See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/276348393

Globalization and the Nation-State

Research · May 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.5028.7528

CITATIONS READS

3 32,159

1 author:

S A Hamed Hosseini
The University of Newcastle, Australia
96 PUBLICATIONS 364 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by S A Hamed Hosseini on 18 December 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Global Alternatives

Globalization and the Nation-State: Lecture

Notes

By: S A Hamed Hosseini, University of Newcastle, Australia

For Citation: Hosseini SA. (2010) Globalization and Nation-state: Lecture Notes. DOI:
10.13140/RG.2.1.5028.7528, Available at
http://globalalternatives.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/globalization-and-nation-state/.

Introduction: key questions

When dealing with this aspect of global change, the question of global political
integrity will be at the center of our attention. This question has been
formulated in different ways such as:

• Does globalization undermine the nation-state?

• Has globalization integrated nation-states and local communities into one
single political system world order? Or are we living in a politically integrated
world (i.e. a solid global polity)?
• Has globalization overwhelmed the primacy/sovereignty/autonomy of nation-
states? Is there a power shift from national governments to the evolving
systems of regional and global governance? Do all nation-states experience
the challenges of global change to their sovereignty in similar ways? What
would be the implications of growing global problems like climate change
that cannot be dealt with by nation-states individually?
• How are we governed, by whom, in whose interest, and to what ends? (how
are the power relations are transforming in the post-Cold War era?)
• Are we moving towards a single political community with a particular system of
power-sharing and decision-making, by the means of (inter/trans-)national
1 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course
Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010
organizations? If yes, to what extent this system is democratic? And to what
extent this has affected local and national autonomy/sovereignty?

It is not difficult to predict how each of the main theoretical perspectives

would answer the above questions. Globalists argue that globalization has
undermined the sovereignty of nation-states due to the growing number of
powerful supranational/super-territorial forces as well as global problems (like
climate change, MNCs, terrorism, international non-governmental
organizations, new communication technologies like the Internet). Skeptics
would argue that the nation-state is still important, and we still live in an
international system rather than a truly global one where the nation-state is
expected to be diminished. The rise of China, the rise of far-right nationalist
sentiments in Europe, the significant role played by the G8/G20 in forming the
international relations, conflicts of interest between the US, Russia, Iran, North
Korea, and China all point to the importance of nation-state.
Transformationalists hold a moderate position and while acknowledging the
challenges of global problems they do not see a decline in the importance of the
nation-state. Instead, they believe nation-states are transforming in response
to the requirements of globalization and its complexities. However, they
believe that in dealing with global problems, a system of global governance
with a democratic covenant (i.e. cosmopolitan democracy) is needed.
According to a transformationalist point of view, globalization is both founded
on and produces the transformation of the state. Globalization must not be
considered as opposed to the nation-state system. The structure of modern
state and national citizenship systems have been globalized in the last few
centuries and have been evolving. Therefore, the question that needs to be
raised must be around the nature of this evolution. Our answer will depend on
the way we may define globalization, the state, and its sovereignty, autonomy,
2 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course
Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010
territoriality, and primacy

Concepts
There are some key concepts that we need to first discuss:
Power, in simple terms, means having control over social relations; politics is
about how to use power, and (liberal) democracy is a mechanism that allows
the use of power by people’s representatives for the interest of their
constituencies.
Polity: a particular form or system of government; political community; a
complex of decision-making roles and sharing power
Global polity: consists of collective structures and processes by which
“interests are articulated and aggregated, decisions are made, values allocated
and policies are conducted through the international and transnational political
process” (Ougaard 2004: 5); an imagined integrated political community at the
global level.
Global governance: a system of political coordination among public
authorities (states and intergovernmental org.), private agents (corporations),
and civil societal actors (NGOs, INGOs), seeking to realize common purposes
or resolve shared problems through making and implementing transnational
norms, rules, programs, and policies (see Baylis et al, 2008: 581)
Global covenant: shared norms, values, rules which govern the global society
of states.
Territoriality of state: a political space that is confined by internationally
recognized borders. The formal international recognition of state territoriality
was started from the establishment of the Westphalian state system in 17th
century Europe and then expanded through colonial border making among
colonial societies. They have been problematic from the beginning for many
native colonized societies. Borders are now being penetrated by huge amounts
of transnational flows (legal or illegal).
Scholte in Baylis and Smith (2001: 22) argues that the state can be
conceptualized as a space of flows regarding the diversity of many
supraterritorial influences. The following figure illustrates such a conception
(we may add flows of organs and sex workers, smuggled women and children,
or human trafficking to the figure).
State Sovereignty: is defined as the entitlement of a state to rule within its
3 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course
Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010
own territorial space; From a transformationalists view, globalization
processes have challenged the sovereignty of different states to different
degrees, but one can hardly argue that they have totally eroded the
sovereignty of any state; states still have significant sovereignty but this is less
bound with their territorial space. During the last fifty years, the world has
witnessed a significant increase in the number of intergovernmental
organizations (like EU, ASEAN, G7, G8, G77) and international non-
governmental organizations (see the following figure)
This implies that the more interactions societies have across their borders and
the more international and transnational bodies are involved in the formation of
global governance, the more an individual state will be confined by external
factors.
However, this situation has been facilitated through new international
legislation made by nation-states and the current global governance today has
become a field of competition and contention as much as cooperation among
nation-states.
Stronger nation-states (the North American and European states as well as
China and Japan) exercise greater levels of power in such a system and
therefore their sovereignty is less challenged by global issues like global
poverty, corruption, or crime. They are in a better position to deal with such
global problems.
State Autonomy or self-governance: can be defined as an internationally
recognized right given to a state to rule without interference from other states.
Challenged by recent global transformations, states are sandwiched between
demands from within to protect the interests of different groups of society
against global challenges and from without to collaborate (or comply). This can
have more severe consequences for the autonomy of powerless states
compared to powerful states.
The primacy of the state: modern states are given the most important
authority in exercising power over their citizens. However, the growing number
of new centers of public authority above and below the state as well as private
authorities (like MNCs) and civil societal authorities (NGOs, INGOs, and
transnational social movements) have challenged and transformed such
primacy.

Activity 1:
Watch the two following online video clips, and then try to explain them by drawing on the theoretical
perspectives reviewed above. Which perspective can help us better understand the two apparently
4 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course
Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010
contradictory stories in concert? Try to develop one coherent explanation of both stories together.
1. The Beast File: Google (HUNGRY BEAST) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfV6RzE30)
2. Great Firewall Of China (HUNGRY BEAST)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWfUOG0EA9w)

Globalization of modern state: a short historical account

The nature of the Western modern state from the beginning has been
problematic (similar to the nature of capitalism); the ‘modern state’ was
initially born out of rivalries among European Imperial powers (known as the
Westphalian state system). It was based on a rationalized monopoly of force
and only later under the pressure from social movements; it became gradually
democratic although power is still channeled through political parties and their
ideological discourses. This system was exported to other societies during the
colonization time and then it was kept by the post-colonial societies as the
only viable option to run their political systems in the modern time. The
modern state then was married to a problematic establishment of national
borders among former colonies with manipulated identities (take the example
of Pakistan and India and their conflicts since their independence). Then
these post-colonial states were targeted by the superpowers during the Cold
War through proxy wars and competitions between the Capitalist and
Communist camps. Finally, after the collapse of the Soviet, the Westphalian
state became more vulnerable to the challenges caused by the forces of the
market, transnational flows, and requirements of joining different regional and
international free trade agreements.
Today, world politics (or global governance) is structured around decisions
made by many international governmental bodies influenced by powerful
states, private actors (like MNCs), and non-governmental players. It might
look too premature or too idealist to talk about the emergence of a “global
state”. However, we can attribute some general features to this system of
governing world politics:
1- Global governance is hegemonic (stronger nations play greater
roles): Global governance remains hegemonic (the US and some other
powerful states still can bypass or veto the decisions made by international
bodies like the UN security council).
2- This hegemonic structure is oriented towards protecting a globalist
agenda: even the US is engulfed by the imperatives of global markets.
Underlying the world order is a mechanism that pursues the global
interests of capitalist systems and transnational elite networks. The political
5 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course
Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010
 imperial agendas of the past are replaced with corporate imperial agendas
whether financial or military and interventions by the US, G8/G20, and the
IMF are all about securing and managing the capitalist global order (Hardt
and Negri 2000). However, this capitalist global order also provides, in turn,
a hierarchal structure for the stronger actors to keep their privileges/upper
hand. For instance, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis sparked new plans by
the transnational elite networks including many politicians, finance ministers,
central bankers, bureaucratic and corporate bodies to return stability to the
system while maintaining the supremacy of global capitalist markets.
3- However, we may add to this gloomy picture the people’s power to
challenge the system (governance from below); this is to say that there
is not any determinism (made by state or market); social agents can play
significant roles as oppositions to the World Trade Organization across the
world created a global consciousness/awareness about the roots of poverty,
inequality, and environmental crises. Neoliberalism has lost its currency and
demands for global justice have been rising among the grassroots. From
opposition to the Atlantic Slave Trade in the 18th-19th centuries to the
1970s, Third World demands a new international economic order; from the
success of the anti-MAI movement in halting the OECD secret negotiations
for MAI (multilateral agreement on investment) in the late 1990s to the Battle
Seattle in 1999, and a series of oppositions to the WTO ministerial meeting
across the world can all be considered as signs of such a social change
from below. This has resulted in greater pressures from public opinion,
greater divisions within the OECD and WTO members in the recent rounds
of negotiation as well as the emergence of the anti-War and anti-debt
movement in recent years.
In sum, world politics today is a hierarchical field of contention, competition,
and collaboration in which there are strong non-state forces (such as MNCs
and transnational networks of the elite) that pursue their political-economic
interests through the trans-nationalizing power relations (e.g. integrating
national economies into a capitalist system); there are also forces that re-
actively pursue nationalism or other alternative agendas (like socialism or
fundamentalism) to protect their endangered interests and/or to disturb the
hegemonic expansion of Western/capitalist values. Besides, there are
hegemonic (inter-)governmental forces (like the US, Russia, China, G8,
OECD, and the EU) that use their (inter-)nationally based sources of power to
influence global relations and thereby take the maximum advantage of such
relationships like trade and investment for maintaining their supremacy.
However, there are also independent players from below that struggle for the
democratization of global governance and the realization of justice in both
6 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course
Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010
economic and political relationships.

References
Baylis, J. and Smith, S. (eds.) (2001) The Globalization of World Politics: an Introduction to International Relations. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire, Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press.

Ougaard, M. (2004) Political Globalization: State, Power and Social Forces, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Posted in global politics. Tags: Corporate Imperialism, G20, G8, global state, globalisation, globalization, nation-state,
Westphalian State System, world politics. 3 Comments »

7 | G l o b a l i z a t i o n a n d t h e N a t i o n - s t a t e © Dr. S A Hamed Hosseini, UoN, 2010| Course

Code: SOCA6120 |31-March-2010

View publication stats