This engaging introduction to contemporary politics examines the historical construction of the modern territorial state. Opello and Rosow fuse accounts of governing practices, technological change, political economy, language, and culture into a narrative of the formation of specific state forms. This revised edition reinforces their central argument that the current neoliberal state does not represent a fundamentally new form, but is an attempt to reconstitute the managerial state in the context of globalization. Incorporating the most recent scholarship, other significant changes in the new edition include more emphasis on the interconnections of state and state-system, discussions of emerging forms of international violence and war, and attention to the increasingly multicultural character of states. Studies of state formation in Congo, England, France, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, and the U.S. enrich the discussion, which ranges from ancient Rome to the present.