The article addresses the dilemmas and challenges political science is facing at the beginning of the 21st century, where particular attention is placed on to the understanding the state and democracy. In the first part, the article reflects on the leading geographical interpretations of the state in political science, which still restrict or even define the state as a geographically demarcated and immutable territory. We consider the loss of analytical acuity in such explorations of the state as they completely overlook the processes of redefining and redistributing the state, and thus the processes of its de-/reterritorialisation and spatial restructuring when the state is forced to adapt to dynamics of the economy and no longer vice versa. In the second part, the article analyses the main theories of democracy and identifies their biggest limitations. We argue that the seemingly heterogeneous and mutually exclusive discussions share a similar sentiment – political agoraphobia and, at the same time, the erroneous equating of democracy with being ruled by the people, which is solely realised through state-building projects. Drawing on recent approaches to the state and democracy, the article calls for novel (meta)theoretical, epistemological and methodological pluralism in political science research
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