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‘Bringing the state back in’ to research on comparative, inter-, and trans-national environmental politics and policy will contribute to better understanding of the limits and prospects of contemporary approaches to environmental politics and the overall evolution of contemporary states once environmental issues become central. The rationale for the state as an analytical perspective in environmental policy and politics is explained, and an empirically oriented concept of the environmental state is introduced, along with a tentative sketch of its evolution in historical perspective. A research agenda on the environmental state is mapped out, centring around variation and convergence in environmental states across space and time; the political/economic dynamics of contemporary environmental states; and inter-linkages among environmental problems, the constitution of political communities, and the functioning of the …