The Nation State

I just left a rather long comment on Chris Dillow's post about the nation state. It was so long, I though I might as well post it myself.

Here's what Chris had to say:
What use are nation states? Two different problems raise this question. One is Zimbabwe. The notion that national sovereignty has a value provides a cloak for Mugabe’s brutality, whilst the difficulty of co-ordinating national governments means little is done to stop it. The other problem is inflation. Many governments claim inflation is an imported problem. And they are right in the sense that global factors seem to be increasing relative to national ones as causes of inflation. This means national monetary policy is less able to control inflation. This raises the question. Could it be that nation states are just too small to solve some important problems? They are not big enough to solve some coordination problems, or to restrain tyrants, or to internalize externalities - think of climate change. And yet, in other senses they are too big. The Economist reports that Americans are increasingly choosing to live with like-minded people, suggesting nation states aren’t providing a sense of fraternity and unity. Not a day passes without yet more evidence that national governments display the incompetence arising from diseconomies of scale. And it’s a cliché that people are alienated from national politics or that national provision of public services is unresponsive to individual needs. So, here are my questions. What are the problems which are best solved by national governments rather than global government or smaller-scale authorities (and the individual is, of course, a very important small-scale authority)? What should be the criteria we use for answering that question? If nation states did not exist, would we these days feel a pressing need to invent them?

And my answer:

The nation state is an institution without inherent meaning or truth behind it, it is incompetent in many regards, and people appear willing to give them a kicking (SNP, Belgium, or individual US states operating their own Kyoto targets for example). Yet it persists and there is little reason to suggest that it will wither away any time soon, nor is there the suggestion that its role will become more carefully and sensibly delineated as you suggest is necessary. The reason for this is three fold. Firstly, the new smaller governmental or organizational areas of say regions or counties would begin to foster their own identity creating, in essence, a micro state which would guard its "rights" strongly and would dislike the fact that much of its sovereignty lies elsewhere. This merely creates more entities that want to be nation states (national self-determination and all that), ill at ease with each other. Secondly, to supersede the nation state not only requires local communities to step up and take over roles formerly ascribed to the national government, such as education, but also a giving away of powers to a supra-national organization. In order for this to work every component nation of that super structure would have to be on the same time line of self-dismantlement. For "sovereign powers", such as limited fiscal powers, environment, continental transport, development policy, defense, immigration, and foreign policy, to be removed from the citizens of the nation state they will have to be compensated by a much greater control over the rest of their lives. This requires every state within the supranational organization to go through the process together. This is institutionally difficult and some members will not be able to wait and see the benefits before joining.
Thirdly, our political institutions, language, points of reference are built around the nation state. The post WWII order is sculpted around them. We may very well argue that the nation states of Europe would be better served by local rule and the EU and that many African or Middle Eastern States have little to no real reason for existing as they do today. However, it will take something to fundamentally shake, disturb, and cause the reshaping of this order for this to change. I'm not sure we want to see that.

We may not like the nation state. It may be stupid. It may not work very well but any attempt at change will require widespread contempt for the people's wishes. A state, or supra-national entity can not be formed or fundamentally altered in a sustainable manner if the people are overwhelmingly against it. In theory we can see which areas of government should be hived up and which pushed down but in practice, the best we can hope for is increased international cooperation between nation states on issues for which they are too small, and a localization of democracy and the affairs of government within these nation states.
The Nation State is here. We have to deal with that.