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The Nation-State in Question

A systematic engagement with the historical and conceptual development of nation-states is the major lacunae of the mainstream literature on globalization and the decline of the nation-state of the last ten or so years. In their different ways, the 14 essays included in The Nation-State in Question try to fill that gap, addressing the challenges nation-states currently face by keeping an eye on both the historical continuities and discontinuities of these challenges. Organized around a plurality of theoretical and methodological perspectives, the collection’s unifying theme is no doubt the importance of nation-states within a context of globalization. This, apart from the merit of its individual contributions, is a major reason to welcome the publication of this fine edited collection. From a sociological angle, the book presents a reassessment of some of the ways in which nation-states try, in the current context, to perform their long-established tasks in areas such as war, security, taxation, public health, legislation, international relations, and economic modernization. The argument here is that these are all functions and roles on which nation-states still have much to say at the moment and for the foreseeable future. Historically, the volume revisits issues such as the formation of different types of national identities, the possibilities and limitations of federal states with an interesting emphasis on the challenges this may pose to the project of a Federal Europe, the consequences of new geopolitical scenarios on the politics of national security, and the changes in the state extraction capacities depending on both internal and external circumstances. The contention here is that the current content of these challenges may indeed be new, but they have to be seen within the ongoing process of social change in modernity. Comparatively, the collection revisits how nation-states help create but also react to different settings, threats, and opportunities. The book reflects mostly on the West, with particular although not exclusive attention to the United States, but there are also chapters devoted to the weaknesses of African states, the ethnic elements in current discourses on Russian national identity, the postcommunist state reforms in Poland, the predatory elements of the Chinese state, and the role of national legislatures in those Latin American states that are part of Common Market of the South (Mercosur). Normatively, the book demonstrates that the relationship between nation-states and the liberal democratic ideology is more problematic than is usually assumed and that this link has changed historically. It is argued that due to this problematic connection, the rise of globalization may strengthen rather than weaken the nationalist dimension of political demands: The Plenary Room of the United Nations is more crowded now than ever before. The Nation-State in Question compellingly challenges more orthodox approaches to the subject on each of these four different planes: modernizers, realists, globalists, and otherwise. The central paradox I found in the book has to do with the fact that the focus on the nation-state fades away, subtly but surely, as the collection becomes centered more on the state and the relationships between state and society. In fact, the headings for the four parts of the collection express this quite clearly: from “national identities” the book moves on to explore the questions of “state security,” “state autonomy,” and “state capacity.” The Introduction and first two chapters of the book explicitly reflect on the question of the role and position of nation-states in modernity, but with the change in focus the book tends to treat nation-states as the natural container of modern sociopolitical relations. The irony of this lies in the fact that both levels seem to be equally part of the project of the book. In the words of one of the editors, we must think about the general problem of the “ambiguities” in the “relationship between the nation-state and modernity” (p. 369) but also about the more empirical or even practical question of “what can states do now” (p. 350). No doubt, The Nation-State in Question rejects “methodological nationalism,” the claim that nation-states are the final and necessary result of modernity, and this is