State-building and state expansion are well-studied topics. But not all states that are built or that expand remain intact. States also end and, in different ways, may disappear. The questions posed by the fate of capable, powerful states, such as Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Pahlavi Iran, Franco’s Spain, Qaddafi’s Libya, or apartheid South Africa, are crucial, but rarely if ever addressed. This is a significant and increasingly awkward lacuna in political science’s engagement with perhaps its premier institution. How is it that impressively capable states can, relatively suddenly, vanish? What explains the demise of states? Drawing on Weber, Gramsci, and North, this paper responds to this problem by considering all states as problematically institutionalized, so that the meaning of state demise differs across states depending on their depth of institutionalization, and by suggesting that this kind of disappearance may be associated with a distinctive loss in the hegemonic status of expectations of its continuation. The plausibility and payoffs of this approach are illustrated by in depth treatment of the discourse surrounding the question of the survival of the state in one highly-developed and high performing state—Israel.
What does it mean about the State of Israel that almost every public issue of concern is characterized as a question that will determine “if the state will survive?” By considering strong states as hegemonic regimes, but always as problematically institutionalized projects, variation in precariousness can be traced, in part, to changing expectations of continuity. Applying this approach to Israeli politics and political discourse highlights the real vulnerabilities it faces as a state and explains at least part of why the two-state solution project failed, giving rise to a one-state reality.