vanishing state power Let\'s Debate the Issue Globalization: Vanishing State Pow
ID: 1134241 • Letter: V
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vanishing state power Let's Debate the Issue Globalization: Vanishing State Power? Argument 1: State Power is on the Decline Nonstate actors are now as important as the state . States are no longer the key economic actors Many substitutes for nationalism have emerged Argument 2: States Are Down but Not Out . States have always been challenged, but they have always persevered . States still perform functions that cannot be handed off to other actors . Nationalism will remain a powerful ideological force for the foreseeable futureExplanation / Answer
State Power is on the Decline
The decline of authority of nation with the process of globalization. It asks whether globalization will inevitably lead to a decline and eventual withering away of the nation state as sometimes argued. What the factors are which would contribute to this and whether other elements would tend to argue for a redefinition and even the resurgence of the nation state as resulting from globalization. I limit the discussion to economic policy making, leaving other dimensions of globalization on one side. The notion that the power of centralized authority in nation states will inevitably decline as globalization accelerates, to most people seems both natural and quite realistic. In late medieval times, authority structures based on city states began to weaken as wider political groupings based on regions began to emerge, reflecting the presence of trade and flows of labour between cities. In the last 200 or so years, nation states have become the central focus of growth, reflecting a strong emphasis on nation building as perhaps the key element underlying development. At the same time, federal structures have either subsumed smaller pre-existing entities or emerged as power structures beyond actual boundaries (such as with the EU). All these processes typically reflect a pattern under which elements of economic policy making and authority concerning common but cross jurisdictional problems, such as monetary and fiscal policy, pass to higher levels within the jurisdictional structure, while the particular and different tend to remain under the jurisdictional authority of the lower level. As this has happened over the decades and centuries, lower level entities have tended to recede and higher level entities grow in authority. If globalization, in part, involves the emergence of supra national authorities because of new transnational problems resulting from growing trade, foreign investment, financial market interdependence and rapid technological change within a globalizing economy, then it seems only too natural that this process too will lead to supra national authorities eventually acquiring more jurisdictional power and nation states declining.
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