Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira

Texto de Discussão da EESP/FGV n. 189, maio de 2009.

Nation and civil society are forms of politically organized societies, the state, the central institution, and the nation-state the basic territorial-political unity that the Capitalist Revolution originates. Each country of a nation-state is formed of a nation or a civil society, a state, and a territory. Each state is the expression of its respective form of politically organized society, but the relation between the state and society is explicitly dialectic in so far as each national society creates its state to regulate it. Since these definitions are historical, the forms of society and, correspondently, the forms of state change historically. The paper summarizes these historical forms.