Changes in statehood

States have always undergone development and change. The modern, territorial nation-state of the mid-twentieth century has been transformed. We cannot be entirely sure about what has taken its place because the changes are still in progress.

Yet as indicated above, the modern state has been transformed. There is no stage where states are ‘finally developed’; state transformation is the rule and not the exception. The current process of change has lasted for several decades and is still unfolding. That is why I suggest the label of ‘the post­modern state’ as a way of summarizing those changes still under way. (The term was used by Robert Cooper in a 1996 article and therefore many attribute it to him; I did, however, suggest the term in a book in 1995, edited with Hans Henrik Holm. See Holm and Sorensen 1995: 203.) As already pointed out, the ‘post-’prefix is a way of emphasizing that we are not quite clear on what shape and form the postmodern state will eventually take

Figure 10.1 The modern and the postmodern state

Source: Adapted from Boxes 1.1 and 9.2 in Georg Sorensen, The Transformation of the State (2004), by permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

but, at the same time, we are quite certain that it is different from the modern state. The reader should be warned that the label ‘postmodern’ is being used in several different ways by scholars, some of which do not at all correspond to the way it is used here. The ideal type of the modern and the postmodern state are set forth in the figure below.

The postmodern state is an attempt to portray major trends of state trans­formation among the advanced countries in the OECD-world. It should be reiterated that the postmodern state is an ideal type. It thus attempts to draw out and clarify major trends in the real world, but it is not an accurate picture of the real world. Actual states will conform to the ideal type in different degrees. Some will argue that the ideal type is too Eurocentric in a narrow sense; it really only pertains to EU-Europe while countries such as Japan or the United States are not really as postmodern as the EU-members.

There is some truth in the claim; the most demanding forms of multi-level governance, for example, are most developed in context of EU-co-operation. But it would be misleading to claim that the notion of postmodern state­hood is only relevant for Europe. Take a closer look at the United States. In terms of the general level of integration the US is high on the list. The annual Globalization Index measures four aspects: (a) political engagement: memberships in international organizations, UN Security Council missions in which each country participates, and foreign embassies that each country host; (b) technology: number of internet users, internet hosts, and secure servers; (c) personal contact: international travel and tourism, international telephone traffic, and cross-border transfers; (d) economic integration: trade, foreign direct investment and portfolio capital flows; and income payments and receipts. On that index, the United States holds place no. 11, in front of such countries as Germany, Spain, New Zealand, and France.

In the economic sphere, the change from ‘shallow’ integration to ‘deep’ integration in the case of the US is documented by the high levels of intrafirm trade (i.e. trade among transnational corporations and their affiliated); this trade amounted to 47 per cent of the US total value of imports in 2001 and 32 per cent of the value of exports (Foreign Policy 2003). As regards nationhood, there was always a universalist element in US national identity; one might even say that the ‘Western civic identity’ identified above originates in the United States. The idea of a ‘citizenship without moorings’ is also highly relevant for the US.

That leaves the level of politics or government. The United States surely participates in the development of relations across borders, including inter­state, transgovernmental and transnational relations (Slaughter 2004). At the same time, US unilateralism has been pronounced in the response to 9/11 and other unilateral moves (e.g.

But this interpretation overstates the changes mentioned here. They must instead be put in context of the more fundamental goals of US foreign policy. These goals reflect the basic values of domestic civil society in the United States: open market economies; liberal democracy; civil and political liberties. As regards the fundamentals of promoting liberal political and economic values, US policies have been in harmony with the concerns of the consolidated democracies in Europe. In this light, the deviations in unilateral direction recorded above appear less serious than they are often interpreted in the current debate.

Furthermore, even if a neoconservative political faction is currently very influential in the US, several observers emphasize that even with her great military power, the US ‘cannot go it alone’ in a complex, and increasingly integrated world (Nye 2002). Nye argues that if unilateralists ‘try to elevate unilateralism from an occasional temporary tactic to a full-fledged strategy, they are likely to fail for three reasons: (1) the intrinsically multi-lateral nature of a number of important transnational issues in a global age, (2) the costly effects on our soft power, and (3) the changing nature of sover­eignty’ (Nye 2002: 163). Soft power is the ‘ability to structure a situation

so that other nations develop preferences or define their interests in ways consistent with one’s own nation’ (Nye 1990: 91).

The struggle against mass-murder terrorism will require networks of ‘co-operating government agencies’ (Nye 2003: 65) as much as it will require unilateral military action. And even when it comes to such military action itself, there continues to be sharp in-built constraints to the US utili­zation of her preponderant power (Posen 2003).

In sum, the claim is that the current processes of state transformation among the advanced countries can be understood as an ongoing shift from modern to postmodern statehood. These types of statehood are ideal types and real world states may conform more or less to them. But they are relevant for the larger group of advanced OECD-countries rather than merely for EU-Europe.