The State and Globalization in the Contemporary World

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. What is Globalization?
2.1 Nature of its existence

3. The State and Globalization
3.1 The Dead State?
3.1.1. Computer and telecommunications revolution
3.1.2. Increase in Trade, International finance and Multinational Production
3.1.3 Rise of non-state actors
3.2 The Powerful State

4. The Survival of the State
4.1 Culture and Globalization
4.2 The state of globalization in India
4.2.1 The Indian economy
4.2.2 The nuclear India
4.2.3 The political India
4.2.4 The ‘international’ India

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

1. Introduction

W hat is more important for the society—the present or the future ? What it has achieved and preserve or what it can create in the long run? This ordering of preferences is the most crucial point of understanding for any unit—political, social, economic, cultural or otherwise. This binary distinction of the present and the future as a part of other sets of distinctions e.g. the ‘base’ and the ‘superstructure’, or the ‘symbolic’ and the ‘material’ can be traced back to the ancient philosophical distinctions of the

‘mind’ and the ‘body’, the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’ (Wallerstein, 1990). Nations and people sacrifice welfare and security, which generally demonstrate long-term commitments, to immediate issues as nationalism, ethnicity or religion (Waltz, 1999: 32).

This dissertation is an attempt to revisit this old debate of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘real’ in the present context of states as embedded in International Relations theory and how they react to the processes of globalization. Such an attempt, being extremely broad and diverse in its scope brings many different converging aspects which are in need of clarification at the very outset. This dissertation hopes to identify the manner in which the state perpetuates itself while faced with the reductionist forces of globalization. However, to do so the author will deliberately avoid going in to the extremely rich and contested theories associated with the modern state, their origins and survival as that would be beyond the scope of the present study. Also, for the entire duration of the literature states have been identified as nation-states. This dissertation thus discusses states as identified by international relations, territorially bounded sovereign locations which generally correspond to a single nationalist sentiment, even though being constituted by different nations.

The sovereign scope of the state has been questioned as the world has become more integrated in terms of communications, economic transactions, money flows etc. What is of utmost importance here is to locate the different ways in which states react to such a threat which tends to break its sovereign hold over its subjects. However, before such an analysis can be made globalization as a concept needs to be explained. The first chapter thus describes the major themes of globalization and discusses what the phenomenon supposedly entails. It also briefly touches on the debate of the existence of such a phenomenon. Interdependence and interconnectedness have reduced the state’s sovereign hold over its territorial identity. This is the most crucial claim of the globalization discourse and it has been taken up following an overview of state- sovereignty in the second chapter. Both sides of the argument have been explained in order to provide the reader with a complete understanding of the claims and counter- claims of the globalists, the sceptics and the transformationalists. Chapter three identifies culture as being the major defence of the state against the forces of globalization. This chapter further chooses the Indian state as an example and locates the four different ways in which the Indian state answers the threats of globalization. It shows how India has carved a niche for itself in the international society in the four different fields of economy, politics, military and culture. It also applies the Indian context to show that all states which are rooted in a strong society and culture can accept globalization without the fear of succumbing to it. However, this acceptance necessarily presupposes adaptations on the part of the state. In conclusion, the future of the modern nation-state has been laid out briefly on the basis of such adaptations which it needs to make or have already made. Indeed, there is no denying the recent changes in contemporary world and as the title of this literature suggests, distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘the rest’ are crucial to such an understanding.

List of References:

Wallerstein, I (1990): “ Culture as the Ideological Battleground of the Modern World- System ” in Featherstone, M (ed.) “Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity”. SAGE Publications, pp. 31-55.

Waltz, K (1999) .: “ Globalization and Governance ” in “PSONLINE”, Columbia University (Dec). URL: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/walglob.htm Accessed: 15.05.2007

2. What is Globalization?

The reasons behind the conceptual difficulty of identifying globalization in exact terms of what it is and what it does, lie in the cyclic logic used to define it. Most researches on globalization tend to extract the meaning of globalization from the effects it has on a society’s economy, political sphere, culture and the like. For example, a particular society’s culture can be studied and the traits of globalization as might be found in them can be attributed back to the definition of globalization. Robertson (1990) found globalization to be the ‘form’ by which the world became ‘united’. The perceived unity of the world gives globalization a definitional quotient, that of a ‘grand unifier’. But this unity happens through different channels, varied planes of understanding. The multiple layers associated with globalization must be identified and addressed separately yet under a conceptual whole to decipher the meaning of the word. Tomlinson (1999: 22) for example identifies this multi-dimensionality as a natural concomitant of what he terms ‘complex-connectivity’. However, he also points out that to understand globalization its multi-dimensionality must be reduced to a single dimension (Tomlinson, 17). But this reductionism cannot be sweeping in its scope. What Tomlinson underlines is that an analysis of a single dimension for example, culture as a part of the complex-connectivity associated with globalization—helps to identify globalization in relation to that specific dimension.

So the question remains: what is globalization? Without going into the debates concerning the problematic definition of the term itself, it can be roughly identified as a non-linear phenomenon based on accumulation, ordering and restructuring. It has no ‘top’ or ‘bottom’, no ‘start’ or ‘end’. Globalization has no fixed point of departure from any previous historical socio-economic processes. It is much like a circle with no point of initiation or completion. In fact globalization is a form of forced social evolution. It is man-made and yet its development and effects are natural to the extent that the results follow naturally from within the idea. It is an ideational construct encompassing all aspects of the modern (some would say post-modern) society. The idea of a ‘globalizing world’ in academic spheres relate to a ‘shrinking’ of distances, of a ‘time-space compression’; a world where connections between and amongst people have become so easy, rapid and intricate that the ‘territoriality’ associated with the term ‘space’ has lost its relevance. Globalization in effect means becoming a part of the globe, not the world. This distinction is essential in marking the chief trajectory of the concept. World is the real-time association that we have presently. An association with the self and the surroundings, the ‘immediates’ such as family, friends, offices, clubs etc, where there is no place for the ‘others’, the strangers, the unknown. Globe as a word signifies the unity of mankind, of the people living on the planet. It is a universal attachment to a particular social life/being. Here, you take notice of someone in a different country a thousand miles away, or are affected by the economic downturns they are facing. Here, you develop ties and bonds with the other, the ‘non-immediates’. Globalization thus becomes the process by which you become one with the globe.

But how did this significant change come to happen? How did the Hobbesian ‘selfish, nasty and brutish’ individual come to terms with such a magnanimous connectivity where existence is supposedly more about the ‘other’ than the ‘self’?

Sadly it turns out that this beautiful thought of becoming one with the globe was a by- product of an agenda, an ideology. As noted earlier globalization has no fixed point of initiation but that it evolved from the historical socio-economic processes already in place. Globalization can be traced out from the inherent human tendency to look beyond, move forward and expand his senses. In a crude explanation it can be said that the roots of globalization were in human romanticism i.e. in the beauty of knowing the unknown. From deriving mere aesthetic pleasures this slowly made way to the greater socio-economic implications with the unrestrained movements of human beings, capital, information and culture. As human knowledge increased the dissemination of such knowledge became a priority along with movements. In the 16th century Europeans established worldwide trade connections and started spreading their culture. On the other hand movements also resulted in territorial expansion and domination. Especially during the late 19th century period along with the rise in migration, trade increased and so did the formation of new norms and orders upon different colonies. After the end of World War II colonies created due to such expansion entirely on the basis of economic and material gains (the high ideal of disseminating knowledge or the romanticism associated with discovery has long died) gained independence and complete political sovereignty. What also happened was that the links, institutions that were in place during the colonial period transformed in to cultural residues, remnants of consciousness from the past (Lechner and Boli, 2004).

However, the imperialist drive of the colonial powers riding on the back of military prowess had to wither away with the acceptance of core and intrinsic human values e.g. freedom etc. legalized through international organizations as the United Nations.

But capital as an entity itself remained and kept on flourishing with the help of capitalist- industrialist societies, largely associated with the Western world. The collapse of the communist bloc in the early 1990s with the end of the Cold War saw the completion of capitalism as an accumulative and regenerative mechanism. But capitalism cannot flourish without new markets; newer territories must be conquered by capital for it to survive. Thus the military dimension of imperialism gave way to the economic imperialism through capital. Globalization as we experience it today originates specifically through the brisance of such a capitalist explosion situated in the commodity-plenitudes, mass consumption patterns etc. Featherstone’s (1990) formulation that globalization is not a form of cultural imperialism driven by economic imperialism can be contested only when we are talking about globalization as it started anew in the late 1990s. With the help of technological inventions in communication, information-sharing gathered immense speed and thus globalization became truly ‘global’. Globalization had thus gone through several phases in history before it reached the present state. It had evolved through time.

Scholte (cited in Greig: 2002) on the other hand identifies three distinctive descriptions of globalization. First, globalization involves cross-border internationalization, effectuating increase in the movements of people, goods, ideas, thoughts, capital, technology etc. Second, globalization is described as amounting to or resulting in removals of barriers to large-scale movements of those previously stated items. As such, here globalization itself becomes a by-product of the removal of barriers. The third conception of globalization sees it as transcending borders diminishing territories and distances. Rupal Oza calls this ‘the simultaneous solidification of global flows and the consolidation of the local identities’ (2006, 4). This is termed the ‘global-local nexus’ or ‘ glocalisation’, one of the chief claims of globalists, where the global and local interactions submerge, transcending and bypassing any national level interactions.

2.1 Nature of its existence

To understand globalization we also need to acknowledge the many varied planes of understandings that at times run counter to each other and at times collide. The literature on globalization can be divided into three distinct theoretical understandings: (i) globalists/hyper-globalists, (ii) radicalists/ inter-nationalists and (iii) transformationalists (Held 2004: 22-24). Globalists and hyper-globalists have a fixed belief on the might of the globalization which they think is spreading affluence all over the globe. Globalists and the hyper-globalists have fixed belief in the occurrence of globalization. It is a new phenomenon like none other and it is here to stay. Globalization is a fad which is slowly making its way to each and every corner of the globe. It is the path towards a global development; through globalization comes the power of emancipation, freedom and through freedom the right to seek changes and to join the global forces of change. By joining the globalizing forces the poor and the downtrodden can slowly attain equality with the rich and the wealthy. Equality comes through the demonstrative ability to perform. Globalization provides the power to demonstrate the capability to join the market. Thus, states have lost their sovereign power over its subjects as the market (now ever more vibrant with economic transactions of unprecedented magnitudes) decides the fates of individuals. If the state tries to counter the forces, the resulting exclusion of it from the developing global changes would render it obsolete. The state thus learns to obey the market. For globalists, the state is losing its importance tremendously and we are not far away from witnessing a state-less world society run by the ‘invisible hand’ of the market. Globalization, according to the globalists, is here to stay and to help.

The radicalists believe that globalization is not a new phenomenon. It’s rather a continuation of past histories when we used to have such trade interactions. Also, the power of the nation-state is far from over. States are building new institutions to counter the increasing inter-nationalism. Radicalists or inter-nationalists on the other hand are completely opposite in their understanding. Hirst and Thompson (1999), Waltz (1999) and others have argued that globalization is nothing new as far as its occurrence is thought to be a late 20th century novelty. They have shown that globalization as we define it today with relation to connectivity, increased economic transactions, growth in international trade and investments, cultural exchanges etc was present for over two centuries. In their viewpoint nation-states are becoming all the more important in the increasingly enmeshing global-regional-local networks.

Transformationalists on the other hand think that globalization is happening and the nation-states realizing that they are not the be-all and end-all of modern politics, are adapting themselves to the currents. They are united in their views about the natural instinct of the state to survive through transformations and unearthing newer measures to counter the globalizing forces of change. This transformation is different than mere structural adjustments to suit the immediate needs of the day. This is a complete makeover of the value-systems, power distributions, state-society relations, private- public distinctions etc in order to make the state ready for the next era of post-modern politics. This doesn’t only involve the new ‘information society’ (Castells: 1997; Kumar: 1991) or the ‘risk society’ (Beck: 2000) but the post-industrial and post-modern de- territorialized state-society where borders are porous but present, helping to retain the most precious national cultures and sentiments which stay territorially bound. This is discussed later in greater detail.

The biggest political claim of globalization is that it has resulted in the death of the state. In fact, such a claim ceases to be just political in nature when the reasons behind it are analysed. Claims about the declining nation-states touch political, economic and cultural sides of globalization. The following chapter discusses the nature of the modern nation- state with globalization as perceived by the three different planes of understanding and investigates the truth behind such statements.

List of References:

Featherstone, M (1990): “ Global Culture: An Introduction ” in Featherstone, M (ed.) “Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity”. SAGE Publications, pp. 1-2.

Greig, J (2002): “ The End of Geography?: Globalization, Communications, and Culture in the International System ” in “The Journal of Conflict Resolution” Vol. 46, No. 2, (April), pp. 225-243.

Held, D (ed.) (2004): “A globalizing world? Culture, economics and politics”. 2nd Edition, Routledge.

Lechner, F & Boli, J (2004) : “General Introduction” in Lechner & Boli (eds.) “The Globalization Reader”, Blackwell 2nd edition, pp. 1-3.

Oza, R (2006): “The Making of Neo-Liberal India: Nationalism, Gender and the Paradoxes of Globalization”. Routledge.

Robertson, R (1990): “ Mapping the Global Condition: Globalization as the Central Concept ” in Featherstone, M (ed.) “Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity”. SAGE Publications, pp. 15-25.

Tomlinson, J (1999): “Globalization and Culture” Polity pp. 17-22.

Waltz, K (1999): “Globalization and governance” in PSONLINE. Columbia University (Dec) URL: <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/walglob.htm> Accessed: 15.05.2007.

3. The State and Globalization

With the Westphalian Treaty of 1648 states came to honour the mutual benefits of allowing each other the right to control their own territories. The crucial claim of the state over society thus came from ‘outside’, it was decided that states will not interfere with each other’s sovereign rights to govern its citizens. This was true for all states, be it liberal, democratic, authoritarian or any other. Sovereignty in its modern distinctive nature is the ‘exclusive control of a definite territory’ (Hirst & Thompson: 1999, p. 256).

Over the years various challenges have threatened to erode the sovereignty of the nation-state. Till the end of the Second World War, such threats more often used to come from below i.e. from within the state itself. Dissident voices, sub-national movements, nascent nations developing inside a state etc. pulled the sovereign legitimacy of the state into a vortex of internal commotion. Such anti-systemic threats were mostly direct answers to the colonial rule and manifested themselves as outcomes of political and territorial domination. With the end of the Second World War the modern state started to advance its capabilities as the ‘container’ of the civil society in all its aspects of economy, polity and culture. It was based on the principle of territoriality—its ‘physical expression’. Through territoriality the state distinguished between the presence of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ (Brenner 1999). The borders configured space and were co- existent with the territorial supremacy of the state. This ‘bounded space’ was the domain of the state’s activities, rules, laws, associations, principles, regulations and the like. Within this domain it served everyone equally and tried to meet the demands of everyone. It also realised that with the increasing demands from both the domestic society and the international society, responsibilities were needed to be shared or delegated to other organisations, associations working beneath the level of the state. So the modern state retained the classical functions of protecting its citizens from harm, both externally (sovereignty) and internally (a stable civil society), maintaining a fully functional economy which grants rights to its individuals and to provide justice for all. But above all, the state abstracted all the contingent identities of an individual, which stretched for example from being a man, to a father, a husband, an office worker, a friend etc. by collapsing all these into a single identity of citizenship. You derive your rights, your pensions, your profits, your health insurance etc based on the rigid fact that you are first and foremost the citizen of a state which legitimates the constitution which gives you the rights, accepts the license for the employer who gives you the pensions, help run the stable market which assures your profit and so on. Thus by the 1960s the state became the supreme socio-political entity (Hirst & Thompson: 1999). In the advanced western countries it was widely felt that continuance of national economic management through uniform and organised services in health, education, welfare etc was essential for the sustenance of full employment and growth (Hirst & Thompson: 1999). However, such Keynesian macroeconomic services were found wanting with the demise of the welfare-state (Bhattacharjee: 2006). The functionality of the welfare state came under immense scrutiny with the new Right calling for the rational market forces to ride over the irrationality of bureaucratic state interventions (Bhattacharjee: 2006). With the collapse of the Soviet bloc similar assertions were forwarded to the concept of state itself as the whole world became ‘open’. States, which were cautiously following the power blocs disentangled themselves from the Cold War era of veiled governance. By the mid 90s, along with the rise of the processes of globalization through increased trade, investments, post-Fordist production mechanisms (Kumar: 1995), and advanced telecommunications etc. the supremacy of the state, or even its necessity in the modern world was put to perspective. Many debates have taken place in order to posit state in the recent globalizing world affairs which have questioned the legitimacy of the state to order societies when the distinctive territorial demarcation to underline the beginning of a state’s sovereign power has lost its meanings. The following section traces the most vibrant of such claims.

3.1 The Dead State?

Debates involving the reasons behind and nature of the modern state’s demise are not new. According to Scholte (1997) state-redundancy theories have been in debate from early twentieth century. Modern theorists who advance the collapse of the state theory come mostly from a non-political academia. Public policy analysts like R. B. Reich (1991) and management theorists like Kenichi Ohmae (1995) are the chief proponents of the scaling down of the state’s activities. From within the discipline itself British political economist Susan Strange (2003) was pivotal in underlining the ‘hollowing out’ (Strange, cited in Douglas, 1997) of the state in the globalising age. Ohmae calls the nation-state a ‘nostalgic fiction’ which nowadays has lesser contributions to make as the freedom to contribute has been taken away from it (Ohmae: 1995, pgs. 11-16). Almost all redundancy theorists have based their arguments on similar observations and follow a remarkable structural parity. They have looked at the modern state from such vantage points as the rise of the non-state actors, the inevitable force of global finance resulting in the deterritorialization of the increasing ‘borderless world’ (Ohmae: 1990), the fragmentation of the central authority of the state aiming towards a global society, advanced communications undermining the state’s controls etc (Douglas: 1997). What is common in all these claims can be grouped under the following sections.

3.1.1. Computer and telecommunications revolution

Technology has become widely accessible. The de-monopolisation of the use of the technology by the government to gather large amounts of information have been crucial in its demise (Mathews: 2002). Today, computers are not the prerogative of the wealthy and influential. It’s the basic necessity, the way of connecting with the globe, the rest. Internet usage has increased rapidly facilitating this global exchange of information. Castells showed that from 14 million users in 1995 the number of users went up to 400 million users in 2001 and predicted that by 2005 it will reach 1 billion (cited in Urry, 2005: 246-7). According to the latest data released by Internet World Stats, 17.85% of the world’s population, amounting to approximately 1.1 billion people have been penetrated by the reach of the Internet, which is a 225.0% increase from 2000 (Internet World Stats 2007). This phenomenal growth however is supplemented by some interesting figures which show that 37% of the users are from Asia (see Appendix: Figure 1) but ironically that is only 12% of Asia’s population (see Appendix: Figure 2). In terms of population penetration North America has achieved the largest penetration with 69% of its population using internet, followed by Australia/Oceania and Europe. Mathews argues that internet, satellite communications, fax machines etc are carriers of technology which reduce distance and the ‘importance of proximity’ resulting in societal divisions (2002, 204).

3.1.2. Increase in Trade, International finance and Multinational Production

Extreme globalist writers like Ohmae (1990) and Reich (1991) argue that global markets have become totally integrated and connected. Multinational corporations have free reign over their entrance and participation in the domestic markets. Non-tradable goods and services are also marketed by multinational organisations as production has ceased to be localised and national (Perratton & Goldblatt: 1997). But globalization sceptics often argue about the myth of increased international trade. Such authors (Hirst & Thompson: 1999; Gilpin: 2002 ) argue that the amount of global flows involved during the classical Gold Standard Period circa 1870-1914 have been matched but not surpassed by modern trade flows. But recent studies have shown that as much of the post-war GDP growth in industrialised countries had been in non-tradable services, mostly public services, the ratios of trade to private sector GDP (as a proxy for tradable GDP) has surpassed Gold Standard ratios by the 1970s (Perratton & Goldblatt: 1997). Such an increase in global trade coupled with the flow of unregulated global finance resulting from the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and the concomitant origins of floating exchange rates were the chief reasons behind the state’s alleged demise. With the rise of MNCs, FDIs have also increased from $192,682 million in 1990 to $572,774 million in 2001 (Source: Global Financial Flows, 2005. List-6.7). Such increases in FDIs tend to underline the fact that states are no longer immune from international exchanges. Today, the greater the amount of FDI a country can attract reflects its market and political stability towards foreign investors. As Strange (2003: 132) points out,

“(T)o the extent that attention is paid at all to the institutions creating and marketing credit in the world economy, they are held to be important chiefly for the increased volatility they may cause to exchange rates, or to the impact they may have on the ability of governments to borrow abroad to finance development or the shortfall between revenue and spending, or between export earnings and import bills.”

3.1.3 Rise of non‐state actors

Non-state actors range from NGOs to terrorist organizations. Even criminal groups working inter-nationally do not belong to any specific state. NGO’s roles have exploded in the last ten years. They have grown from around 200 in 1909 to over 17,000 in 2001 (Krasner, 2001: 25). Today, NGOs generate ideas, mobilize public support, do social analysis, welfare work and a host of other activities which the state find increasingly hard to handle as such activities are hierarchically so weakly positioned. For example, NGOs can help create and sustain year-long water supply to the remotest of villages which the state cannot reach or can choose to ignore. According to Mathews (2002: 205) today NGOs ‘deliver more official development assistance than the entire UN system’. On the same vein terrorist organizations cannot be traced down to any single country. They have bases all over the world and do not stay confined to any state- boundary for maximum reach and scope of their activities creating a “security problematique” (Spruyt, 2002: 143). This undermines the power of the state as well.

Such are the claims of the state-redundancy theorists where a shift in power from the state to the market-society is imminent. States are dying even as we speak. However, no discipline would like to relinquish its core concept and discard it to the garbage of history and the subject of International Relations is no exception. States have always been the major point of interest as politics essentially originates at the top: the state, and is substantiated and consolidated at the bottom: society. To say that states are needless in the present world would render the discipline redundant. Thus, it is only logical that political economists would talk about the market overtaking the state; sociologists would argue that a transcendental trans-national society is in the making which would supersede the state and so on. The study of ‘inter-national’ relations is about the states and their relations in an international framework. Taking the state away from it would result in an academic vacuum. But this also doesn’t mean that the discipline would sacrifice all arguments in order to proclaim the supremacy of the state. Globalization theorists, as argued earlier, are divided on what they believe is happening. The sceptics would believe that there is nothing new about the process and thus, the state have nothing new to fear albeit structural adjustments are needed to accommodate changes (Hirst & Thompson: 1999). But such adjustments have been essential to the state’s survival through the period of its modern-day existence. Globalists would further the market economy approach of the orthodox liberal- institutionalism and point out the tragedy of the ‘container of the society’ as no longer being suited to run as the chief machinery. The free market which has transcended borders, has given us ‘floating capital’, has shown us the path of the invisible ‘hot’ money such as stocks, bonds, shares etc all of which do not follow any state regulations. But first we need to see how states actually have responded to globalization and why many scholars so passionately believe that states are still powerful.

3.2 The Powerful State

Numerous international relations theorists have forwarded their claims for the state’s survival. ‘Bringing the state back in’ to the discipline has seen a major thrust in the three decades following Nettl’s classic 1968 article-“The State as a Conceptual Variable”, where he argued that the institutional centrality of the state or its ‘stateness’ needed more attention as it differs from nation to nation (Evans 1997). Studies about the survival of the state resurrected again after the end of the Cold War with the global interconnected markets and capital questioned whether the state has lost its authority and autonomy internally in making decisions about such issues as taxation, income redistribution and other macro-economic policies as fixing exchange rates etc. (Wolf 2001). Scholte (1997) observes that on the contrary, modern states ‘enable’ globalization to foster by creating the basic framework of rules for the market on which depends the success of the globalizing market forces. According to Scholte (1997: 441- 2) the state constructs ‘property guarantees, investment codes, currency regulations, tax regimes, labour laws and police protection’ for global firms to enter the national market and develop its market base and also, by ‘removing exchange controls, passing legislation for offshore facilities…allowing non-resident ownership of bonds and equities’ etc. help structure the framework of regulations under which non-territorial global finance can perform. By comparing with earlier reactions of states to common existing problems of higher unregulated trade, movement of goods and men Krasner (2001) argues that states today are better prepared now than they were before in handling such threats and problems. He argues that the present day world recovered much faster and more efficiently from the Asian financial crisis than it did from the Great Depression which resulted in an ‘international collapse of credit’ (2001: 24). Wolf (2001: 189) also believes that ‘the constraints imposed on (or voluntarily accepted by) governments by globalization are, on balance, desirable’. Economic integration, riding on the trade theory of comparative advantage increases meaningful competition to which the states gladly concede to portray their commitments towards fostering and perpetuating such sectors. In the same vein, entering into international treaties creates binding responsibilities—accepting which, states emphasize their private-sector leanings. Also, to take advantage from such international economic integration, the society needs a broad range of assured public goods as property rights, basic education, strong legal frameworks, personal security (Wolf 2001), quality health system and so on—which can only be provided by the state. Moreover, the sense of identity emanating from the state can never be supplanted by a state-free international society. A loss in the sense of immediate security would propel international society back to the state-system. Further, international order rests on the individual state’s power to monopolise and exercise coercion within its territorial demarcation. Cyberspace, invisible monies, finance capital etc can never change this.

What is important is to identify the correct changes that have taken place or are still happening and not to over emphasize and generalize such transformations into an overall declinist state-thesis. Spruyt identifies this problem and differentiates between the decline of the state’s autonomy and changes in the ‘institutional logic of territorial sovereignty’ (2002: 142). The latter remains strongly grounded to the discourse of political science. Seen in terms of ‘hard’ geo-politics of international belligerence states have managed to keep its legitimacy intact. Post-nuclearism, involving scaling down of mass-mobilization warfare tended to diminish the classical role of the state, just as the prospect of nuclear warfare threatened its political existence (Mann, 2003: 135). Nuclear weapons made statist theories obsolete as states found it impossible to protect themselves from the devastative power of such weapons (Spruyt 2002). Still, with the help of international doctrines of nuclear weapons usage and non-proliferation the substantive threat of total annihilation from such weapons have been curtailed. Thus, again states resorted back to the precision-warfare which involves mobilization and is not essentially pyrrhic. Traditional alliances still retain their classical realist supremacy over other supra-national or multi-lateral forces. Modern day warfare increasingly researches on urban placement and locality oriented attacks as the invasion of Iraq proved. Thus, even in military terms the state has retained its legitimacy as the protector of domestic security (Tarrow, 2001: 3). There are still reasons for its existence.

The key argument here is that transnational organizations, post-industrial capital, regional institutions, NGOs etc have indeed restructured the scope and authority of the state. Thus, when we look at globalization from the point of economy the state indeed seems to be in a spot of bother, albeit not so much as to herald a state-free transnational society. But what holds the idea of state together is its construction of territorial culture. Culture is time and space based; it is not diffused through an invisible sieve. Even when sharing similarities with others over the space-less existence of internet, cultures retain their specificity. Cultures mix, adapt, develop and change but never evaporate. It is manifested through the political behaviour, the military strategy, the economic policies and the social exigencies of the state. The state is powerful not because it can still impose taxes, or it can fight wars or open-up borders for other companies to come in; it’s powerful because it has the strength of its culture to propel it forward. A state which is embedded in its culture can counter the globalizing trends of diminishing authority and questionable legitimacy. The following chapter discusses this concept with reference to the Indian subcontinent and show how the world’s largest democracy has retained its stateness in an era of globalization.

List of References:

Beck, U (2000): “World risk society”. (Polity Press 2000)

Bhattacharjee, R (2006): “Welfare State: Dead and buried?” p.4. in Centro Argentino Estudios Internacionales.

URL: <http://www.caei.com.ar/es/programas/economia/07.pdf > Accessed: 01.08.2007.

Brenner, N (1999): “Beyond state centrism? Space, territoriality and geographical scale in globalization studies”, in Theory and Society, Vol. 28, No.1 (Feb.) pp. 39-78.

Castells, M (1997): “The power of identity” in “The information age: economy, society and culture” (Vol. 2. Blackwell).

Douglas, I (1997): “Globalization and the end of the state?” New Political Economy, Vol. 2, Issue 1 (Mar).

URL: < http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=117&sid=e9fe995f-ddf5-4229- 89e6-8865eb9ea789%40SRCSM1 > Accessed 16.08.2007.

Evans, P (1997): “The Eclipse of the State? Reflections on Stateness in an Era of Globalization ” in “World Politics” Vol. 50, No.1. 62-87

Gilpin, R (2003): “The nation-state in the global economy” in Held and McGrew (eds.) “The Global Transformations Reader “ (Polity) pp. 349-358.

“Global private financial flows, Table 6.7” (2005) in ‘Chap. 6: Global Links’ of World Development Indicators.

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4. The Survival of the State

“One man’s imagined community is another man’s political prison”

- Appadurai, Arjun (1990: 295)

Globalization is thought to have eroded boundaries and to have significantly moulded the identity of nations. Interdependence and interconnectedness have reduced the state’s sovereign hold over its territorial identity. What it also did was to further complicate the question of ordering. Globalization results in immediacy and promptness. The euphoria associated with those speedy changes becomes starkly contrasting when the long term picture is put into perspective. Globalization has been (now even more so) connected to homogenization, an instrument generating similarities. Similarities may range from the nature of the distribution of power to the eating habits particular to a specific culture. The long term implications of globalization such as producing simple and complex patterns of similarities in the political, social, economic and cultural fields render the short term attributes of it as a mathematical conclusion gone horribly wrong.

The effects of such homogenization are felt strongest in culture. Culture as a concept is unique and thus very complicated. It is malleable but again, it is extremely strong. Culture itself has an identity of its own. It moves freely yet it is tied strongly to the people who exhibit its traits. This complex identity of culture is thus easily affected by globalization.

The purpose of this chapter is to first, trace the relation between culture and globalization and second, develop such relations in the Indian context. The location of state in international affairs following globalization has been put to a lot of academic enquiries, but surprisingly very few have attempted to place the state as a cultural construct as part of the discipline itself. International relations being a subject about politics- ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ has long ignored the cultural side of the state theses. Our main argument here is to show that culture as an all-encompassing entity subliminally dictates similar terms to the political, economic, social and military arms of the state. We briefly develop this argument by discussing the effect of Indian culture in matters of international participation and co-operation, military strategy, economic policies and social culture. Albeit, as Mann (2002) proposed that global interaction networks affect different states differently, national culture, we will see has similar aspirations for all states; only they are manifested differently.

4.1 Culture and Globalization

Culture as an idea, as stated earlier, is multi-dimensional. Different layers of convergence and many divergences are embedded within it. To some scholars it is an ideational instrument for the construction of ‘meaning through practices of symbolic representation’ (Tomlinson 1999, 18). Such symbolic representations can range from the nature of the distribution or concentration of powers in the political dimension, or the nature of production, exchange and consumption of goods in the economic dimension etc. (Tomlinson, 18). Wallerstein (1990: 31) explains that there are three ways in which a person can be described: attributes of humanity as a whole present in him, a set of characteristics defining him as a member of some specific group he belongs to and third, his idiosyncratic characteristics. Culture thus comprises the second category as it is neither universal, nor idiosyncratic. It is a social construct which helps groups of individuals to distinguish between other groups. Culture for Wallerstein also signifies certain characteristics within a single group which are different from certain other characteristics of the same group (1990: 33). This signifies that an individual can belong to many different cultures.

Smith (1990) on the other hand, expresses national culture as ‘ particular, time bound and expressive’. There is no singular culture, but several historical cultures with strong emotional quotients for those who are sharing such a culture (Smith 1990) . Even the images and symbols which help people in imagining a community are time bound and limited in space for him. In other words Smith argues that culture is manifested through a social conglomeration of people sharing a common history and a set of continuing values and feelings moving towards a common destiny. Anderson in his seminal ‘ Imagined Communities ’ also concedes that a culture represents a collective existence based on “a repertoire of beliefs, styles, values and symbols” (1991: 171 ).

Theoretically and sometimes even in practice, culture can be identified with symbols, past histories, values, moralities, styles, beliefs, knowledge, myths, practices etc. This host of different ‘markers’ of culture makes it complicated. Thus when any culture based on any single, both or all markers of it are exposed to globalization the resulting confusion grows exponentially. The effect of globalization on culture thus can be seen from two vantage points: first, how the former is affecting the latter and second, whether such a relation has resulted in a ‘global culture’. We now turn to these two crucial debates.

Globalization affects culture as the latter is amenable to changes through increased connectivity. Tomlinson explains this clearly: “(…) Globalization alters the context of meaning construction: how it affects people’s sense of identity, the experience of place and of the self in relation to place” (1999, 20). Culture being constitutive of complex connectivity (Tomlinson, 1999: 22) it is through communication it is mostly influenced by globalization. Greig (2002) questions whether communication while affecting culture results in homogenization or polarization. He uses the adaptive culture model in his simulation to examine the hypothesis that globalization results in cultural homogeneity. The model focuses on how cultural similarity shapes human interactions (Greig, 226). Interactions occur not only when there is communication but there is also some degree of commonality, such as similar values.

Expansion of communication has indeed become a key source of socio-cultural change. Inexpensive transcontinental communications with the help of the internet, telephones, fax machines, air travel, televisions etc have broadened the scope of interactions between different geographically non-contiguous cultural groups. For example, someone in Nepal can exchange thoughts and ideas with someone in Brazil over the internet and can be sufficiently influenced or can influence his Brazilian counterpart. In common terms a music album from New Zealand can influence millions worldwide. Such influence can be permanent (depending on the nature of the album, its popularity, its musicality etc.) or temporary. For example ‘The Beatles’ as a rock-and-roll band single-handedly had created a unique musical and social culture and have influenced millions worldwide. Such influences have been embedded in specific sections of some societies, be it Western or non-Western. Homogenization of culture results from such communicational upsurges.

However, this homogeneity is not complete and total in nature. In some respects globalization manifests a sense of similarity to the Hegelian triad of thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis i.e. the proposition, the negation of the proposition and the creation of a new proposition reconciling the truths of the earlier two. Globalization with its attributes clashes with the ‘national’ or ‘local’ attributes and creates a ‘hybrid’ synthesis. Then, why do we say that globalization breeds homogeneity? This is because globalization maintains its influence on different cultures in the same homogeneous way. This means that globalization injects the same ideas, values, thoughts, and perceptions etc to different cultures and societies who react differently and produce hybrid cultures. The power relations behind globalization thus become clear. To retain the power of influence and to sustain the change in the new culture the imposing culture needs to be superior. As nations help ‘imagine communities’ on the basis of their national culture the durability of such a culture rests upon the strength of the nation. This is why even though a country like Chad, (for the sake of the argument) may influence US in this globalizing world—it cannot forge new cultural traits on the American national culture. But this is precisely why, on the other hand, US can influence a nation like Mauritania and mould its culture to suit its globalizing needs. Appadurai’s statement at the start of the chapter emphasises this truth that the smaller polities are always afraid of cultural absorption by larger polities.

This differentiation is possible through the manifestations of their hybrid cultures. In other words, societies which are rational enough to understand that their cultures may not stand the wrath of the sweeping globalizing forces would rather choose the reformist/transformationalist model of hybridizing their cultures in order to attract capital and survive in the world-system. But societies which are built on a strong national cultural sentiment would involve itself in globalization completely differently. That is the chief argument. States survive and will continue to survive because of this strength. The following section would emphasize how the Indian state has acted when faced with the question of globalization.

4.2 The state of globalization in India

“After all, the saying goes that India does best what it regulates least: producing movies, microchips and Miss Universes”

- Khanna, Parag (2005: 17)

The Indian nation-state, even during the British colonial period wasn’t homogeneous. Religious and caste divisions did create different sub-nationalities within the country itself. The most crucial of this distinction resulted in the Partition of the state in 1947 to two different countries. However, the national sentiment that ran through all these individual nationalities was the thought of an independent nation free from the British bondage, which was above everything else culturally distinctive. Chatterjee (1994) explains how the cultural distinction played the most crucial part in planting the nationalist embryo in the hearts of the middle-class Indian. The inner domain of the Indian citizen was the container of their purest and most sacred existence, which held such concepts like the ‘Sati’ or ‘the gracious self-sacrificing woman’, religion, beliefs, superstitions etc. This inner domain was preserved so fiercely that once the colonizers tried to encroach upon that territory it sparked the nationalist fervour amongst them. This fierce affinity towards their culture best defines the Indian state. Even today, this sentiment is central to every single decision the state makes, be it in terms of economy, politics or otherwise. The Indian state didn’t succumb to a ‘closed-door’ international discourse; rather, by displaying its strong cultural attributes it carved a place for itself in the international field. Although this entailed a lot of cultural adaptation on part of the state itself, but that was readily agreed to as it was not equated with assimilation, which corresponded to total submission of the independent cultural identity. Times change and so do attitudes and this adaptive nature particularly helped India to survive through globalization. The crux of the argument presented in this paper revolves around the notion that “countries that can leverage globalization—rather than being circumvented by it—can advance their growth and status” (Khanna: 16). Accepting globalization as the modern international phenomenon is the prerogative of the government and more a matter of policy choice than inevitability. States choose to enter the globalization game and try different measures to use it to their benefit. Narlikar (2006: 64, 71) argues that the post-colonial Indian state used the strict distributive or value-claiming strategies in international negotiations, even in the post-Cold War era when almost all other Third World countries have conformed or started conforming to a ‘liberal solidarist consensus’. Such strict distributive strategies comprise of ‘a set of tactics that are functional only for claiming value from others and defending against such claiming, when one party’s goals are in conflict with those of others’ (Odell, cited in Narlikar, 2006: 62). This particular negotiating strategy of the Indian state which is offset by adaptive affirmations in terms of some international agreements has helped India in maintaining a distinctive sovereign existence.

India’s response to globalization came from four different planes. On the economic front after the end of the Cold War India opened up its economy. This was a conscious decision by the national government as the need to join the world was felt strongly. So joining the globalization movement by becoming a part of the global economy was the first step towards showcasing its new stance and aims towards becoming a major world player. India’s second major thrust towards carving an independent foreign policy came from its decision to go nuclear in 1998. This shift from an idealist state to a realist one was crucial in displaying its military sinews, underlining its self-sufficiency and proficiency in protecting its international sovereignty. Third, with the quickly developing and booming economy, greater political presence in south Asia as well as with increasing ties with other non-Asian countries India’s bid for a permanent UN Security Council membership proved to be its most bold step forward. And finally, riding high on its knowledge, creative and entertainment resources, which Khanna (2005) calls ‘Bollystan’, Indian culture has globalized itself rather than being globalized by extra- territorial forces. The following sections develop these arguments and abstain from developing a historical account of the growth of the Indian powerhouse.

4.2.1 The Indian economy

During the Cold War period India was sufficiently detached from the bi-polar power politics and followed the geopolitically ‘soft’ Non-Aligned stance under the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Much of India’s economic policies were protectionist in nature and focused mostly on import-substitution-industrialization, heavy state interventions and a centrally planned economy which followed strict Five Year Plans for sustained development (Varshney, 2007). But with the end of the Cold War and following the tremendous pressures on its balance of payments due to immense protectionism macroeconomic stabilizations were found wanting to tide over the looming debt problem which amounted to US $ 70.2 billion in 1990 (Basu, 2005: 46). Thus, in 1991 with the introduction of the New Economic Policies (NEP) the Indian economy was liberalized. This welcome change was reflected in the foreign reserves as it quickly reached US$ 127 billion by November 1994 (Basu: 48). In 2005 India had a GDP of US$ 805.7 billion (Source: World Bank Data, 2007: April) and today accounts for 2% of the world’s GDP at current prices (Winters and Yusuf: 1). Riding high on a 6 percent annual growth rate (Bava, 2007; Brummer, 2005; Varshney, 2007; WTO Statistics Database: April, 2007) for the last 10 years the Indian economy has started integrating itself with the world economy. The economic liberalization, which was more a forceful emergency measure, following the fiscal crisis, than a conscious rational policy led India towards globalization.

In terms of competitiveness, the service sector provides India the maximum revenues and as such, has helped to put India in the global market. With an average annual growth rate of 9.9% in the last ten years services like information technology, business process outsourcing etc. have helped this sector provide half of the national GDP (World Bank Data, 2007: April). Such growth rates have earned India a lot of respect in WTO and to further consolidate its position as a growing international ‘Giant’ (Winters and Yusuf, 2007), one who is ready to play key roles in developing and fostering regional and international economic co-operation and integration, India has signed the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) as a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in January 2004 which should help engender new regional trade systems, move towards complete removal of trade barriers, new regional dialogues etc. (Brummer, 5). Also, trade agreements are underway with the Andean Community following preferential agreements with Mercosur (Brummer, 6).

But how do such integrative activities by the Indian state help build its defence against globalization? India’s main interests lie in developing its international economic stance in order to garner more respect from the international community. To this effect it utilizes its phenomenal growth in services and vigorously pushes liberalization, attracting more FDIs and private investments to showcase the burgeoning talent-pool. On the other hand, to underline its specific individuality, as being separate and ‘non-aligned’ from the industrialized West, India uses its leverage in WTO and leads the Third World countries through such groups as the Like Minded Group, the G-20s etc to the tables of trade- negotiations for fair and just trade policies. The LMG failed to garner any form of concessions for the unwarranted cost associated with the Uruguay Round of talks at the Doha Ministerial Conference in 2001 and India was left stranded due to its strict ‘no- saying’ policy (Narlikar: 65). Undaunted, India continued its strategy of negotiations along with the G-20 at the Cancún Ministerial Conference in 2003 and called for “substantial reduction in trade-distorting domestic support” (Argentina et al 2003: 2). Narlikar (2006: 75) argues that first, India’s hard negotiations in the GATT and WTO have helped consolidate its leadership among the developing countries and second, with the credibility of a threat to block treaties by India increasing, its payoffs are higher to continue doing so.

4.2.2 The nuclear India

Like any other post-independent colony, India attached major significance to its immediate economic development. To this effect it was felt that scientific advancement was also intrinsically linked to such growth and development. India’s tryst with nuclear physics started thus, as a scientific endeavour under nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha. Along with Nehru he was more concerned to showcase the Indian scientific knowledge and use nuclear power for social development and not as military weapons of mass destruction. But, it was still Bhabha who ‘sought to build a completely indigenous nuclear process with scope for weaponization’ (Narlikar: 66) if the need ever arose. However, the growing uneasiness resulting from the bloody war with China in 1962 didn’t help the Nehruvian cause for strict civilian domestic use and it was increasingly felt that a proper military nuclear program was needed. In 1968, even when being a constructive member of the Eighteen Nations Committee on Disarmament, drafting the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the treaty failed to discriminate between the nuclear haves and have-nots. India used its distributive strategy of nay-saying and underlined its preference towards and independence in making national decisions without being dictated the terms by anyone else. Thus, in May 1974 India conducted its first ‘Peaceful Nuclear Explosion’ (PNE) which was developed following an upsurge in nationalist sentiment with the successful war just concluded against Pakistan (Oza: 112).

Following the first PNE, till 1998 India managed to balance its adherence to the non- proliferation agreement even as it ignored NPT. With the end of the Cold War and with the liberalisation of the economy, the country realised that surviving the globalizing times needed stronger self-asserting measures. Thus, under the BJP-led coalition government Prime Minister Vajpayee conducted the second PNE in 1998 and finally displayed the Indian nuclear prowess. Years of secrecy by the government in order to protect such an identity was thrown to the wind as a ‘realist’ ideology was necessitated by the growing power imbalance in south-Asia. This reassertion of one’s sovereignty demanded that “the nation be given international recognition as a postcolonial state in the throes of modernity” (Oza: 125). Such a demand was rewarded when the US and India signed a historic civilian nuclear partnership deal (Baker, 2006). Sovereignty of the Indian state thus received a major boost from its ‘masculine’ show of a democratic, restrained and responsible military prowess which coupled with its economic growth provided the basis for India’s application for a UN Security Council Membership.

4.2.3 The political India

Developing states had long questioned the equity of the composition of the UN Security Council. In 1992 a UN General Assembly resolution (UN General Assembly, 1992) asserted the need for an expanded Security Council so that the changed international scenario, following the end of the Cold War was reflected in the membership. Following this resolution India formally launched its bid for permanent membership in 1994. The reasons behind such a bid were both simple and logical. India being the largest democracy in the world, with nearly 15% of the world’s population requires a larger representation in the Council and be granted veto power as well. However, by 2005

India started emphasising only on the composition and size of the Security Council and aimed for a permanent seat, leaving the call for veto power to be followed in a foreseeable future with even more increased international participation. As Mathur (2006: 5) contends:

“India’s commitment to the UN Charter and maintenance of peace and security—a guiding factor in the selection of additional Council members—is evidenced by the fact that India has been an energetic and influential participant in the UN debates on peacekeeping, as has contributed more than 67,000 personnel to 37 out of the 56 UN Peacekeeping missions established till 2003”.

Also, India’s nuclear prowess which became evident in 1998 also made its bid logically sound. A democratic nuclear power which has no history of civil war, or corrupt and incapable governance should be granted a permanent seat. More so, when it is the largest functioning democracy holding 1/5th of the world’s population and one of the top ten economies in the world it is only natural that India would aim for a permanent membership. Such a demand again shows the nature of India’s relation with the international society. By asking for a permanent membership India is slowly demonstrating its bid to be called a major power to reckon with. Also, it is acting as a major spokesperson for the rest of the developing countries by calling for inclusion of other developing countries in the Security Council in order to protect weak states and to work towards reforming existing economic institutions which are controlled by the industrialized and advanced West (Mathur: 13) Thus, the creation of a successful niche for itself is preconditioned by its admittance into the Security Council.

4.2.4 The ‘international’ India

Consider the following facts: the Indian diasporic culture, which projects the new India to the global audience, comprises of a population of over 20 million spread out in 48 countries and boasting of such eminent office-holders as several British Lords, the president of Guyana and at least 200,000 millionaires making them the wealthiest ethnic community in the USA (Khanna: 18-19). The Indian claim to ‘great power’ emanates not only from such a participatory model of Indian foreign relations through their working foreign national class of people i.e. its diasporic international community, but also through its cultural radiance signified mostly in terms of entertainment. Globalization purportedly results in homogenization and consumes the cultural traits of the globalized state. In India, however the most popular culture, that of films, “has not been undermined or devalued by the recent influx of Western product as some expected and multinational companies have not succeeded in dominating the prize Indian market” (Tyrrell, 2004: 312). Hollywood movies, being the frontrunner in global entertainment failed to grapple the Indian market as Bollywood movies still dominate the Indian film culture simply because cultural disparity has a stronger basis on nationalist sentiment, and works as a deterrent to external influence. Internationally thus India’s popularity, riding on the diasporic successes and the profitability of Bollywood, has grown tremendously. These in turn has helped India forge and reshape a strong national and international culture protecting it from the threats associated with globalization.

The Indian example shows how nation-states can manage to survive the globalizing times without losing their sovereign power of governance. To announce the death of the state is premature and naive as it does not take into account the cultural aspect of a nation-state. However, questions may be raised about the uniqueness of the Indian example. But such questions will not be true to the nature of the enquiry as the investigation does not hope to underline why the Indian state may survive; rather, it shows how following the Indian example other states may try facing globalization. In fact, such measures are already in place for many countries. For example, the British culture is sympathetic to the mélange of other international cultures residing in Britain. But, even while accepting and assimilating with such differences the national culture is true to the British society. In a crude cultural example, the origin of the British national food, chicken tikka masala, was in the Indian spicy curry dishes. However, the addition of cream and onions make it essentially British. Such a dish is qualitatively different from any other Indian dishes. Further, chicken tikka masala is now being exported to India and Bangladesh, where it is treated as British food (BBC UK, 1999). Thus, a strong nationalist sentiment moulds the globalizing agents into new cultural symbols as preservation of the society assumes primacy over anything else. Culture, as argued at the start of this chapter, has similar aspirations for all states. This is the claim to the national society. Higher the strength of such a claim, the more nationally bounded the state becomes. As the territorial attachment and sentiments increase with such cultural claims, globalization finds it even more difficult to perpetuate its concomitant homogenization. But, if such a homogenization is always subject to the strength of the existing national culture then the aspirations of the globalists for a global culture needs to be reassessed. The concluding portion discusses this question.

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

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Anderson, B (1991): “Imagined Communities” (Verso) p. 171.

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Baker, P (2006): “Bush signs India nuclear law” in “Washington Post” [Online] 19 December pg. A03

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Tomlinson, J (1999): “Globalization and Culture”. Polity Press.

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5. Conclusion

Theorists like Smith argue that as the era of the nation-states are getting eroded and a new world of economic superpowers is developing, it is essential to their success that relying on a ‘transnational lingua franca’ the transnational corporations will be able to package and sell imageries and symbolisms in order to construct the global culture (Smith, 1990: 175). Globalists and hyper-globalists suggest that the complex interdependence results in replicating similar forces and processes (be it political, social, economic or otherwise) for nations and cultures all over. On the other hand, Tomlinson (1996: 25-30) identifies that another view of a global culture sees a cultural uniformity as opposed to a cultural unity where a dominant set of cultural practices will be followed at the expense of all others. This dominant culture is the Western or the American culture. Tomlinson criticizes this factor and emphasizes that structural unity does not mean a ‘global culture’ (1996: 24). Unevenness in the globalization process itself is the primary drawback for such a global unification. Waltz (1999) also shows that even when closely interrelated advanced countries with similar levels of development, are taken as examples of a growing common culture (even when being regional in scope), uniformities of forms and functions are not displayed. For example, the economies of Germany and France grew close together through increased trade relations since the 1950s. But, when it came down to implementation of political culture, it was evident that France borrowed German policies but not German institutions (Waltz, 1999).

But where is the nation-state headed? What lies ahead for the state needs to be understood with what it has achieved today. This dissertation started with the question of preferentially ordering the more important. This can only be understood when both present and future are engaged together in order to develop a meaning for the state. There are indeed a few future concerns for the state which need immediate attention. These are embedded in the present working of the state. First, state-reduction theories have some truth about the decline in some aspects of its governance. The global-local nexus is indeed a cause for concern as it results in ‘placelessness’. As the link between the nation-state and national culture fades, citizens start losing the relation to place and time. This perceived loss of identity and belonging perpetuates further towards secessionist movements and ethnic movements searching for newer identities. Thus, the application of the theory results in the effect it is supposedly based on. Second, what Urry (2005: 245) terms ‘global networks’ and ‘global fluids’, are increasingly trapping the nation-state in legal vacuums. It is in such places the state needs to adapt its existing territorial laws to further accommodate sovereignty in a non-territorial vacuum of cyberspace and/or other electronic existences. Terrorism utilizes media and communication devices such as internet, as they are unregulated, to extend their reach throughout the globe. TV channels like Al-Jazeera, and other websites utilizing the loopholes in existing media, communication and cyber laws have helped groups like Al- Qaeda foster terrorist activities. States have thus got to involve themselves even more to stop such unregulated activities. Up until now, nation-states did not realize the power of such exigencies and thus had not developed or even tried to develop newer adaptive methods. It is in this scenario that the state has become even more important. Third, the state-market dichotomy must establish fixed policies of entrance and exit for either of the two. This means that the state needs to lay down in strict legal terms where it can engage itself and where it should let markets decide. Finally, the natural human tendency to create conceptions of ‘us’ and ‘the rest’, in terms of classical political distinctions, must change. One of the most important features of globalization is that it brings people together and essentially shows that while national cultures may differ, human behavior and relations to one other stay the same for all nation-states. Until and unless this ‘sameness’ is appreciated, the modern nation-state will not be matured.

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Smith, A.D (1990): “ Towards a Global Culture ” in Featherstone, M (ed.) “Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity”. SAGE Publications, pp. 171-188.

Tomlinson, J (1996): “Cultural Globalisation: Placing and Displacing the West ” in “European Journal of Development Research”, Vol. 8 Issue 2, Dec pp. 22-35.

Urry, J (2005): “The complexities of the global” in Theory, Culture and Society Vol.22 No.5, p. 245.

Waltz, K (1999): “Globalization and governance” in PSONLINE. Columbia University (Dec) URL: <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/walglob.htm> Accessed: 15.05.2007.

Appendix

Abbildung in dieser Leseprobe nicht enthalten

Figure 1

Source: Internet World Stats, June 2007

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Figure 2

Source: Internet World Stats, June 2007

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