The Hindu : Towards a 'new' state?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 31, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Towards a 'new' state?

By Hasan Suroor

It is perhaps other institutions such as Parliament, church, local authorities which have become weaker as national governments have tended to increase their own powers.

THERE ARE signs, we are told, that finally the State has started to `wither away', not in the classical Marxist sense but in the sense that it is slowly losing control over areas which it has traditionally dominated — and a "new" state cutting across geographical barriers and national sovereignties is taking shape.

This is not some subversive left-wing rhetoric, and there are no insurrectionists waiting at the gate. On the contrary, the warning comes from a formidable Establishment figure who has no apparent reason to rock the boat. The man behind this provocative thesis is Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England, whose outspoken views on such conventional "no-go" areas as gay priests and alternative lifestyles have already caused ripples in the Church.

Now he has stirred up a debate by raising some awkward questions about the changing face of the nation-state in the developed world. Arguments, mostly against his thesis, have been flying around ever since he put them forward in his BBC's Dimbleby Lecture last week described by The Times as "one of the most intellectually ambitious and far-reaching speeches from an Archbishop of Canterbury for 30 years".

Shorn of verbiage, his central argument was that some of the basic assumptions that have characterised the idea of nation-state throughout much of the twentieth century were "shifting". And the state as an entity in full control of its territorial, political and economic sovereignty — and all too often playing nanny to its citizens — was in danger of being supplanted by the "market state" controlled by global corporate forces which do not respect geographical and political boundaries.

"The idea that's being canvassed is that we are witnessing the end of the nation-state, and that the nation-state is being replaced in the economically developed world by what some call the market state," Dr. Williams said. Increasingly, the state was being reduced to the role of simply a service provider to its citizens — offering them a range of consumer choices in education, health and transport but no security, either economic or personal. It was steadily losing power to guarantee the general good of the community.

``It means that Government is free to encourage enterprise but not to protect against risk, to try and increase the literal and metaphorical purchasing power of citizens but not to take for granted anything much in the way of agreement about common goals or social good," the Archbishop argued.

A lot of what Dr .Williams said is not new, and he acknowledged that the plot came from the work of an American academic, Philip Bobbitt, who explored the idea in his book "The Shield of Achilles". In a different sort of way, anti-globalisation groups have been making a similar point, though not so much lamenting the decline of the state as complaining about the rising power of global market forces and the consequent erosion of the state's own powers to take decisions in the best interests of its people.

What was new in Dr. Williams' argument was his call to utilise religion to fill the vacuum which is being created by the decline in the state's powers, and the erosion of confidence in its capacity to provide social security to its citizens or protect them from technologically-driven external threats. Only a morality, derived from religion, could provide a compass to a society in danger of losing its way in an "amoral" market-driven world. With the state being increasingly forced to withdraw "from many of those areas where it used to bring some kind of moral pressure to bear", it was important to put morality back into the heart of public life — and religion alone could do it.

There has been a strong reaction to what has come to be known as the "Williams thesis" with critics both on the Left and the Right joining issue with him though for different reasons. While his apparent nostalgia for an old order, what he calls the "pre-modern world" when "religion sanctioned the social order" , has been greeted with sniggers on the Left, his right-wing baiters have denounced him as a "hairy Leftist" for mouthing anti-globalisation slogans. But critics say that there is a more fundamental flaw in his line of argument — the very idea that the state is in retreat is misplaced.

If anything, the state has become stronger, all-pervasive and more intrusive in the name of national security and threats from terrorism. Seldom in recent times has the Orwellian notion of the Big Brother looked so plausible and especially after "9/11" there is no such thing left as a private sphere of citizens. "The state now spends more than ever before on protecting us from all imaginable ills and even from some which don't exist — from illness, unemployment, disability, discrimination, unsafe sex, racist parking, junk food, getting `heavy' and even from unkind words in case anyone might be offended," said a Sunday Times columnist, Minette Marrin, pointing out that contrary to Dr. Williams' assumption "there is far too much intrusion by the state" today.

The idea that the democratically elected national governments are being subverted by new global forces has also been questioned. Far from being victims of international trade and political institutions, developed nations are in fact beneficiaries of what one commentator calls these "protectionist cartels". It is the Third World, about which the Archbishop had nothing to say, which is in fact more vulnerable to the new world order. According to Mathew Parris, a leading political commentator, the view that "the nation-state is being blown away by the global market state is a fashionable view for which there is no sound evidence".

It is acknowledged that the European Union, for instance, has eroded some aspects of the national sovereignty of member-states, but, as Mr. Parris points out, "federalisation" — which is what the E.U. is — should not be confused with globalisation. There is a broad consensus even among critics of globalisation that the nation-state is "very far from dead". On the other hand, it is perhaps other institutions such as Parliament, church, local authorities which have become weaker as national governments have tended to increase their own powers.

But it is Dr. Williams' call for putting "God back into politics" that has attracted the most criticism. Even staunch anti-globalisers, who agree with his analysis of the changing nature of nation-states, do not believe that religion is an answer given its divisive role whenever it has been mixed with politics. There is certainly a case for greater morality in public life — less corrupt politicians, less greedy businessmen, more upright citizens — and for reining in consumerism but the suggestion that religion should be brought back into the public sphere as some sort of an antidote to an "amoral" state is seen as a lot of spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

It is also seen as a dangerous prescription for multi-religious societies where it will inevitably lead to a clash between the dominant religion and minority faiths. Critics warn that it could be a first step towards theocracy and religious revivalism — a prospect which they find more threatening than the rise of the "new" state.

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