Political Changes: From National Government to Multilevel Governance?

Abstract

In this chapter our attention shifts to the ways in which the political level of the state has been transformed compared to our starting point, the modern state of the early 1950s. There are two major aspects to this: first, we need to know about the changes in the institutional organization and the exercise of politics as they have developed in context of economic globalization and a host of other relevant factors. Second, there is the issue of democracy: what are the challenges to democracy in the new political situation? Is democracy possible at all when politics takes place in a new multilevel context, very different from the well-defined territorial container of the modern state? Traditionally, this entire debate has focused on the modern states in Western Europe, North America and Japan. For our purposes, it is necessary also to ask about changes in the political level pertaining to the weak states in the Third World.