"This is an important book by any standard. No matter how commonplace it is to observe that the state was born in Western Europe and subsequently exported to the rest of the world, until now there has been no single book that traces out the implications of this for those peripheral, extra-European societies that were compelled to import this bizarre form of political order. It is impossible to do justice to the variety and scope of arguments that Badie develops in this extraordinarily erudite and interdisciplinary work."
--Philippe C. Schmitter, Stanford University