The state increasingly represents an enigma in contemporary politics, which problem opens up a variety of controversies in social science research. This volume is the result of the conference “The State and State-Building: Theory and Practice in Retrospect,” held in Belgrade in May of 2011. The papers in this volume address the semantics of state-building from a variety of perspectives. To greater or lesser degree, a majority of the contributors do so historically, whether discussing political history, social history or the history of ideas.