#POLITICAL 

The modern state is also going through some significant changes. Globalization is a key factor in
this process.
• Globalization is a process facilitated by neo-liberal economic reforms. Its consequences on
the state have been felt in the new trend in which external forces, outside the nation-state, have
begun to exercise dominance over the state.
• Examples of these developments that have transcended the limits of the nation-state are the
global flow of capital, electronic technology, global information flow through information
revolution, cultural globalization, and international movement of labour.
• How have these new developments impacted on the state? There are two approaches to
finding answers to this question:
• The end of the nation-state argument
• Restructuring of the nation-state argument
• The end of the nation-state argument begins with the assumption that globalization has put
the nation-state in a severe crisis. The French political thinker Jean-Marie Gehenno first
developed this argument in his book The End of the Nation-State (1995). He argued that
globalization had weakened the social foundations of the nation-state based on the territorial
principle. He also argued that globalization has made nation-state’s territorial boundaries
meaningless. The reason, according to Gehenno, is that capital, labour, information technology
and human organizations can now not only easily move beyond the boundaries of the nationstate, but also the nation-state has no control over their global mobility. They in fact ignore the
nation-state. These developments have made the territorial principle of the nation-state irrelevant.
• The end of the nation-state thesis also says that the importance of ‘nation’ has also been
declining. The argument goes as follows: Under globalization, human relations have become
tentative, superficial and fragile. As a result, there are no stable, lasting or permanent bonds
that can keep human communities together. What we have under globalization are temporary
networks, and not human bonds. As a result, the idea of the nation, which is based on stable
human bonds as political communities, has been severely weakened.
• David Held, a British political scientist, wrote an essay in 1991 entitled “Democracy, NationState and the Global System.” There, he argued that under globalization, a new global system has
come into being. A key feature of this new global system is that no single state, even a powerful
state, can control it. The new global system has thus escaped the control by the nation-state
system.
• Held also argued that in the new global system, ‘transnational networks’ emerged and the
states cannot control them. Similarly, non-state international organizations can even control and
influence the most powerful states.
• Thus, the weakening of the nation-state is viewed as a direct outcome of globalization.
• The second argument says that the nation-state is not coming to an end under globalization. Instead,
what has happened is that global capital has escaped the control of the nation-state and acquired
a new sense of autonomy from the nation-state. This has led to re-structuring of the nationstate, and not its weakening or ending. The states have learnt to work with the new global system.
Thus, the states may have been weakened by the forces of globalization, but they have not come
to an end. (see also the discussion under ‘neo-liberal state’ in the next section)