One of the hottest debates in globalization discussions is the changing nature of the nation-state. While I won’t go into all of the arguments and views here, I will just say that the perspectives are many. As time goes on I will explore more of them, but for now I want to focus on an article by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, “What People Will Die For”. In it, Zakaria asserts that because of globalization, subnationalist identities are asserting themselves and are coming to the forefront in global politics:

Globalization and democratization are the broad trends of the day, and both have the effect of empowering small groups within countries and weakening the nation-state. Gujarat can prosper without much reference to or help from New Delhi. The Sindhis can maintain their sense of identity far better today—with the proliferation of regional television, Web-based communities and cheap communication—than ever before.

As Zakaria points out, these are very old and very firm identities. It is not always a religious conflict within nations, but rather a clash of subnational ideologies. I would not go so far as to say that this is all leading to the collapse of the nation-state(to be replaced with smaller nation-states, perhaps), but it does bring up the issue of legitimacy.

One problem that has always existed within nation-states is the idea that national identity represents everyone within that state. However, most states do have minorities who also have strong identities, languages and communities - if these communities feel that their interests are being ignored by the nation-state that is controlled by an unsympathetic majority or a powerful minority, these minorities will feel less invested in the national mission. Moreso, if they feel that they are disenfranchised from the political process, it leads to upheaval as today’s events in Pakistan can serve to illustrate.

Coming back to the original point is that forces of globalization - in specific, communication technology - allow for a construction of subnational identities, as well as a means of coordinating activities across state boundaries. Which allows them to press for recognition…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Globalization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.