Revisiter la question de l’État à la lumière de la crise de l’Europe. État extérieur, situé ou absent

State theory must be renewed. It?s time to let aside old views of the State as a superstructure influencing society from the external. Instead one should consider the plurality of its forms, the role that citizens play in conjointly ?producing? the State, the scope covered at all levels by democratic practice. This article develops a reading of the State based on the concept of convention of the state. It means that any state should be analysed with regards to the common good and to the mutual expectations citizens have for the role, versus the role of the state, they should play for the definition, realisation and evaluation of the common good. Three of such conventions are defined : external, absent and situated states, each of them formulating the question of democracy in its own way. Such theoretical framework points on the major failure, if not bankruptcy, of the European project, i.e. to have been deliberately constructed at the external of national political communities. European peoples have had no chance to make theirs the European project, so no convention of the state, no mutual expectations, no conventional agreement, could emerge between the Europeans with regards to the role European institutions should play in relation with common goods. The article concludes with some lines for research.