Globalization makes states: perspectives of local governance in the age of the world city

Abstract

This article discusses perspectives of local agency in the age of the world city. It presents a brief critique of the debate on globalization and posits that globalization makes states. This includes a discussion of the local state as a complex creature of state and civil society, of the regulatory power of the urban and of the world city as a site of the emergence of the post-national state. While it can be argued that globalization hollows out the state and helps facilitate the replacement of state by non-state institutions in the market or civil society, it also creates new forms of states. The state does not wither away but is rather reincarnated in a plethora of forms on many socio-spatial scales. Globalization makes states but these differ from the ones we used to know. This article concentrates on those new forms of governance that occur on the urban level, particularly in so-called world or global cities. It makes the case for the recognition of the urban as a relevant site of the political in the era of globalization. Politics in world cities is concerned with the governance of complexity which can be understood best through a combination of regime theory, regulation theory and discourse theory.