The state has no essence, only the mobile effect of ongoing statification.

Evidence

The state is nothing else but the effect, the profile, the mobile shape of a perpetual statification( etatisation) or statifications, in the sense of incessant transactions which modify, or move, or drastically change, or insidiously shift sources of finance, modes of investment, decision..,making centers, forms and types of control, relationships between local powers, the central authority, and so on. In short, the state has no heart, as we well know; but not just in the sense that it has no feelings, either good or bad, but it has no heart in the sense that it has no interior. The state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple govemmentalities. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 519

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of Foucault’s anti-essentialist theory of the state: the state is the effect of statification (etatisation), not an autonomous source of power.
• SEED: Essay angle: countering state-phobia by showing ‘the state has no interior’ — how locating power in state essence vs. governmentality practices reframes political critique.