The State between Fragmentation and Globalization

Abstract

The terms used in the title of this essay were chosen to enable us to go beyond a purely legal approach in order to integrate legal facts into the broader legal context from which their meaning derives.1 State, fragmentation, globalization: these terms constitute the three poles of our analysis. The relations between them form the threads which tie it together, with the state, however, forming the central focus. It may well be supposed that the state is not terribly popular. Once again, it is being brought before the tribunal of history, this time a prospective or speculative history. At worst, the state is being asked to reabsorb or dissolve itself, even to allow itself to be divided up or reshaped by this pushing and pulling in two different directions. At best, the state must agree to transform itself. It is therefore useful to shed some light, at the outset, on this trial to which the state is being subjected (Section I). From this basis, we can then move on in Section II to consider the observed, or predicted, break-up of the state: Is it indeed a case of fragmentation or, on the contrary, the promotion of a new model of the state? Finally, Section m concludes our analysis by examining this curious term 'globalization': What is it really? Is it not simply a contemporary mask for the classic old game of domination? Should we speak of globalization or of hegemony of the New World?