Does Globalisation Threaten the State? Thesis on the Fractal State

In: Cambridge review of international affairs, Band 15, Heft 3, S. 393-405

Abstract

There has been much recent debate concerning the role of the state. What should we make of this unease? There are two possibilities: the first involves taking a clear position on the debate by stating that globalization leads to the downgrading of states in global regulation, to the benefit of the market. This suggests that the era of the state will be followed by the era of the market. While this thesis has many elements of truth, it underestimates the capacity of the state to transform itself, at the risk of opposing the state too systematically to the market. The second takes the opposite point of view by saying that globalization leaves the state neither defenseless nor weakened. The tenants of this analysis use the historical plasticity of the state & the falling numbers of states in the world as evidence. At the same time, they hide the size of the crisis of legitimacy of public policies. The problem comes from the fact that these two theses, reputed to be mutually antagonistic, are in fact perfectly complementary. Accordingly, instead of choosing between them, it seems useful to address them simultaneously before moving beyond them to propose the following thesis: globalization develops at once against & with the state. This inherent contradiction transforms the state into a fractal actor, that is to say a state that no longer poises itself over society, but who at the same time remains the guarantor of a public rationality. Adapted from the source document.