Nationalism and World Governance:Comment on Warren Wagar's " Praxis"

Abstract

It is no accident that every political leader in current times is disappointing at best. The decline of state e ff i cacy has its source in the remarkable increase in the pace of world integration, or "globalization," that has occurred over the last two decades. Increased economic and cultural interpenetration across state boundaries is obvious to most observers. The surprise is short lived when wefind such ironies as that both sides in the 1992 Gulf War followed the battles on CNN, that Chinese studentsraised a "Statue of Liberty" during the 1989 protest inTiananmen Square, or that in 1994 the US dollar becamelegal tender in Cuba. With globalization has also comea somewhat less evident decline in a state's ability to manage its share of the world economy.