Will globalisation create a world without borders?

NATION-STATES UNDER SIEGE

The most famous photograph ever taken of our planet is called Earthrise. It was snapped by astronaut Bill Anders on Christmas Eve 1968 as the Apollo 8 spacecraft rounded the dark side of the Moon*. The now iconic image shows the world as a singular sphere, suspended in a desert of darkness. Earthrise changed how we see our blue-white planet and ushered in a collective awareness of the Earth as a whole, transcending borders and boundaries.

When the Earth is observed from space, you see one beautiful and fragile planet, not 195 sovereign nations. Nation-states are represented on maps by lines of demarcation which enclose and define territories. In reality, the Earth has no borders that divide the planet’s terrain. The physical world, of course, is interconnected. We are all part of Mother Earth – an indivisible, living community which is interrelated and interdependent.

All of us share the same natural resources – air, water, soil, minerals, plants and animals. Our three basic needs – food, clothing and shelter – largely come from these natural resources and their production is common to all cultures. Yet, we live in a world of “national tribes” who see themselves as different and disconnected from one another. But these tribes experience common issues that extend beyond artificial borders.

The challenges humanity faces – like climate change, global pandemics, natural catastrophes, international crime and rampant terrorism – are increasingly transnational in nature, which is why they cannot be addressed by any single government. As individual nation-states are too small to fix shared global problems, coordinated and collaborative action among governments, non-government organisations (NGOs) and international organisations is increasingly required.

Nation-states have also seen their power diminished by decades of global commerce. Capitalism has spread to the remotest parts of the world with transnational flows of goods, data and money. Borders no longer fulfil their historic roles as barriers to the movement of people, commodities and capital. Even so, the prediction that nation-states – as autonomous, independent entities – will collapse under the combined onslaught of monetary unions, global television and the Internet is hotly contested.

While many scholars have prophesied the decline and eventual demise of the nation-state, others fiercely contend that it does have a future and will not be superseded by a new world order. Three main schools of thought dominate the academic debate on globalisation theory – the hyperglobalist, the sceptical and the transformational. Drawing on the work of renowned political theorist – the late Professor David Held (et al.) – these perspectives can be described as follows:

• Hyperglobalists argue that the world is heading towards a form of global governance which will increasingly see nation-states relegated to the role of decision-takers and not decision-makers due to the existence of international organisations such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.
• Sceptics strongly resist this view and believe that the intensification of international activities has reinforced and enhanced state powers in many domains and that national governments will continue to shape the nature of world politics with their borders remaining effective.
• Transformationalists narrow the scholarly divide by presenting the middle ground that globalisation is creating new political, economic and social circumstances which are serving to transform state powers and the context in which states operate.

I’m a proponent of the transformationalist view. While I embrace the belief that nation-states will not vanish in the foreseeable future, I acknowledge that their powers are receding**. Globalisation has caused the erosion of the state’s authority and made it less important and central. So, I stand with transformationalists in believing that states will continue to dynamically evolve in response to changing socio-economic and technological trends.

These trends have already altered the political landscape with nation-states coexisting with a patchwork of non-state actors. We are moving towards a more distributed power structure as the world increasingly turns to experts outside of government to guide and shape state decision-making. This transfer of power is evident in the proliferation of international standards over recent years which most governments have simply incorporated in their national laws.

An example is the work of the International Accounting Standards Board. It sets transnational financial reporting rules which corporations around the world follow, making it a powerful de facto global regulator of accounting standards, even though it is a private-sector body.

Many believe that an even more powerful body is the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. This Committee, which is headquartered at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland makes decisions which affect every man, woman and child on the planet. Yet few know of the existence of this unelected group of central bankers and banking supervisors.

The Basel Committee does not possess any formal supranational authority and its decisions do not have legal force. Yet its views hold great sway, enabling it to impose stringent rules and standards on the global financial system. The Economist magazine described central bankers as “more powerful than politicians, holding the destiny of the global economy in their hands”.

Beyond accounting and banking, non-state actors address every conceivable issue and operate in virtually every part of the globe. From buying bananas at the supermarket (the World Trade Organisation governs how bananas are traded) to obtaining medicines at the chemist (the World Health Organisation issues standards for prescription drugs), international laws impact our daily lives.

Imagine flying overseas to watch a major sporting event. The operation of the plane that transports you is regulated by the International Civil Aviation Authority. On arriving at your destination, you drive to your hotel by following standardised road signs developed by the UN Convention on Road Traffic. Following check-in, you phone home and this global connectivity is facilitated by a treaty on International Telecommunication Regulations.

You leave your hotel and use your credit card to buy a jumper and this transaction is governed by technical requirements issued by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. With your jumper to keep you warm, you then watch an international sporting event where athletes are subject to mandatory drug testing by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Globalisation has spawned the growth in organisations that regulate and control activity on a global scale. This has made non-state actors a worldwide phenomenon and there is no turning back the clock. These actors are essential to the smooth working of our globalised world. Nonetheless, nation-states still have an important role to play and will survive, albeit in a different form.

We often forget that nation-states (countries) are late comers to history. The fact is that we didn’t always have passports and borders – they are relatively new. Jamie Bartlett, one of the UK’s leading thinkers on politics, points this out in an essay he wrote for the digital magazine Aeon.

If you’d been born 1,500 years ago in southern Europe, you’d have been convinced that the Roman empire would last forever. It had, after all, been around for 1,000 years. And yet, following a period of economic and military decline, it fell apart. … To the people living under the mighty empire, these events must have been unthinkable ….

We are just as deluded that our model of living in ‘countries’ is inevitable and eternal. Yes, there are dictatorships and democracies, but the whole world is made up of nation-states. … Try to imagine a world without countries – you can’t. Our sense of who we are, our loyalties, our rights and obligations, are bound up in them.

It’s true that systems based around national sovereignty struggle to deal with complex companies, sophisticated technologies and social movements. It’s also true that economics and information have grown beyond the authority of national governments. Nonetheless, it is premature to write off nation-states as they still function under globalisation and will continue to exert significant influence over the daily life of their citizens.

The rumours of the death of the nation-state have been greatly exaggerated.

*Anders remarked that despite all the training for an exploration of the Moon, the astronauts ended up discovering Earth.
**Even though I would like to see nation-states superseded, they will stubbornly continue to exist.

Regards

Paul J. Thomas
Chief Executive Officer
Ductus Consulting