This article argues that conventional understanding of how IR theory conceptualizes the state is in need of revision. By relocating IR theories of the state within the ‘second state’ debate, we find that neorealism underestimates the power of the state in world politics, while neoliberal institutionalism exaggerates its power. Moreover, liberalism, constructivism, Marxism, postmodernism, and ‘second-wave’ Weberian historical sociology, all endow the state with greater degrees of agential power in the international realm than does neorealism. The significance of the second state debate will be not merely to reconfigure our understanding of how IR theory conceptualizes the state, but to turn conventional understanding of IR theory upside-down.