The primary instruments of intervention for the liberal state (security, defense, justice, diplomacy) and the welfare state (social policies and programs, assistance, social protection) are public policies. Our areas of empirical inquiry include: a) bureaucratic structures (ministries, agencies, and bodies) and their state capacities; b) public policies in their material dimension (transformations in state architecture, social programs and mechanisms of social intervention, functions, resources) and symbolic dimension (the production of categorizations, controversies, and official characterizations regarding different social groups); c) the network of relationships among various social actors, their practices, and their social beliefs, including both state actors at different hierarchical levels and other actors operating on the “margins” of the state; d) trends in social policies—across sectoral areas—during specific historical periods at both the national and subnational levels, from an institutional and socio-historical perspective.
