The Academy of Political Science
When defining the impact globalization on the national state, a group of political scientists believe that, the nation is coming to an end within globalization. One of the pioneers of this theory is the French political scientist “Jean-Marie Guéhenno” who suggests this idea in his book “The End of Nation State”.
The concept of nation state is based on the idea that, each country and each nation has a separate state. Each nation state, is based on 4 elements as territory, nation hood, sovereignty and government.
Therefore, a national state constantly emphasizes on territorial boundaries. However, in the modern age these territorial restrictions are not influential due to many reasons. Also, entities such as information, technology, human organizations and capital are globally expanded without the application of boundaries.
Therefore, according to Jean-Marie Guéhenno globalism is a direct attack on the foundation of the nation state. Hence, the nation state has lost its basis. According to the traditional interpretation of the nation state the members are bound together, with a common identity and common desire “nation hood” as Guéhenno points out that, people in the modern world are not bound together by non- political reasons, for example social media platforms unite people despite geographical borders. Therefore, it can be seen that in the modern context the concept of nation is not important to keep citizens united.
People are mostly attached with technological and economic factors than territories of the state. These modern challenges haven’t been handled well by the nation state as most of the modern national states have lost their influence within globalization. Sovereignty which is one of the main elements of a state has become quite in-applicable in most of the situations therefore, the world is currently heading towards one world state.
This can be seen in two areas:
1. Global economy
In the modern world the economic system seems to be centralized around a global source. The production, distribution, transferences and financial transaction take place in a global scale. The independent states are incapable of making financial decisions alone. Therefore, the economical factor has gone out of the authority of the sovereign state.
2. Global politics
Since the global economy has been a system beyond sovereign states the political decision making process has also become a task beyond the sovereign state. In the global political system most of the important decisions are made by bigger and powerful states and powerful international organizations. Therefore, the global political system has also evolved into a larger system beyond sovereign states.
As mentioned before a group of political scientists points out that, globalization ends nation state. However, another group of political scientists provides a different interpretation by mentioning that the state in fact gets adjusted to globalization.
According to this group globalization is not an external process that challenges the nation state, instead a process handled by the sovereign state itself, this means all though information, technology, capital etc. none of these entities can function without the state.
Therefore, this group emphasizes the supremacy of the sovereign state and points out that elements of globalization cannot exist outside of the state territory independently. Marxists also seem to have a similar approach to address globalization as Marxists believed that, capital and the state are pretty much the same inter-connected unit rather than two separated entities.
• 2 mins read
• April 19 2021