For those who are still not sure what a nation-state is and why it is collapsing:
The nation-state ‘ s model of statecraft links the sovereignty of a state to its territorial borders. Within these borders a state is supreme with respect to its law, and beyond its borders a state earns the right of recognition and intercourse to the extent that it can defend its borders. (Philip Bobbitt )
No state can defend its borders from terrorists, international corporations, and cyber hackers. And all intents to guard the borders against migrant flows are failing, too. No borders = no nation-state. The global economy spits on borders. Hence, there can be no more nation-state.
Clarissa's Blog 
Interesting! I always presumed that the ‘nation-‘ bit of the construct was the significant bit, and the one going through the changes. As in, with everything said and done, we’d end up with a ‘something else-state’.
But if it’s territory that’s at issue, then it’s the concept of statehood itself that’s in question. So long as Weber’s definition of a state as something that lays claim to a monopoly on the use legitimate violence within a specific territory is still the default one in political science and associated disciplines, at least (which I think it is, but then I’ve only cursory bits of knowledge on the issue).
I may be mistaken, but I got the idea that you think statehood is going to survive in some form. What’s a state to you, then?
I hope these endless requests to clarify definitions aren’t too annoying. 🙂 Getting those down doesn’t really make any difference to the underlying processes being discussed, but I feel like I need a good idea of what these words mean to you so that I’d have an idea of what you mean in detail, rather than the more general sense of “the world is changing, mobility is going up and welfare is going down” that I currently have.
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I love questions about the nation-state so no need to worry.
State forms keep changing but the state remains. Statehood in the Weberian sense is not going away. The state will keep exercising internal and external violence on behalf of the citizens.
What is going to change is the contract between the state and the people: when is the violence exercised, with what goal, what is expected from the citizens, what do they get in return?
This change can take many different forms but it seems like the state will try to derive its legitimacy from guaranteeing safety from the volatile contemporary threats (cyber terrorism, ISIS and Co, epidemics, ecological catastrophes, etc) . Whether it will be successful remains to be seen.
The change in state form has always led to massive upheaval and violence. Right now, the goal is to avoid massive warfare by diluting it in a series of low-intensity conflicts. But conflicts are inevitable.
Thank you for the great questions. It’s helpful to have such a well-informed reader.
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In a past post you said:
“The reason why we need to look towards war-making strategies to see what the fate of the nation-state will be is that the nation-state did not arise for economic reasons. The economy was always accidental to it. The nation-state arose very specifically for the purpose of waging more massive warfare with greater ease.”
Can you prove this statement? If it’s 100% about making wars cheap, why have nation states arisen when they did, quite late in human history, and not before that time?
I have heard this claim many times on your blog, but still have difficulty to believe in it. Perhaps, it’s since on the emotional level I want to believe my state Israel is created for my people as its central goal, not to use Jews as a cheap resource in wars. Couldn’t it be both? I mean, the Jews who created Israel wanted to live well in their own country, hopefully w/o wars. (I know about Israeli numerous wars obviously, but the state wasn’t created in order to wage them.)
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I’ve been thinking about what would happen to the borders of the current nation states since I read your posts about the post-nation state era, so this post proves your mind-reading capabilities :-). What I can imagine right now: the borders of the current countries will have the same role as the borders of local council areas (or I don’t know what is the name of the smaller local regions in the USA) have today. The role of the national government will be something like that of the local councils today: they will decide only in local questions like the location of schools and hospitals, or the renovation of the public libraries, and things like that. I wonder if I understand the concept well, or I’m on a false track. I also wonder who will make the more important decisions like financial or economical decisions. And what will happen to very big countries like the United States or China? Will the borders of them also become unsignificant, or is that only true for smaller countries?
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“What I can imagine right now: the borders of the current countries will have the same role as the borders of local council areas (or I don’t know what is the name of the smaller local regions in the USA) have today. The role of the national government will be something like that of the local councils today: they will decide only in local questions like the location of schools and hospitals, or the renovation of the public libraries, and things like that. I wonder if I understand the concept well, or I’m on a false track.”
“I also wonder who will make the more important decisions like financial or economical decisions.”
“And what will happen to very big countries like the United States or China? Will the borders of them also become unsignificant, or is that only true for smaller countries?”
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What is the connection between borders becoming “insignificant” and open-for-everybody-to-enter borders? The latter won’t permit the state to protect the state’s population from anything: not from terrorism, not from disease, etc.
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I guess borders will be “insignificant” only for a new privileged group – the highly educated mobile people. Others won’t have neither the means nor the necessary knowledge to move.
However I still don’t understand what will happen to the large groups of illiterate illegal immigrants from very poor countries/regions who will still want to flock without any knowledge or reasonable background to the more developed countries. If there will be no borders, that will mean a HUGE violence in the territory of the post-nation states.
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“If there will be no borders, that will mean a HUGE violence in the territory of the post-nation states.”
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“a cataclysmic war in the early decades of the twenty-first century”
I guess the consumerist dwellers of the post-nation states won’t be that successful in this hypothetical war. I still don’t understand why the new post-nation state is worth for them. Why don’t they rather want to keep their comfy nation states (that would protect them)?
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I love these great questions. Great, great questions. The new state form has also been called the state of opportunity and choice. This is a complete liberation from gender, tradition, prescriptive morality, etc. You are not tied to anything at all. Everything is your own choice and in everything there are enormous options.
Remember that the nation-state was very much into imposing morality. Often violently.
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I was thinking about economical reasons. I mean the current state of the nation state is unmaintainable: huge debts everywhere, literally everyone (even the rich) only wants to take away from the state, but nobody wants to pay in (me neither). So my tip was that it’s not because the inhabitants don’t want to keep the nation state, but rather they can’t finance it. Most people I know hate real choices and opportunities. They appreciate secure life trajectories much more than freedom. They also love to impose moralities onto each other. I can hardly imagine the majority will cherish the changes on an ideological level.
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// I still don’t understand what will happen to the large groups of illiterate illegal immigrants from very poor countries/regions who will still want to flock
What do you think, Clarissa?
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So shall we see a defeatist collapse at the sign of terrorism, or shall we see a triumphant rise of an international organisation like the United Nations?
Really, if you are arguing that the collapse of defence systems is natural and laudable, you need to also be arguing for the positive side of the dialectic too, otherwise this seems like rationalizing chaos.
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Most people want borders. I don’t blame Germans here. Quite likely, I would’ve wanted to march too in their case:
Poll: One in 8 Germans would join anti-Muslim marches
Survey highlights rise in anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim sentiment among Germans, as Merkel stresses country must welcome people fleeing conflict, war.
[…]
The latest poll of 1,006 people by Forsa for Germany’s Stern magazine found 13 percent would attend an anti-Muslim march nearby. It also found 29 percent of people believed that Islam was having such an influence on life in Germany that the marches were justified.
While two thirds of those polled believed the idea of an ‘Islamisation’ of Germany was exaggerated, many Germans are concerned about the numbers of asylum seekers, many from Syria, pouring into the country.
Partly in response to its Nazi past, German asylum rules are among the most liberal in the world. The number of asylum-seekers arriving in Germany surged to about 200,000 in 2014, four times the numbers in 2012. Net immigration has hit a two-decade high.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4610459,00.html
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Regarding “Poll: One in 8 Germans” I was interested in 3 comments:
1 From Worried Jew – Max , Germany :
Ridiculous Merkel shows her true (DDR) colors when she tells her fellow German citizens NOT to attend a PEACEFUL demonstration/movement.
There were no calls for violence unlike what we had seen in July during the Gaza war, when mostly Muslim citizens shouted anti semitic slurs.
2
No Muslim country would ever bring in so many Christians or Jews into their country.
3 (Answers to 2)
You are wrong: the Gulf States have a huge Christian population (in some places 80%), who work as slave labor to make the country function.
el: so, do Europeans want to become like the Gulf States? Never thought about it this way.
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