Nicos Poulantzas was a smart grown-up who studied how societies work. He believed there are different groups or classes of people in society, like poor people and rich people, and they have different amounts of power. He thought the rich people have more power and control over things like money, jobs, and politics than the poor people do.
Poulantzas also believed that the government plays an important role in society by helping to keep everything fair and balanced. But he said that the government is mostly controlled by the rich people, and they use it to keep their power and control over society.
Poulantzas came up with big words like "hegemony" and "structuralism" to describe these ideas. But in simple terms, he was saying that the rich people have a lot of power and they use it to control things, and the government is supposed to help everyone but sometimes it doesn't because of the rich people's control.