In 2000 I published a book, Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution which revised the terms of the debate about the state, arguing that the dominant state form in today’s world is a ‘Western state conglomerate’ led by the USA but combining many ‘nation-states’ and international organisations. Together with the ‘global layer’ of international institutions which the West largely dominates, I saw this as an incipient ‘global state’, although I emphasised that this was a highly contradictory development.
In 2003, Alex Wendt, a well-known IR theorist, published an article arguing that a ‘world state’ was inevitable. Now the Garfield Institute at Hiram University has set up a new website, worldstatedebate.com which includes a new paper by Wendt and my new article ‘Global State Formation in the 21st Century’, which discusses Wendt’s ideas and updates my argument.
Martin Shaw 