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Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

GLOBALISATIONANDWITHERINGAWAYOFTHESTATE

Session20132014

SubmittedBy:SubmittedTo:
BhanupratapSinghShekhawatDr.AvinashSamal
RollNo.50Faculty(PoliticalScience)
SemesterIHNLU,Raipur
B.A.LL.B

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to the Almighty who gave me the strength to accomplish the project with sheer hard
work and honesty. This research venture has been made possible due to the generous cooperation of various persons. To list them all is not practicable, even to repay them in words is
beyond the domain of my lexicon.
May I observe the protocol to show my deep gratitude to the venerated Faculty-in-charge Dr.
Avinash Samal, for his kind gesture in allotting me such a wonderful and elucidating research
topic. Apart from that I would like to thank my friends for their support and suggestions during
the process of making this project.
Bhanu Pratap Singh Shekhawat

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

CERTIFICATE OF DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this research work titled Globalisation and Withering away of the
State is my own work and represents my own ideas, and where others ideas or words have been
included, I have adequately cited and referenced the original sources. I also declare that I have
adhered to all principles of academic honesty and integrity and have not misrepresented or
fabricated or falsified any idea/data/fact/source in my submission.

...
(BHANUPRATAP SINGH SHEKHAWAT)

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

RESEARCHMETHODOLOGY
This project work is descriptive & analytical in approach. It is largely based on secondary &
electronic sources of data. Books & other references as guided by faculty of economics are
primarily helpful for the completion of this project.

OBJECTIVESOFTHEPROJECT

To study the meaning of Globalisation

To study how Globalisation withers away the State

SOURCES

OF DATA

The researcher has used secondary sources of data while making this project. These sources
include:

Books
Political Journals
Articles available on Internet

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments

Certificate of declaration

Research Methodology

Objectives of the Project

Sources of Data

Globalisation

Globalisation And Withering Away Of State

Globalisation Co-Existing Or Competing With National Networks?

10

Globalization And Trans-governmentalism

10

The Limits Of Globalization

11

Conclusion

12

Bibliography and Webliography

13

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is widely perceived as the master concept of our time. Yet a consistent definition
remains elusive. Ironically, while participants in the globalization debate disagree over the
meaning and extent of the phenomenon, they are largely united in the view that globalization
impacts negatively on state power. In many cases, definitions of globalization presuppose in a
somewhat circular manner the very outcome (of state retreat) that demands empirical
investigation. A more fruitful conceptualization allows for the possibility that globalization may
actually complement and co-exist as opposed to undermine or compete with national sociospatial networks of interaction. This in turn paves the way for a more nuanced appraisal of the
differential impact of economic openness on the capacity for national governance. Specifying the
conditions, under which state capacities may be enhanced or diminished, sidelined or
strengthened, remains the key task for students of the politics of international economic
relations.1
In the least trivial sense, globalization is quintessentially an economic process, whose causes and
consequences may be political and social (as well as economic). This sense of an economic
process at the core of a globalization tendency is one that can be identified as more or less
implicit in most definitions of the term. Sociologists and political scientists tend to opt for more
encompassing and more general definitions in which economic happenings are often
presupposed. Thus, Anthony McGrew defines globalization as the multiplicity of linkages and
interconnections between the states and societies which make up the modern world system, and
as the process [whereby what happens] in one part of the world can come to have significant
consequences for individuals and communities in quite distant parts of the world.
Globalisation means the tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond domestic
and national markets to other markets around the globe, thereby increasing the
interconnectedness of different markets. Globalization has had the effect of markedly increasing
not only international trade, but also cultural exchange.2
1 isdpr.org/isdpr/publication/journal/29-1/1Linda%20Weiss.pdf
2isdpr.org/isdpr/publication/journal/29-1/1Linda%20Weiss.pdf
Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

Globalization is the process of international integration arising from the interchange
of worldview, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture.
The political economists, Susan Strange has called globalization, a term used by a lot of woolly
thinkers who lump together all sorts of superficially converging trends in popular tastes for food
and drink, clothes, music, sports and entertainment with underlying changes in the provision of
financial services and the directions of scientific research, and call it all globalization without
trying to distinguish what is important from what is trivial, either in causes or in consequences.

GLOBALISATION AND WITHERING AWAY OF STATE

There are many forces abroad in the world that challenge established models and practices of
state sovereignty. These include globalization and nationalization, the emergence of new polities
such as European Union, the reconfiguration of world trade into gigantic trading blocs, the rise
of communications global village, destatism and privatization, regionalism, the merger mania
among megacorporations, global environmental problems and so forth.3
Withering away of the state is a concept of Marxism, coined by Friedrich Engels, and referring to
the idea that the social institution of a state will eventually become obsolete and disappear, as
the society will be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law.
The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after
another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of
things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not abolished, it withers
away
As perceived by the globalists, both the nature of capitalism and the role of the state are being
transformed: On one hand, capitalism is becoming increasingly ungoverned as markets are
disembedded from institutions. On the other hand, state power over territory is withering, giving
rise to a different kind of state one which has lost sovereignty, scaled back welfare programmes
and industrial policy, and entered into multilateral governance arrangements. The primary locus
for policymaking and for governing economic affairs is thus allegedly shifting away from the

3 lasswebs.spea.indiana.edu/bakerr/challenges_to_sovereignty.htm 22/10/2013

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

nation-state, giving rise to a politics of less rather than more democracy.
Globalization implies the worldwide, virtually instantaneous interdependence of a growing
number of aspects of economic and cultural life. Streeten summarized the components of this
fundamental change in our lives as follows:
In addition to economic interdependence (trade, finance, direct investment) there are
educational, technological, ideological, cultural, as well as ecological, environmental, legal,
military, strategic and political impulses that are rapidly propagated throughout the world.
Money and goods, images and people, sports and religions, guns and drugs, diseases and
pollution can now be moved quickly across international frontiers.
Streeten argues elsewhere in his paper that in the early years of this century during the epoch of
the empires, the world was, in fact, more inter-related. However, at that time, the technology
imposed serious constraints on how rapid or direct that interdependence could be. At that time, it
really mattered to have viceroys and ambassadors. Today, they are rapidly pushed aside by global
communications.4
This is the overarching paradigm behind this paper, encapsulating many of the other variables
and being composed of them simultaneously and interactivelyAIDS, trade, terrorism,
communications, environmental change etc. It represents a dimension of many changes rather
than a process of change in itself, but it is the greatest single challenge to the "traditional" postWestphalian model of the state. We have to consider incremental, but major, adjustments of the
state to this dimension, as well as possible radical transformation of the whole context and
meaning of the state as we have come to accept it over the last few hundred years. At one end of
the scale we see the re-emergence of old regional (sub or transnational) identities within the
colossus of the European Union; on the other the resurgence of local cultures in the poor world
as a reaction to Western hegemony.5
There is no absolute model of the state, though people in many places still seem prepared to die
for the current prevailing option. In discussing the state and globalization we face the same
dilemma as discussing the family in the West. The fact is that the traditional Western model of
the family and marriage has undergone enormous stress and change, and maybe irreparable
4 lasswebs.spea.indiana.edu/bakerr/challenges_to_sovereignty.htm 22/10/2013
5 lasswebs.spea.indiana.edu/bakerr/challenges_to_sovereignty.htm 22/10/2013
Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur

Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

damage. We have no real understanding of what the future family will or should be, and so we
try to retain the folklore of the old or traditional values, without actually being sure what
they are/were, or whether they really worked in todays terms. States, similarly, are seeing
considerable elements of the glue of traditional statehood being eaten away, and are left
without any idea where all this is really going, and so their captains tend to cling on to the
mythology of the past, while sailing on into uncharted waters. The European Union seems to be
the best example of this schizophrenia.6
It is rather easier to see globalization in terms of its component parts than as a broad sweep, but
that is where we need to start, for it is in this huge, interdisciplinary context that the various
elements of public-affairs training have to be set. The importance of this is that globalization
will, otherwise, be perceived and handled sectorally and incrementally so that the overarching
structure remains only the sum of its disparate, symptomatic, parts without any real institutional
or regulatory cohesion, or even sense. It could be argued that the EU grew this way for the
longest time on the pretence that it was some economic techno-union, but what economic
union has a parliament? In sum, what is the collective shared vision for globalization?
Globalization will lead to increasing diminution of the role of the traditional state by means of
treaties, international organizations, free-trade agreements, etc. What is to take its place?
Actually the brightest and best have been predicting the nation states demise for 200 years,
beginning with Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace, through Karl Marx and the
Withering away of the state, to Bertrand Russells speeches in the 1950s and 1960s.
Nonetheless, there is a need for moral, legal, and economic rules that are accepted and enforced
throughout the global economy. A central challenge, therefore, is the development of
international law and supranational organizations that can make and enforce the rules for the
global economy.

GLOBALISATION CO-EXISTING OR COMPETING WITH NATIONAL

NETWORKS?
6 lasswebs.spea.indiana.edu/bakerr/challenges_to_sovereignty.htm
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Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

For most globalists the emergence of a global economy implies a world in which economic
exchange has transcended national territorial space as the primary locus of accumulation.
Geography, in the sense of physical location, no longer matters to economic transactions. The
widespread acceptance of this form of zero-sum reasoning explains why it is that the language of
globalization has come to imply tendencies quite different from those captured by the language
of internationalization. Indeed, to use the language of globalization is fundamentally to claim
that the nation-state is no longer important either as power actor or as a site of economic
accumulation. But we see now that there is a half-way house. It is possible for a globalization
tendency to exist, and yet to do so by virtue not at the expense of the structuring and
coordinating capabilities of national and state-constituted institutions. Globalization in fact may
be quite open ended.

GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSGOVERNMENTALISM

Modern state formation involved a kind of caging process since it meant that social inter- action
networks that started out largely as transnational or local in scope became increasingly regulated
at the national level.
By nationalizing much of social life, nation-states thus provided a sort of social caging device
that existed alongside and gave structure to transnational networks. The caging of social relations
that the nation- state made possible should be seen as a metaphor not for territorial confinement
or restriction, but as a way of conveying the idea that all social relations and all outcomes of
social struggles (whether at local or supra-national levels) came to be regulated through the
nation-state. The state became a focal or coordinating point for social activity. As Mann has
argued in a larger time frame contrasting pre-industrial and modern states,
The power of the modern state principally concerns not state elites exercising power over
society but a tightening state-society relation, caging social relations over the national rather than
the local-regional or transnational terrain, thus politicizing and geo-politicizing far more of social
life than had earlier states7
7 globalisationandstatepower.pdf

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Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

THE LIMITS OF GLOBALIZATION

With varying degrees of boldness, its proponents posit the disintegration of national economies
and the demise of the states domestic power. Capitalism is becoming increasingly transnational,
say the globalists, and this is displacing national political and economic power networks. Like all
orthodoxies, which attract a majority following, this one is not without substance. The sheer
volume of cross-border flows, of products, people, capital and above all of money, is hard to
ignore.
One can also argue on theoretical grounds that even if economic integration were far more
advanced than at present, the predicted emasculation of state powers would not necessarily come
about. This conclusion rests partly on the fact that the impact of economic openness is always
mediated by domestic institutions, thus the character of public purpose and national
arrangements provide for diverse responses to and outcomes of external pressures. It is also in
part because, in many areas, from acquisitions and mergers to strategic alliances globalization
is being advanced by and through the nation-state, hence depending on the latter for its support
and maintenance. Thus, rather than counter posing nation-state and global market as antinomies,
in certain important respects globalization is often the by-product of states promoting the
internationalization strategies of their corporations.
Thus, say the sceptics, proponents of globalization not only overstate the extent and novelty of
transnational movements; they also underrate the variety and adaptability of state capacities,
which build on historically con- figured domestic institutions.8

CONCLUSION

8 globalisationandstatepower.pdf
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Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

With globalization, the bond between the nation state and capitalism is now coming to an end.
Globalisation is said to be making the nation state obsolete, politics irrelevant and national
sovereignty an empty shell.9
This alleged demise of the nation state and national sovereignty is part and parcel of the
Universalist claims of contemporary capitalism. For the first time in history, capitalism has
spread its reach to the remotest parts of the world and posits itself as a global system. Neither
British capitalism in the 19th century nor even the American post-1945 version was truly
universal. Today, capitalism is said to have finally broken away from its national moorings. It has
become, as it were, extra-territorial, rootless, identity-less.
Though in many parts of the world the state has indeed lost control, the fact remains that the
American state has not withered away in the new free market utopia. On the contrary, US
hegemony and sovereignty have been strengthened in spectacular fashion. In Europe, state power
has been redeployed in accordance with the logic of globalisation to achieve economic
unification. While the role of the state has been redefined (at the cost of growing social
hardship), there has been no automatic weakening of state power.10

9 www.globalpolicy.org/nations/global.htm
10 www.globalpolicy.org/nations/global.htm

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Globalisation and Withering Away of the State

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Badyal, J.S., Political Theory, Raj Publishers, Jalandhar
Myneni, S.R., Political Science, Allahabad Law Agency, Faridabad

WEBLIOGRAPHY

lasswebs.spea.indiana.edu/bakerr/challenges_to_sovereignty.htm
globalisationandstatepower.pdf
www.globalpolicy.org/nations/global.htm
isdpr.org/isdpr/publication/journal/29-1/1Linda%20Weiss.pdf

Hidayatullah National Law University | Raipur