3. Globalization will lead to a decline in state power. This is one of the most frequent assumptions in all of the lexicon of the political scientists who study globalization, and is taken for granted so regularly as to be a maxim of the field. But while there is certainly no dearth of failed states, successful states are just as plentiful. Moreover, state power, while sometimes bested by new challenges, does not seem to be withering away. Consider the many faces of state power that are not about to crumble: intelligence collection; military expenditure and operations; the setting of monetary policy and interest rates; the collection and disbursement of revenue; the creation and enforcement of regulations. States are surely challenged by globalization, and many may succumb to it, but its effects cannot be described as a frontal assault, and the demise of states is far from a foregone conclusion.

If the old touchstones of globalization analysis are looking pretty worn for the wearing, where does that leave us? I propose two new tenets of globalization that recent history seems to uphold:

1. Globalization subverts hierarchies. Indeed, it is not state power that is waning, it is state power expressed in the form of bureaucracy. Globalization speeds the pace of life, of events, of the spread of ideas, of the necessity for decisionmaking. Sclerotic state bureaucracies — and any other bureaucracies for that matter, corporate or otherwise — can only keep up for so long. Here is where the purported loss of state power may be visible; for while organizations that are flexible and adaptable have no problem adjusting to the speed of current decision cycles, those that require reams of forms filled out in triplicate, several layers of command between action and decision, and administration by committee are the ones most likely to be found mired in scandal, backlogs, and ultimately, irrelevancy.

The very medium through which I deliver this message is one of the more prominent examples. A pulsing, living, breathing conscious thing called the internet, but which is actually the online mind of a large proportion of humanity, is constantly seeking new information, devouring it, processing it, transmitting it, analyzing it, storing it, and so on in iterations ad infinitum. Compared to traditional means of performing those same functions, it is blisteringly fast. Moreover, it has little imposed order within its organization. What hierarchy may exist is highly decentralized and spontaneously generated ex machina. There is no top-down organization and drawing a wire-diagram of even the smallest portion of it would soon prove frustrating. The relationship to subversion of hierarchies is not hard to comprehend. One of the earliest texts on the implications of the internet, the cluetrain manifesto declared that “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.” In the intervening years, this has proved true. And so on to the next point:

2. Globalization leads to a decentralization of all aspects of human existence. Whereas cranks like the Unabomber once worried that the forces of history were turning human beings into “mere cogs in the social machine,” now we know better. The “machine” is decentralizing, and is no longer singular, having made itself into a networked entity, not a singly hierarchy. And the results for human choice have been, and will continue to be, nearly unimaginable. Humans are not cogs in a machine — they are more and more free radicals in a large interconnected organism. Certainly we are connected to others in many more ways, and in some cases new ways, than we once were, but at the same time our freedom of activity has not been circumscribed — in most cases it has been enhanced dramatically. In the United States for example, a country that was recently declared to be a Free Agent Nation, is now developing a do-it-yourself economy, such that, for example, anyone with the time and inclination to do so can use services such as eMachineShop, and draw on a worldwide manufacturing and supply network. Such trends are expected to increase dramatically.

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