The destabilization of world politics over the last decade has actualized the need for a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the nature of a modern state and its ability to adapt to changes both in the sphere of interstate relations and in domestic politics (the relationship of the state apparatus with its national political community, i.e. outside and within the legitimate territorial control of the state). An major - and in many respects irreplaceable - contribution to solving this problem is the foundational monograph by Bob Jessop, translated into Russian last year (Jessop B. 2016. The State: Past, Present, Future. Cambridge: Polity). Due to the complexity and versatility of Jessop’s monograph, this article it will inevitably be limited to only a partial reflection; moreover, this will be approached from an obviously subjective point of view, and in the format of free reflection. The purpose of the article is to draw readers’ attention to the invaluable resource of conceptualization and polymorphic analysis of the state as still being the key concept of political science it remains today. Jessop combines his original approach (in his words, strategic-relational) to this phenomenon of our political imagination with a critical analysis of other, widespread approaches (Marxism, liberalism, conservatism, realism, neorealism), In fact, he offers a method to fundamentally synthesise these approaches, leading to a new quality of political analysis. Historicism, comparativism, the global context, and the evolving nature of statehood are the basis of this alternative approach to the systemic study of the state and state power. Almost conventional in modern political science, the concept of the modern state as such - including its fundamental, institutionally separate components, as well as the principles that integrate it - describes, according to Jessop, only a special case of the capitalist-type state. Along with this essentially “idealized” state, there are still states of a different type, which also effectively ensure the interests of their political communities, without possessing all the normative characteristics (as they are defined by the canons of political science) of the institutional structure and without strictly observing the general principles of organizing social , economic and political life.