Intensifying fragmentation: states, places, and dissonant struggles over the political geographies of power

ABSTRACT This paper offers an engagement with The Fragmented State, published in 1983 and representing Ronan Paddison’s most significant book-length contribution. The paper demonstrates how certain claims prosecuted by Paddison – especially relating to central local state relations and a splintering of metropolitan governance – continue to hold a relevance for understanding ‘real world’ transitions in the institutional and territorial forms assumed by Western states since 1983. The Fragmented State is thereby revealed to be not merely an impressive outcrop of past intellectual labour on space and polity, but remains a fresh provocation for all who take seriously the present challenges of state (re)formation.