After World War II, states transformed into collective fortresses in order to protect competing ideological systems. The debate on post-modern statehood heavily built on ideological disputes between liberalism and communism, over the nature of the economic and social system, and the state and government that could sustain such a system. What is an ideologically acceptable state-concept; which tasks and fu- tions should the state fulfil, and how to legitimate not only democratic, but also authoritarian and even totalitarian regimes? These questions were at the very centre of state theory. However, after the fall of communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union, the discourse of state and government scholarship radically changed. The need for a profound shift in the state paradigm was emerging. The time after 1989 seemed to proclaim that the nation-state had lost its raison dêtre as an island of undisputed and unlimited sovereignty. A globalised world order broke open the fortress state that developed within the tradition of European constitutionalism. Given the simultaneous structural changes to the nation-states foundations, socio-economic and political reforms going hand in hand with new constitutional designs, the state in transition started paving the way towards a new state paradigm, and not only with regard to the states in the process of de- cratic transformation from socialist into liberal constitutional democracies.

General Introduction.- From the Tribe to the State in a Globalised Environment.- The View of Man and the State as the Starting Point of State Theories.- Human Rights.- Rule of Law.- The State as Legal Entity.- Theoretical Aspects of the Organisation of the Modern State.- The Multicultural State: The Challenge of the Future.- Outlook: The Constitutional State at the Threshold of a New Millennium.