The Fiscal Crisis of the State Reconsidered: Two Views of the State and the Accumulation of Capital in the Postwar Economy

This paper argues that the theoretical categories in The Fiscal Crisis of the State (1973) by James O'Connor produce empirical results that fail to explain the financial crisis of the state in the 1960s and 1970s. The argument has three steps: (1) a theoretical examination of the connection between O'Connor's analysis of state expenditures and revenues and the accumulation of capital; (2) an empirical estimation of O'Connor's expenditure and revenue categories for the United States from 1952 to 1980; and, (3) the presentation of an alternative theoretical understanding of the relationship between the state and the accumulation process that produces more plausible empirical results than O'Connor's.