State Capacity in a Globalized World

In the second half of the twentieth century, the modern state seemed to have become the dominant form of organization on the globe. All states, including former imperialists, former colonies and those never engaged in the imperial adventure, seemed to be adopting the broad outlines of the state as it developed in Western Europe. Even the communist states shared many of the forms of the Western liberal democratic state. But in the last decades of the twentieth century, the nature of the ongoing process of globalization changed. Instead of being associated with the territorial state, it became deterritorialized, and thereby has been seen by many to threaten the state’s very existence. Thus just when it had appeared to become dominant, the state appeared under mortal threat. How real are such fears?