HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE EMERGING
WORLD ORDER OF MARKET-STATES

 

There is a widespread sense that we are at a pivotal point in history—but why is it pivotal? This book offers an answer: that we are at one of a half dozen turning points that have fundamentally changed the way societies are organized for governance. It identifies this change and shows how it is related to five previous such pivotal moments that began with the emergence of the modern state at the time of the Renaissance. It lays bare the neglected relationship between the strategic and the constitutional—the outer and inner faces of the State. Yet, this book is just as concerned with the future as it is with the past, laying out alternative possible worlds of the twenty-first century.

The modern state came into existence when it proved necessary to organize a constitutional order that could wage war more effectively than the feudal and mercantile orders it replaced. The emergence of a new form of the State and the decay of an old one is part of a process that goes back to the very beginning of the modern state, perhaps to the beginning of civil society itself. That process takes place in the fusing of the inner and outer dominions of authority: law and strategy.

Whether war or law is the initial object of innovation, constitutional and strategic change inevitably ensue, and new forms of the State are the result of the interaction. Each new form of the State is distinguished by its unique basis for legitimacy—the historical claim it makes that entitles the State to power.

A great epochal war has just ended. The various competing systems of the contemporary nation-state (fascism, communism, parliamentarianism) that fought that war all took their legitimacy from the promise to better the material welfare of their citizens. The market-state offers a different covenant: it will maximize the opportunity of its people. Not only the world in which we live but also the world that is now emerging is more comprehensible and more insistent once this historical development is appreciated and explored for the implications it holds for the fate of civilization itself.

The emergence of the market-state will produce conflict in every society as the old ways of the superseded nation-state (its use of law to bring about certain desired moral outcomes, for example) fall away. This emergence will also produce alternative systems that follow different versions of the market-state in London, Singapore, or Paris, and this development could also lead to conflict. Most important, however, the global society of market-states will face lethal security challenges in an era of weakened governments and impotent formal international institutions. And these challenges will pose difficult internal problems as well, as every developed, postindustrial state struggles to maintain democracy and civil liberties in the face of new technological threats to its well-being.

A society of market-states, however, will be good at setting up markets. This facility could bring about an international system that rewards peaceful states and stimulates opportunity in education, productivity, investment, environmental protection, and public health by sharing the technologies that are crucial to advancement in these areas. And these habits of collaboration can provide precedents for security cooperation; for example, the United States can develop ballistic missile defense technology or fissile material sensors that can be licensed to threatened countries. The technology for safer nuclear energy can be provided as a way, perhaps the only way, of halting global warming while assisting Third World economic development. A state's internal difficulties can be dealt with—perhaps can only be dealt with—through international information sharing that the market makes feasible. Markets, on the other hand, are not very good at assuring political representation or giving equal voice to every group. Unaided by the assurance that the political process will not be subordinated to the most powerful market actors, markets can become targets of the alienated and of those who are disenfranchised by any shift away from national or ethnic institutions.

The decisions that arise from the emergence of the market-state are already, or will soon be, upon us, but they are often disguised if they are not seen in the context of this new form of the State.