The State Schema: Seeing Politics through Morality and Capacity

Abstract

The aims of conservative activists are broadly characterized as anti-state. But an ethnographic case study of a rural activist chapter reveals a range of anti- and pro-state attitudes. Existing concepts for studying the idea people hold of the state, such as the “state effect,” are inadequate for understanding such multidimensional views. To make sense of the chapter’s seemingly contradictory views of the state, I demonstrate how their “state schema” characterizes the three levels of the federal government and a rural-majority 51st state they envision founding as (im)moral and (in)capable.