The  state, wrote  Nietzsche, is

the coldest of all cold monsters... (it) lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever its says, it lies – and whatever it has, it has stolen... only there, where  the  state  ceases,  does  the  man  who  is not  superfluous begin... (Nietzsche 1969: 75

As  post-war  ‘welfare states’ in the West  and centralised  ‘party states’ in the East have come  under challenge, contemporary political debate  has become suffused  by  images  of  the  state  as malign  and  potentially monstrous. Only

‘beyond  the  State’,  it appears,  can a life  worthy  of  free  human  individuals begin. Criticising  the  excesses,  inefficiencies  and  injustices  of  the  extended

State,  alternatives  have  been  posed  in terms  of  the  construction of  a ‘free market’  and  a ‘civil society’  in  which  a plurality  of  groups,  organizations and individuals  interact  in liberty. This concern  has been  paralleled  in social theory,  where  analysts have  challenged  liberal pluralist and economic deter- minist  theories  of power, and argued that the specific form  of the state is of crucial  importance,  not  only  in  understanding  geo-political   relations,  but also  in  comprehending modern forms  of  exercise  of  power  over  national territories.2

But  the  political  vocabulary  structured  by oppositions between state  and civil society, public and private, government and market, coercion and consent, sovereignty and autonomy and the like, does not adequately characterise the diverse ways in which rule is exercised  in advanced  liberal democracies. Politi- cal power is exercised  today through  a profusion of shifting alliances between diverse  authorities in projects  to  govern  a multitude of  facets  of  economic activity, social life and individual  conduct.  Power is not so much  a matter  of imposing   constraints   upon  citizens  as  of  ‘making  up’  citizens  capable  of bearing a kind  of regulated  freedom. Personal autonomy is not the antithesis of political power, but  a key  term  in its exercise, the  more  so because  most individuals   are  not  merely   the  subjects  of  power   but  play  a  part  in  its operations.