aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Eamonn Kelly & the future of the nation-state

Moira Gunn’s conversation with Eamonn Kelly is the most intellectually exciting thing I’ve heard in ages. I will likely be quoting more in the weeks ahead, but for now, he weighs in on my recent topic of inquiry, the past and future of the nation-state:

[my rough transcription of this clip] In the 17th century we saw the coming of the nation state… at that point in history the idea of the nation state as being the supreme level of governance really took hold. Up until then in history there were many ways of thinking about where government ought to reside and where power ought to reside, be it the church, be it the clan, be it the tribe etc. At that moment in history the idea of the nation state being the supreme level of government got locked into place.

I would argue that when you think about the challenges we face today—the economy is truly global and doesn’t conform to national boundaries, the environment and the climate clearly doesn’t conform, hurricanes don’t stop at national borders, lawlessness and crime don’t conform to national boundaries, viruses...national borders are not going to do anything to resist that, and of course terrorism which is a profoundly important topic for all of us today, again no respect for national borders—so I think that we have an idea of the nation state as being the supreme level of governance and the organizing principle for how we think about who we are in the world, but in fact the important things in the world just now, and of course the internet has been a huge factor in that in terms of communication and connectivity as well, the world is much more truly global and the nation state’s genuine importance is in my opinion declining. And yet we haven’t reconciled that with other ways of thinking about the governance challenges that then presents for us.

So far so good. So what of the future?

[my rough transcription of this clip] When I look ahead and look at the three big possible ways in which these geopolitical and technological and societal trends might converge and settle out, I see a possibility of three different worlds and I think we’ll see a combination of them but in different proportions.

Two of them are worlds in which the idea of the top down model, the more centralized organization, the more hierarchical ways of organizing to succeed really kind of hold and the bottom up emergent open source collaborative models don’t really get traction.

One of those scenarios I call the New American Century. I think we can see the United States really coming through what has been a difficult few years for it in terms of its role in the world, to really be the driving force and the dynamo economically—but also in terms of political systems and technologies—that it has been for several decades now. That’s a world that most of us are well-prepared for and perhaps many of us assume will happen.

I think it’s a very realistic scenario, but I actually think another top-down scenario is equally plausible and I call that the Patchwork Powers scenario, and that’s a scenario where we go from a very uni-polar scenario of the US really driving the agenda for the world to some extent and acting as the world’s policeman… to a much more distributed worrld where there is a kind of patchwork of authority and alliances are struck and new institutions, multi-lateral institutions, where things are negotiated more. Where different actors and different voices set the rules differently.

To put either of those in context, I recommend yet another Moira Gunn interview, this one with Robert Kaplan, who discusses his new book, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground. That totally put my pre-conceived notions of the meaning of our imperialist global presence in a different context. I’ll be reading his book.

But my favorite of Eamonn’s three is this:

[my rough transcription of this clip] The final scenario that I think is an interesting one for us to contemplate is one where actually neither of those things [above] hold true. The top down model doesn’t really crack it in this extraordinarily difficult complex world. It is actually more about what happens when you start to connect 6 billion citizens and give at least now a couple billion of them the opportunity to interact with each other in new ways.

That really we start to see the world being shaped more by people and by passion than by the institutions and the markets that have shaped the world today. There are little clues of that just now… The idea of an emergent “global we.” A global citizenry that really makes its voice heard and has a point of view on how we share this fragile home that’s the only one we have. I think it’s another scenario which I’m intrigued to see how it will play out.

I note that this third is the least articulated, and it’s the one I’d like most to see explored. He starts his interview with a 500 year old quote and moves forward through the centuries. That’s the context I’d like to place my notions of emergent democracy facilitated by the nation-state’s successor: the corporate state.

The the next Google may not harken that corporate-state. But it could well be the company after that.