Exit: The State. Globalisation, State Failure and Crime

Abstract

The Emergence of the “Failed State”: Tales of Globalisation and the Demise of the Nation State The “failed state” emerged more than two decades ago in the wake of globalisation, concomitantly with its widely assumed implication that the nation state as we had known it would soon become obsolete. If indeed globalisation and the massive social and economic changes that it would entail emerged as an irresistible force that limited the realm of national politics and governments, and the impact of citizens on their national polity, why then should the “failure” of one or more states be anything but what could be expected when globalisation finally took hold? When taking the “hyperglobalisers’” perspective seriously, according to Held and his colleagues (Held, McGrew, Goldblatt and Perraton 2006), failed states appear to be the vanguard of globalisation rather than a major threat to the security of the global economy, and to the process of globalisation itself (Esty et al. 1995; Esty et al. 1998). “Hyperglobalisers” claim that globalisation is primarily an economic phenomenon, and consequently privilege economic processes in their analyses of globalisation. According to this perspective, the authority of the nation state declines in the face of overwhelming global market forces, and is diffused and transferred to other institutions and associations. National governments are “sandwiched between increasingly powerful local, regional and global mechanisms of governance” (Held et al. 2006, 550).