It is not those who command who govern, but those who define what is possible

The administered State: politics as the management of limits.

Today I am providing my English translation of an article by Hakan Illatikdi, originally in Italian and published on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Friday 2nd January 2026.
(All formatting original).

Summary

This article analyses the historical evolution of political dependence from the classical colony to the contemporary configuration of the West. To this end, the concept of the administered State is introduced to describe a specific and historically determined form of political domination that emerged in late modernity.

Subordination has not disappeared, but has been transformed: from the explicit forms of external domination characteristic of the colonial order, it has gradually been reorganised into internal mechanisms of technical management. The concept of the administered State allows us to grasp this change, describing a political form in which formal sovereignty persists, while the effective capacity for decision-making is limited by structural conditioning administered through an intermediate functional layer.

This transformation involves an operational depoliticization of the State, insofar as fundamental decisions are removed from political conflict and recoded as technical necessities. In this context, the work raises crucial questions about the future of collective-oriented governance and the conditions of possibility for political sovereignty in the contemporary West.

1. Introduction: the functional transformation of the State in late modernity

In late modernity, a form of State organisation has crystallised that cannot be adequately understood either as a simple weakening of the State or as a mere continuation of its classical functions. Rather, it is a functional mutation: the transition from a State conceived as an instance of sovereign political decision-making to a State whose main function is to administer pre-given structural limits.

In this contribution, this form is defined as the administered State. The term does not refer to a formalised legal category, but rather to an ideal analytical type, useful for understanding a central transformation of contemporary political power: the progressive replacement of the logic of political conflict with that of technical management (Weber, 1978; Rose, 1999).

The central hypothesis is that this form of State represents the culmination of a broader historical evolution, in which political dependence ceases to manifest itself as visible external domination and is incorporated as an internal structure of government.

2. Political dependence and the historical transformation of power

Political dependence should not be interpreted as an anomaly or as an outdated phase of State development, but rather as a dynamic and changing historical relationship. Over time, it has taken different forms, becoming progressively less visible and increasingly mediated by institutional devices.

This process does not imply the disappearance of the State, but its reconfiguration as an implementing rather than a decision-making body (Poulantzas, 1978; Jessop, 2002). The trajectory from colony to administered State reveals a gradual shift of control from outside to inside the state apparatus.

3. The colony: direct domination and absence of mediation

In the classic colony, political dependence manifests itself as direct domination. Power is exercised through territorial occupation, explicit external authority and institutionalised violence. There is no local sovereignty or decision-making autonomy. Colonial administration functions as a direct instrument of imperial power, without ambiguity or mediation (Mamdani, 1996) .

At this stage, dependence is transparent: power resides outside and is exercised from outside.

4. The protectorate: the legalisation of guardianship

The protectorate introduces a first formal transformation. The local State survives, but explicitly cedes central powers – defence, foreign policy, strategic finances – to a guardian power. Dependence ceases to be mere occupation and takes the form of legally recognised subordination.

In this context, a local administrative layer emerges to mediate between external power and internal society. This layer does not define political goals, but translates, implements and stabilises the imposed order. Control thus begins to operate through the State, and not exclusively over it.

5. Formal independence and structural dependence

With the processes of national independence, colonial domination appears to have been formally overcome. Constitutions, parliaments and legal systems are established. However, the inherited economic, administrative and productive structures remain largely intact.

Dependence therefore takes on a structural form: the State is sovereign in legal terms, but lacks effective control over the main parameters of economic and political decision-making (Cardoso and Faletto, 1979). Politics survives, but within narrow margins that are gradually naturalised.

6. The functional intermediate layer: bureaucracy and the materialisation of power

The decisive element in understanding the transition to the administered State is the consolidation of an intermediate functional layer, composed of technical bureaucracies, administrators and experts. This layer does not define political ends, but exercises decisive control over procedures, information and institutional continuity.

As Weber (1978) observes, modern bureaucracy constitutes the material support of legal-rational domination. Its power derives from technical knowledge (Dienstwissen), control of procedures and its stability compared to the volatility of political power. In systemic terms, this layer reduces complexity and translates abstract decisions into operational routines (Luhmann, 1995).

Over time, the intermediate layer ceases to be a neutral means and becomes the actual place where power is exercised.

7. Neocolonialism and enclosure administration

During the 20th century, dependence was increasingly expressed through indirect mechanisms: indebtedness, financial conditioning, multilateral pressure. The State retained a certain capacity for action, but within increasingly stringent limits.

In this context, the administrative layer becomes more technical and professional, and the structural limits become naturalised. Power ceases to issue direct orders and moves on to defining the parameters of what is possible. Politics thus begins to merge with management (Foucault, 2007).

8. The administered State: internalised dependence

In the contemporary order, dependence reaches its most effective form. The administered State retains its formal functions – legislation, taxation, electoral procedures – but loses its capacity for strategic decision-making. It does not collapse because the intermediate functional layer guarantees its operation.

Central decisions are presented as technical requirements: fiscal objectives, monetary rules, past commitments. Sovereignty does not disappear, but it is emptied of its substantive content. Dependence is no longer imposed coercively: it is administered.

9. From external domination to internal control

The decisive feature of the administered state is the transfer of control from a visible external power to impersonal internal mechanisms. Domination no longer has a clearly identifiable subject, but is embodied in procedures, rules and technical criteria.

This shift produces a structurally anonymous form of power, in which political conflict tends to dissolve and responsibility to fragment.

10. The administered State in the Spodocene: the management of ruin as a form of government

The administered state does not represent the end of the State, but rather its characteristic form in late modernity. Its central function is no longer the construction of collective projects, but the management of complexity and risk.

The political form defined in this work as the administered State finds its full intelligibility when inscribed in a broader historical category: the Spodocene [author’s first article translated here]. This concept does not simply designate a late phase of modernity or a variant of civilisational collapse, but a structural condition in which social, political and symbolic life is organised around the management of the material, institutional and subjective residues produced by a historical metabolism based on expansion, accumulation and waste.

In the Spodocene, the central problem of power is no longer the production of order or the promise of progress, but the administration of ruin.

The Spodocene as a theoretical framework

Unlike categories such as Anthropocene or postmodernity, which emphasise human impact or cultural fragmentation respectively, Spodocene focuses on the systemic logic of waste: not only environmental waste, but also human surpluses, hollowed-out institutions, exhausted political promises and forms of life rendered expendable.

From this perspective, the administered State does not appear as a pathological deviation from the modern State, but as its functional adaptation to a civilisation that can no longer expand without destroying its own conditions of possibility. Politics ceases to be oriented towards building the future and redefines itself as damage control, crisis containment and loss optimisation.

From project governance to residual governance

Within the framework of the Spodocene, the administered State expresses a decisive shift: from project governance to residual governance. Where the classical modern State articulated ideals – progress, integration, development, emancipation – the administered State operates on what remains after the failure of these horizons.

Its rationality is not transformative, but thermoregulatory: avoiding total collapse, maintaining minimum levels of functioning, administering social tensions without resolving them. In this sense, the centrality of risk management – economic, health, environmental, security – is not contingent, but constitutive of the Spodocene order.

The future is no longer a political horizon, but a threat to be mitigated.

The intermediate functional layer as a spodocenic device

The intermediate functional layer – technical bureaucracies, administrators, experts – takes on a specific structural function in the Spodocene: transforming systemic ruin into operational normality. This layer does not merely implement decisions, but translates collapse into procedures, limits into protocols, dependence into routines.

From this perspective, the operational depoliticisation of the state is neither an accident nor an ideological betrayal, but a condition for the survival of the system. Open political conflict would be dysfunctional in a context where there is no longer a material or symbolic surplus to redistribute. The Spodocene requires, on the contrary, administration, containment and silencing of antagonism.

Mature dependence and residual sovereignty

Inserted into the Spodocene, the administered state represents the mature form of dependence. It is no longer a question of subordination imposed from outside, but of dependence internalised as the rationality of government. Sovereignty persists as a legal form, but is emptied of substantial decision-making capacity.

In this context, politics is redefined as the management of limits, and democracy as a procedure for legitimising decisions that are no longer taken in the space of collective dissent, but in closed technical circuits. Dependence is not imposed because it is no longer necessary: it has been incorporated into the ordinary functioning of the State.

Critical implications

Thinking about the administered State from the perspective of the Spodocene allows us to avoid two recurring errors:

1. Sovereigntist nostalgia, which imagines a possible return to previous forms of statehood without considering the structural conditions that made them unworkable.

2. Resigned technocratism, which accepts management as the only possible rationality and closes politics as a horizon.

The Spodocene does not cancel out politics, but raises its threshold of difficulty. Recovering politics does not mean restoring past promises, but rather interrupting the naturalisation of the administration of dispossession, reopening the conflict where it was closed in the name of technology.

Conclusion

The administered State does not represent the end of the State, but rather its historically determined form in late modernity. Far from marking a simple reduction in political power, it expresses a transformation in the way that power is exercised: from sovereign decision-making oriented towards collective goals to the technical management of given structural limitations.

Within the framework of the Spodocene, the administered state appears as the political form of a civilisation that has exhausted its narratives of progress and survives by managing the material, institutional and symbolic consequences of this exhaustion. In this context, the central function of the State is no longer the construction of the future, but the management of complexity, risk and ruin.

In this configuration, political dependence is no longer imposed from outside or legitimised through explicit power relations. It is internalised as a rationality of government, incorporated into administrative devices and translated into procedures that make subordination operationally invisible. Sovereignty persists as a legal form, but is emptied of substantive decision-making content; democracy survives as a procedure, while political conflict is neutralised through its technical recodification.

Understanding the administered State does not imply accepting it as an inevitable historical destiny. Rather, it means recognising that any contemporary emancipatory political project will have to contend not only with visible powers or external constraints, but also with an administrative architecture of limitation that transforms dependence into normality and management into governmental common sense.

In the Spodocene, dependence is no longer imposed through direct coercion. It is administered, naturalised and reproduced as the ordinary rationality of government.

Main bibliographical references

• Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1979). Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina [Dependency and development in Latin America]. Siglo XXI.

• Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population. Palgrave Macmillan.

• Jessop, B. (2002). The Future of the Capitalist State. Polity Press.

• Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford University Press.

• Mamdani, M. (1996). Citizen and Subject. Princeton University Press.

• Poulantzas, N. (1978). State, Power, Socialism. Verso.

• Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom. Cambridge University Press.

• Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society. University of California Press.

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