the middle and the rich began to interact with a more functionally differentiated, professional bureaucracy. These findings have important implications for scholarly debates on when the state began to interact directly with the civilian masses and the unevenness of state activities and capacities within countries.