Context Construction through Competition: The Prerogative of Public Power, Intermediary Institutions and the Purpose of Competition

This paper examines the relation between the evolution of statehood and institutionalised competition in the European context. The first half of the paper develops a historical-sociological view on the evolution of modern political power in the state form in Europe while the second half the paper reconstructs how the institutionalisation of competition as a specific type of policy tool which has been used by emerging modern states to establish its authority vis-à-vis competing claims to authority. It furthermore engages in an examination of corporatist and governance based attempts to respectively curb and expand the use of competition as a tool for organising social processes and the implications of the se attempts for the state of statehood.