The nation-state and economic globalization: soft geo-politics and increased state autonomy?

Abstract

Many social scientists contend that the nation-state is experiencing a loss of power and autonomy in the era of economic globalization. In contrast, this article argues that as advanced capitalist nation-states actively promote economic globalization and its associated political institutions, they gain increased power and autonomy in this contemporary phase of their ongoing historical development. Economic globalization is theorized, first, as a ‘soft’ geo-politics, with which states use economic means to acquire international geo-political hegemony. More importantly, globalization represents a strategy with which advanced capitalist states – along with members of their capitalist classes – shift the politics of accumulation away from domestic citizenries to gain increased control over their political-economies and greater insulation from intra-national contestation. It is states' increased autonomy that provides them leverage to dissolve relationships of reciprocity, obligation, and shared determination that have embedded accumulation within the territorially rooted nation and that partly constitute the foundations of nation-hood and participatory citizenship. Individual states' ability to use globalization toward these ends depends upon their relative power within the inter-state system and their indigenous subaltern groups' capacity to retain partial control over economic decision-making, through collective action.

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