Historically, the nation state has been closely associated with economic, social, and political progress. It curbed internecine violence, expanded networks of solidarity beyond local communities, spurred mass markets and industrialization, enabled the mobilization of human and financial resources, and fostered the spread of representative political institutions (Tilly 1992, Gellner 1983, Pinker 2011, Kedourie 1993 [1960], Anderson 2006). Civil wars and economic decline are the usual fate of today’s “failed states.” For residents of stable and prosperous countries, it is easy to overlook the role that the construction of the nation state played in overcoming such challenges. The nation state’s fall from intellectual grace is in part a consequence of its achievements.
But has the nation state, as a territorially confined political entity, truly become a hindrance to the achievement of desirable economic and social outcomes in view of the globalization revolution? Or does the nation state remain indispensable to the achievement of those goals? In other words, is it possible to construct a more principled defense of the nationstate, one that goes beyond stating that it exists and that it hasn’t withered away?
WHO NEEDS THE NATION STATE?
Dani Rodrik, Harvard University and CEPR
src: http://www.voxeu.org/sites/default/files/file/DP9040.pdf
