This chapter examines the role of the state within industrial relations, an often underemphasized or at least narrowly defined social relationship deriving from governance institutions and systems of regulation. It explores sweeping yet contradictory transformations of the state under neoliberalism and themes of legitimacy, coordination and the marginalization of social and employment rights. The changing role of the state in the post-war period, the later influence of New Right governments from 1979 onwards, state intervention to curtail industrial action and the more recent state promotion of marketization are analysed, along with contemporary state-led projects of reform and innovation within the constraints of deregulation, austerity and labour market fragmentation.