The Challenge to the State in a Globalized World

TLDR

Statehood is a relatively recent global norm that emerged from colonialism and decolonization, yet its maintenance is increasingly difficult due to high economic costs, burdens on citizens and officials, and pressures from globalization, making state failure more likely. The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War exposed the inadequacy of existing sovereign state models and challenged the foundational narratives of security, representation, and wealth and welfare.

Abstract

Individual instances of state failure and collapse must be placed within a broader appreciation of the evolution of statehood within the international system. The idea that the inhabited area of the globe must be divided between sovereign states is a recent development, and likely to prove a transient one. Largely the product of European colonialism, and turned into a global norm by decolonization, it is threatened both by the inherent difficulties of state maintenance, and by processes inherent in globalization. States are expensive organizations to maintain, not only in economic terms but also in the demands that they make on their citizens and their own employees. Poor and dispersed peoples, and those whose values derive from societies without states, have found these demands especially burdensome. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union revealed the hollowness of existing models of sovereign states, and challenged the triple narratives on which the project of global statehood has depended: the narratives of security, representation, and wealth and welfare. While individual cases of state failure and collapse may owe much to specific circumstances and the behaviour of particular individuals, they must also be understood within the context of a world in which maintaining states has become increasingly difficult.