The Relevance of the

State amid Globalization

 The state is a distinctive political community with its own set of rules and
practices and that is more or less separate from other communities. It has
four
elements: People, Territory, Government and Sovereignty.
 ELEMENTS
Permanent Population
This population does not refer to nomadic
people that move
from one place to another in an indefinite
time.
 ELEMENTS
Territory
A territory has
clear boundaries. A territory is effectively
controlled by the third element, the
Government.
 ELEMENTS
Government
The government regulates relations among
its own people and with other countries.
This means that the state is a formally
constituted sovereign political structure
encompassing people, territory, and its
institutions on the one hand, and
maintaining its
autonomy from other states on the other
hand.
 NATION

Nation refers to a
people rather than any kind of formal territorial
boundaries or institutions.
It is a
collective identity grounded on a notion of shared history and culture.
If we talk about the Philippines as a state, we may refer to the Philippine
government, The Philippine
territory, and its internal and external sovereignty.
If we talk about the Philippines as a
nation, we refer to our shared collective notion of democracy, our history, and our
collective identity.

In other words, the state is a political concept, while a nation is

.
a cultural concept. States, through its formalized institutions, more or less reflect
nations. This would allow states to have a certain people with their own collective
identity. In turn, they should be allowed to form their own political state. This is a
principle of national self-determination.
A variety of arguments are made including that nation-states
continue to be the
major players on the global stage

(Gilpin, 2001), that they “retain at least some power in

the face of globalization”

(Conley, 2002), that they vary greatly in “their

efficacy in the face of globalization”

(Mann, 2007), and that the rumors of the

demise of the nation-state are greatly exaggerated.
Beland (2008) argued that “the role of the state is enduring---and even
increasing---in advanced industrial societies” (p. 48). He saw greater demands
being placed on the state because of four major sources of collective insecurity:
terrorism; economic globalization, leading to problems such as outsourcing and
pressures toward downsizing, as well as the current economic crisis; threats to national
identity due to immigration; and the spread of global diseases such as AIDS.

The state does not only respond to these threats, by may also exaggerate or create
dangers, thereby making its citizens more insecure (Glassner, 2000).

A good example is
the U.S. and British government’s arguments prior to the 2003 war with Iraq that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that posed a direct threat
to the United States and United Kingdom. The United States even claimed that Iraq
could kill millions by using offshore ships to lob canisters containing lethal chemical or
biological material into American cities (Isikoff and Corn, 2006).
The other side of this argument in support of the nation-state is that global
processes of various kinds are not as powerful as many believe. For example, global
business pales in comparison to business within many countries. In addition, some
question the porosity of the nation-state by pointing, for example, to the fact that
migration to other countries has declined substantially since its heights in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Gilpin, 2001).

A related point is that it would be a mistake simply “to see globalization as a

threat to, a constraint on, the nation-state; it can also be an opportunity for the
nation-state” (Conley, 2002, pp. 378-399).

For example, the demands of globalization

were used as bases to make the needed changes in Australian society, specifically
allowing it to move away from protectionism and in the direction of neoliberalization, to
transform state enterprises into private enterprises, and to streamline social welfare.
With this, the rhetoric of globalization, especially an exaggeration of it and its effects,
was useful to those politicians who were hopeful of such changes.
THANK YOU