Offshore: The State as Legal Fiction

Abstract

Recent debates on globalisation have moved on from the rather sterile question ‘Is the nation state dead?’ to the more fruitful one, ‘How is statehood changing?’ This recognises that there may now be greater potential for more immediate interconnection and interaction between events, activities and transactions across the world, due to reduction or removal of many barriers to cross-border flows, as well as the development of real-time electronic communications. But, far from automatically dissolving local particularities into a globally unified or homogenised unity, this interconnectivity creates greater awareness of diversity and difference. The shift in the debate also recognises that, ever since the emergence of a capitalist world economy, statehood has taken the form of interdependent states. Although globalisation is not new, it can be seen to have entered a new stage, and the changes in the form and functions of the state are intertwined with changes in the scope and scale of power in the world system. This means that global changes are not an inexorable economic process: they also involve the remodelling of the form and functions of statehood, including the forms of interdependence. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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