“The Post-National Condition”: On the Relationship Between the State, Nation and Nationalist Polic in the Present-Day Western World
“The Post-National Condition”: On the Relationship Between the State, Nation and Nationalist Polic in the Present-Day Western World

Summary/Abstract: In the last two decades a considerable number of cultural and social theorists have suggested that we are now living on the threshold of a new historical era. In this new or “post-national” era, as they sometimes call it, we shall be obliged to bid a tender farewell to the old nation states and national cultures. The motivation for this would appear to be located in the process known as globalization or, more precisely, within in its present stage of development. As globalization continues, states will increasingly lose their economic, political and cultural sovereignty. The result of such changes will be that states will also gradually lose interest in maintaining their particular national cultures. As the functionalists might say, in a post-national world a strictly nationalist policy would be a “dysfunctional” matter which states could no longer allow to play a central role in their actions and institutions. In a post-national world, nationalist policies would, nevertheless, still exist, but their significance would be diminishing and they would no longer constitute progressive forces.

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