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The role of cities in the transformation of society is discussed. The growing importance of cities and their global networks undermine the nation state. This is a reversal of the development of the modern state which, over several centuries, increased its control over its territory and cities. Such changes have generated renewed interest in the Middle Ages. The relations between Medieval cities and territorial states were part of complex and shifting political arrangements, involving urban networks and overlapping claims to authority over territories. The general characteristics of prospective neomedieval political systems are discussed in more detail and applied to the regulatory challenges faced by neoliberalism and the transformation to a circular economy. The shift in the focus of neoliberal policy from the competitiveness of cities to that of metropolitan regions, with diverging urban and provincial interests hampers neomedievalist coordination. The cooperation between urban and provincial interests can however be realised in the transformation from a linear to a more circular economy, where metropolitan regions are well suited to accommodate the diverging aspects and forms of territorial regulation in a neomedievalist manner.

This paper discusses the different ways in which local identities are used in two Dutch municipalities. Like all local administrations these Dutch municipalities have to deal with external forces by plotting their own course between closing-off and opening-up. Local identities are used not only for resisting external threats like municipal amalgamations, but also to attract external resources. It proved useful to distinguish between a primary identity based on the widely recognised dominant characteristics of the local community, and a secondary identity based on how communities within a municipality have over time learned to deal with these different primary local identities. During an amalgamation this secondary identity disappears with the old municipality. The disappearance of the protective shield of a secondary identity exposes the underlying primary local identities, and can bring local identities into the centre of the local political debate. A perceived external threat frequently changes the character of these local identities. They can become more inward oriented, focus more on their historical roots and their differences with others; they 'thicken' into resistance identities. In other cases the secondary identity of a municipality is too weak and indistinct to support the primary local identities of its communities. Municipal amalgamation can then help to promote a new more attractive secondary, 'thin' regional identity based on a selection of characteristics of established primary local identities.

The Middle Ages have for the last centuries been used as an object of fear and contrasted with the benefits of modernisation delivered by ever stronger nation-states. But this modernisation narrative of the nation-state has been challenged in the last decades. Globalisation has not only brought people in the world closer together, but has also challenged established certainties. Especially the project of the nation-state of national integration and national development has been challenged by globalisation. After the period of national integration we are now entering a period of renewed fragmentation, questioning the taken-for granted dominance of national territories. This has sparked a renewed interest in the Middle Ages, an era in which the nation-state was not so dominant. This essay focuses on the changing role of cities in the New Middle Ages. It discusses not only how cities and their urban networks tear the traditional fabric of the nation-state apart, but also to what extent urban networks and regions can play an important role in new forms of network based economic, political and civic integration in the future.

World-systems analysis studies the development of our world-system. Its units of analysis to explain social change are not nation-states, but world-systems. There were until the nineteenth century many different and dissimilar types of world-systems – world-empires and world-economies - in the world. These have over the centuries been subjugated by the capitalist world-economy which emerged at the end of the Middle Ages in Europe. Analysing these long term historical processes is central in world-systems analysis. It focusses not on the newest features of globalisation, but on the processes which over the centuries have formed our modern world-system. This started as an European world-economy and has always functioned as a capitalist world-economy. It has over the centuries gone through several distinct phases of development and has subsequently incorporated all areas on the globe. The peripheralisation of these areas enabled the core to prosper. World-systems analysis focusses on the complex processes through which the inequalities in the world-system are reproduced at the systems level, but are changeable at the state level. The semi-periphery plays an important role in both stabilising the world-system as a whole and enabling some states to improve their position in the world-system. These changes in position in the world-system are linked to its economic cycle of growth and stagnation and its political cycle of rivalry and hegemony. Besides these recurrent cycles there are also trends which change and undermine the present world-system.