The nation state in the context of the international market globalization

Abstract

The impersonal forces of the world markets, integrated throughout the post-war period rather by the private companies from the finances, industry and trade, than by the common decisions of the governments, are now stronger than the states to which the fundamental political authority on society and economy is supposed to belong. The failure of the modernist theories on the decline of the nation state may have been engendered by their refusal to make a connection between the consequences of the modernity and the part played by the cultural and ethnic bonds that appeared in the pre-modern periods. These bonds, as well as the ethnical identities, can be found mainly in the local and regional communities, in the walks of life lying at the basis of the society that represented the core of the national mobilisation. An attempt to understand globalization and the emerging nationalisms must take into account both the modernisation process, and the pre -modern heritages, that constitute the basis of many national states.