There has been a range of theoretical challenges to traditional notions of state sovereignty and a burgeoning debate about the power of the state in the face of globalization and new forms of governance. In this text, Georg Sorensen provides a systematic assessment of the contemporary state, steering a middle course between those who argue the state is in retreat and their critics. In so doing he sheds light on just what is actually changing in the nature of sovereign statehood, on changes in the relative power of different states and on the changing relationship between the domestic and external aspects of state power.