In an Era of Globalization, Whither the Nation-State? by Mark Bailey Recent rounds of local elections in the Netherlands and France have once again raised the prospect that the populist right is poised to make a new advance in Europe, a concern which is particularly acute ahead of forthcoming elections to the European Parliament. Ironically, considering such parties’ disdain for international or regional coordination, the pattern of grievances expressed on this end of the political spectrum is strikingly similar across the continent. European ParliamentThe platforms of far and extreme right parties across Europe, which range from the Euroskepticism of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the True Finns to the neo-fascism of Greece’s Golden Dawn, all contain familiar lists of grievances. As international organizations have risen to the fore, nationalist movements – concerned in earlier eras with national unification and, in more belligerent forms, territorial aggrandizement – have placed an unwavering emphasis on sovereignty. It is therefore unsurprising that manifestations of this tendency in Europe collectively take aim at the European Union as the root of myriad ills. Yet the argument against the EU and supra-national organization in general is conspicuously not one which is fought in terms of the fundamental purpose of such institutions: overcoming collective action problems on thorny transnational issues such as climate change, cross-border crime and reducing transaction costs in trade. Rather, instinctive opposition to supposed infringements on the symbols and principal prerogatives of national governments is the modus operandi for such parties whose popularity, even if expressed in such terms, is at its essence a product of economic dislocation, often unrelated to the core activities of the EU and other such organizations. Chief among such grievances is immigration, with arguments marshaled around economic, cultural and social factors. Ultimately, however, migration is only one product of an increasingly globalized world which, especially to the extent that it redistributes power and leaves many people behind, is the ultimate cause of popular disquiet and the extremism to which it gives rise. Immigration is itself a symptom of a global economy, but while the movement of goods, services is now as free as ever, migration remains the least liberalized aspect of economic globalization. This contributes, in part, to significant volumes of illegal migration (5.5 million “irregular migrants” were recorded in Europe in 2012, and 11.7 million in the United States, for example), which in turn provides political fodder to the far-right. There is little that actors at the nation-state level, or even in the EU, can do to reverse the development of a global economy, increasingly powered by emerging powers such as the BRICS bloc. Indeed, given that the EU can boast many of the world’s most affluent trading nations thanks to a highly educated and creative workforce, economic globalization has benefited Europe immensely. However, the communication of benefits such as rising living standards and regional stability, along with the response to such epochal changes at the nation-state level, has been muddled. National leaders are generally sensitive to the need for international coordination, whether at regional or global level, and express this in the sensible communiques of international summits. Such an understanding has fueled the emergence of new and tentatively effective mechanisms for global governance, such as the G20. But the new salience of such processes and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism is not a historical coincidence. National leaders are caught between an instinctive understanding of the need for international coordination and an inability to present a coherent narrative of globalization to their own electorates. As Mark Malloch Brown has argued, as the nation-state has weakened, the lure of nationalism has only strengthened. The result is not only a new popularity of leaders such as Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen, but a new desire to assert national control, even by mainstream leaders, whether over borders (exemplified by efforts in the past few years to roll-back the Schengen free movement zone) or national prerogatives more broadly (as in the case of UK efforts to renegotiate its relationship with Europe as the prelude to an in/out referendum). That leaders are allowing their time to be consumed by such efforts suggests that their political antennae are focused on pushing, Canute-like, against the tide of globalization, rather than seeking to harness its potential and communicate its impacts to voters. Instead, the prerogatives of the nation-state are increasingly evoked, even as the nation-state itself is suffering a crisis of accountability. Without effectively reconciling democratic accountability at the national level with the need to coordinate with other states, more leaders will face nationalist challenges to their authority. Moreover, the crisis of credibility of national governments is being demonstrated not only by right-wing populism, but also by nationalist aspirations which reject central control in favor of a political settlement more congruent with regional identity. The sanctioned independence vote in Scotland (where the SNP posits a social-democratic vision) and the centrally unrecognized referenda in Catalonia (advanced by the left and radical left) and Veneto (aiming to liberate the region’s historic mercantile economy from the rest of Italy) are emblematic of such developments, which suggest that the resort to old cultural certainties rooted in familiar identities has a self-sustaining logic. Ought we perhaps to accept the centrifugal tendency of the contemporary international order, and promote the fragmentation of existing nation-states as a safety-valve to defuse the nefarious tendencies of far-right nationalism? Though not the only successful form of political organization in history, the nation-state remains as one of the most successful experiments in democratic governance. In reality, while decentralization of decision-making (so called “subsidiarity”) can help to improve accountability, unchecked fragmentation of the international order through a proliferation of new states will not help resolve collective action problems; indeed, it will only create more, as the problematic nature of currency union between Scotland and a rump UK has demonstrated. On the other hand, supranational organizations will remain unable to claim democratic legitimacy – and to seek “ever closer union” - unless their members make active attempts to demonstrate their relevance to ordinary citizens. For the EU institutions themselves, this entails not only certain outputs, i.e. delivering a better life to those under their jurisdiction, but also ways through which citizens can provide input, i.e. accessible and participatory ways to allow them to make their preferences heard and to shape the organization’s policies. This requires national leaders to face the challenges of globalization head on, and make compelling and candid arguments to national electorates about the necessity of international cooperation and the critical role that national-level actors have in facilitating it. While Euroskepticism may appear expedient at first blush, the demise of the EU – through which Member States can coordinate global action - would ultimately reveal the true scale of the limitations of the nation-state in a globalized era, prompting further recourse to extremism. In this May’s elections, it is therefore not only Members of the European Parliament who are on the ballot, but also the kind of societies in which we wish to live and ultimately, the continuation of the nation-state as the primary unit of governance in the international system.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 12:17:04 +0000
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