In the last two decades, historical sociology has experienced a dramatic revival. Much of the attention in this revival has been focused on the "classical" concern with the structure and the dynamics of political authority (Axtmann 1993). How to conceptualize and analyse the modern state and its formation has thus become one of the key questions of historical sociology. It is in this context that Weber's institutional approach to politics has been reconsidered by sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Michael Mann, Charles Tilly and Theda Skocpol, Reinhard Bendix and Randall Collins, or John Hall. My aim in this chapter is to extend this institutional approach by examining how Weber's historical sociology can be brought to bear on the emergence of the individual as a political 'subject".