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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

The nation state is in decline, at least among the Western industrialized nations. Decline is a relative term. It does not suggest that the nation state has disappeared, but rather, that it is no longer as defining a feature of geopolitics as it once was, and will likely remain a less controlling feature. In the West, the era of the nation state was characterized by entities that approximated, even if they never attained, absolute control over their territory. First, the nation state had substantial control over economic affairs within its borders. While the world has always been to some extent economically interdependent, the nation state was, to a substantial degree, insulated from the economies of other territories. In part, this insulation was a function of geographic distance in a world that was less technologically advanced. In part, it was a result of the conscious design of institutions, such as high tariffs, and of systems of beliefs, such as widespread suspicion of the value of anything foreign. Second, the nation state was always poised to settle international disputes with force. As a result of the need to mobilize masses of people periodically to defend its territory against other states, nationalism was a very powerful, indeed perhaps the defining, ideological force of the nation state.

Keywords

Economics Law, Federalism, Political Theories and Ideologies, International Law, Comparative and Foreign Law, Jurisprudence

Disciplines

Comparative and Foreign Law | International Law | Jurisprudence | Law

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