The Nation-State at the Crossroads

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the nexus between globalization and the nation-state, which has been heatedly discussed since the end of the 1990's, and present a desirable image of the role of the nation-state in an age of globalization. As will be explained later, globalization, like the two sides of a coin, has brought about positive and negative outcomes. On the positive side, there has been an increase of wealth worldwide through innovations in information, digital, and communication technologies, as well as the enhancement of freedom and women's rights. Yet, globalization has also given birth to potential, and uncertain, dangers such as socio-political frictions and instability caused by social inequality within, and among, nations. The authors conclude by suggesting that globalization poses a threat, one that is not, as has often been argued, to the state itself, but rather to democracy. Since the 1990s, the processes associated with surplus accumulation throughout the world ultimately have expedited the trend toward lower costs of labor, and lower levels of taxation and regulation, and have become a direct cause for the conversion of welfare states to competitive states keen to induce capital. This situation has become a grave factor, forcing national governments to evade their responsibilities for society's weakness. By raising a critical question as to whether this neo-liberal globalization is what we all have really wished for, the authors argue that the nation-states, presently standing at the crossroads of the 21st century, need to recapture their roles as welfare states, transforming the contemporary system of capitalism so that the Keynesian system of mixed economy can be prosperous on a worldwide scale.