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Review on Amazon.com of
The End of the Nation-State
by Jean-Marie Guehenno,
Victoria Pesce Elliott (Translator)
This is a great book for its analysis but its future
scenarios fail to account for what may be the most likely in the end, simply because the book basically is an extrapolation of present trends (it reminds me of the CIA reports of summer 1989 which foresaw another 50 years of
communism). It is not a feat to draw a beautiful extrapolation, as it is perfectly logical and rational, but it still fails in seeing the signs of an emerging global democratic order. Guehenno forgets that history often
breaks with trends. He does not explore what may be the most likely non-linear historical break: the coming establishment of a world democracy with a functional world parliament. Ironically, Guehenno is still a prisoner
of the nation-state mentality in failing to recognize the obvious signs of emerging global democracy, in failing to see the global civil society movements are just a pillar of what will be a peaceful global revolution, one – as
Thomas Paine says – based on reason, one which will complete the historical process which entered its modern phase with the American and French revolutions. The calls for global democracy of anti-globalization protesters (No
globalization without representation...), the desperate calls for better global governance from the global elite (Davos, UN, World Bank etc.), the emergence of initiatives like the Campaign for World Democracy (with supporters from
all parts of society, including business, government officials, MPS, Presidents – Toledo of Peru-, civil society etc.), the Committee for a World Parliament (with Mandela, Delors etc. on board) are faint but unmistakable signs that
the concept of world democracy is a rising force. Any book on the future of the nation state which does not address that fails on the most likely, and probably the best, scenario for the future. In the end, this book
just like the celebrated Empire, is a superb intellectual exercise but it will be seen in a few years as just half of what it should have been, as both unimaginative and off the mark. But its main merit is to awaken people to
the fact, that indeed, the nation-state as we have known it for 350 years is dead. In fact, it has been dead for a while but its death throes are taking a long time. Yet to keep stability, people need an identity which
nations, though not states, provide. So we will see in the future a multiplication of nations while we see the world uniting in a global democracy, one of several layers of democracy of course with most existing states
remaining, just as the EU did not mean the end of its constituent states, or the new African Union does not mean the end of its constituent states.
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