The nation state, one player
among many?
by Pauline Sain and Stéphane Louhaur
The nation state, the basis of international
relations and main framework for the existence and exercise of sovereignty and democracy
of modern-day human communities, is being challenged, at the end of the 20th century, by
the phenomena both of regionalization and globalization. An assessment by Bertrand Badie,
Professor at the Political Studies Institute in Paris, of a post-sovereign world.
Interview.
How has the political and
administrative model of the nation state spread throughout the world?
Bertrand Badie: The nation state, as it
stands today under international law, is a peculiar political system invented by Western
Europe, which took six centuries, from the 13th to the 19th century, to establish itself
across Europe as a whole. When the State came into being in France, Spain and England, it
still co-existed with other forms of political systems, that is, the cities, the Empire
and the papacy, from which it had to gain its independence. It then penetrated areas of
Western culture in the Americas, with the independence of the United States and of the
Latin American societies, where the nation state triumphed as a method of political
organization as they gradually gained independence.
"We are seeing new forms of
transnational solidarity taking shape"
The third wave was the partial, but strong
diffusion of the nation state model to empires on the near or distant periphery of Europe
and victims of the rising power of the European model. These empires had a deliberate
policy of selectively introducing the conqueror's formula for re-establishing, or
attempting to re-establish, themselves. This is how the Ottoman Empire was very slowly
brought under state control at the turn of the 19th century, which led to the Turkish
Republic under Kemal in the 1920s. It also happened in Persia, Afghanistan and to systems
further away, such as the Kingdom of Burma, the Kingdom of Siam and, more particularly,
the Japan of the Meiji in the 19th century, which, however, was never defeated until 1945.
Finally, there is a last wave - the most
important in terms of volume - which is the de-colonization wave in Asia and Africa
throughout the 1950s and particularly the 1960s. It sanctioned the emergence of nation
states reflecting the Western nation state model and mainly the model of France as a
nation state.
What are the effects of the present
phenomenon of globalization on the foundations and functions of the nation state? Is it
doomed to disappear in the face of competition from these new infra- or supra-national
players?
Globalization is not, as is too often said
today, a mainly economic phenomenon. At the root of globalization is a highly significant
technical revolution, which is the removal of distance through the progress of
communication. This has had an extremely significant effect politically, since distance
has ceased to become this government resource which it has been for centuries. The nation
state's authority rested partly on distance, because it gave meaning to national territory
- the fair assessment of communication possible within a human community - and a mediating
function for the State whenever individuals tried to communicate with each other. Given
the extraordinary proliferation of transnational relations operating between individuals
beyond borders, bypassing the State's control, this no longer has any meaning today. Hence
the restructuring of the functions of the nation state insofar as the latter has the new
political perspective of governing in a system where communication defies it and where it
has to control this explosion in transnational relations.
"The major challenge will be to organize
different levels of citizenship"
Globalization has, of course, been used to
their advantage by all the potential players, starting with the economic players, whence
this growth in neoliberalism as a result of the ability of individuals to invest and to
trade directly, bypassing the State and beyond its control. Alongside the market, however,
we are also seeing other forms of transnational solidarity take shape. Due to the
immediacy of image, information and communication, every individual is now directly
involved in the domestic affairs of neighbouring or distant States. Globalization enables
a very large number of players to emerge on the international scene, who will have their
own international agenda, their own political will (this is the case with the NGOs) or who
will put pressure on the State for it to intervene on the international stage, as is the
case with international public opinion. We are therefore witnessing a vast international
public arena being set up, taking responsibility for international issues alongside the
inter-state system and beyond the control of States.
Does the State constitute a framework
which cannot be exceeded in exercising sovereignty?
It is not easy to answer the question of the
future of the State, because the State, with technological progress, is also building up
its means of action, coercion and communication. Rather than speak of the end of the
State, I shall therefore speak of a profound change in the State, which endures alongside
other non-state international players, while losing one of its essential characteristics,
that is, the principle of sovereignty.
Precisely, what part will these new
actors play in the future, and how will their role be connected with the role played by
the nation state?
The connection between these two types of
players becomes the major challenge to our modern-day international relations. The State
has several assets in its hand. It enjoys the virtues of a favoured partnership: it is
much easier to negotiate with a State than to negotiate with a transnational flow. One can
eventually negotiate with a multinational firm, because this is the type of transnational
player closest to state rationality, but not with a migratory flow, or with individual
investors, nor even less, with mafia organizations.
This is one of the tragedies of the new
international conflicts: the militias or the war lords will not have anything to do either
with negotiation or attempts at peacemaking, whereas the nation state is recognized by law
and by international organizations, both of which are inter-state systems. These players,
although not institutionalized, are often the decisive partners on the international
stage.
At another level, however, transnational
communication networks are forming and distributing information, often to the great
displeasure of States, whose leaders would very much like to hush up this or that
violation of human rights, which is nevertheless divulged by the NGOs and thus shames the
economic diplomacy of certain States. Friction is therefore at play between these
different types of player through the dynamism of the international public arena. But the
latter is not merely the public prosecutor of an often ethically questionable
international order. It also takes up humanitarian causes and is one of the major
initiators of this considerable change in nation state diplomacy. It is thanks to this
that human rights diplomacy is starting to assume meaning, and state diplomacy now accepts
that it has to seize on civil wars, internal conflicts and ethnic cleansing processes
under pressure from this international public opinion. All these interactions are
nevertheless still quite unpredictable.
Does the nation state, this political
framework for exercising democracy in Europe, seem outdated to you, or can it be
perfected?
The advent of citizenship has conferred on
the national political community the status of a community with voting rights. In the
context of the 19th century, and in the major part of the 20th, this was necessary for
forging and perfecting democracy. There is no choice today but to admit that national
political communities have fewer and fewer voting rights because the major decisions are
no longer taken by the national political communities. Some of them are already being
taken by the European Union, or even at world level. While it is obvious that regional
integration and some forms of world integration are appearing, the latter are struggling
to produce new conscious political communities with voting rights. A new citizenship
therefore has to be built at the level of vast regional units. Hence the fundamental
nature of European citizenship.
Furthermore, this citizenship, out of touch
with the national territory, is accompanied by the renewal of a citizenship of proximity.
There are thus several strata of citizenship: local, national of course, regional but also
transnational. The major challenge will therefore be to organize these different levels of
citizenship. Because to our French and Jacobinical2 mind, citizenship can only mean an
allegiance hierarchically above every other: the citizen is firstly a citizen of a State.
But from now on this multiple citizenship will have to be credible and democratic.
Otherwise the regional and world-wide level of integration will be left to technocracy.
The national level will remain the citizen's level, but his freedom of debate will become
totally illusory.
Is there a specifically French way of
understanding and analyzing these different phenomena?
In France, we are very much aware of the
problem of the State and its future, because while France did not invent the State, the
nation state model has its origins in her, and this has had a very significant
distributive effect through the influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.
Now that this model of the nation state is being challenged, we are in the front line.
My foreign colleagues often tend to think that my analyses
are more the result of a French obsession than a major, determining challenge to global
change. It is true that we perhaps find it harder to think about a post-sovereign world,
in which the State would have to hand new responsibilities over to civil society and
transnational networks. But basically the issue of the connection between the
international public arena and the States' domain concerns everybody. Tensions over
sovereignty are not the exclusive preserve of France. After all, the United States, which
likes to think of itself as highly emancipated compared with this culture of the State, is
the main protester, along with China, against the establishment of this International
Criminal Court, which is perhaps one of the first post-sovereign3 institutional outcomes.
Likewise, the Third World countries, which are only a very superficial part of this nation
state culture, are themselves attached to some of the attributes which globalization is
directly challenging today. These are fundamentally conservative trends. But beyond this
reactionary response, there are innovative responses. The role of France in Europe and
throughout the world is, perhaps, to show the way to these innovations, on an aspect which
I hold dear and on which I believe we have very important things to say in the name of the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution, namely that is, the gradual substitution of the
idea of the responsible State for that of the sovereign State.
(Courtesy Label France, 01/07/2002) |
