Recasting Political Authority: Globalization and the State

Abstract

Our era is not characterized by a new post-Fordist state (Jessop, 1993) or by the withering away of the state (Ohmae, 1990), and not even by the internationalization of the state (Cox, 1981; Picciotto, 1990). Indeed, our era is characterized by each and all, in a plethora of political experiments ranging from the reinvention of the state to the creation of regional organizations, and including developmental models, social democratic states and minute tax-haven states (Palan and Abbott, 1996). Indeed, the very space of authority, the state system, is bifurcating into two separate realms. ‘Onshore’ is supplemented by ‘offshore’, the latter marking a different level of intensity by which states propose to apply regulations and taxation (Palan, 1996).

An earlier version of this chapter was presented to the ‘Globalization and its Critics’ workshop. In addition to the points raised by participants at that workshop, I have gained enormously from the comments provided by Angus Cameron and Randall Germain.