Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism
“This maverick thinker is the Karl Marx of our time…In recent decades, Mr. Streeck has described the complaints of populist movements with unequaled power. That is because he has a convincing theory of what has gone wrong in the complex gearworks of American-driven globalization, and he has been able to lay it out with clarity.”
—Christopher Caldwell, New York Times


Taking Back Control? examines the ongoing tug of war between the forces of globalism and those of democracy, between centralisation and decentralisation, and between the unifica­tion and the differentiation of states and state systems. On this territory are fought the defining geopolitical struggles of our era, which will determine the advance of global capitalism and shape the prospects for its social and democratic regulation.

The neoliberal revolution of the 1990s gave rise to a politics of scale aimed at the centralisation and unification of states and state systems. This was the “New World Order” proclaimed by the United States in the wake of the Soviet collapse. But it proved to be ungovernable by democratic means. Instead, it was ruled through a combina­tion of technocracy and mercatocracy, failing spectacularly to provide for political stability, social legitimacy, and international peace. Marked by a series of economic and institutional crises, hyperglobalisation called forward various kinds of political countermovements that rebelled against and ultimately stopped the upward trans­fer of state authority in its tracks.

Exploring the possibility for states and the societies they govern to take back control over their collective fate, Wolfgang Streeck formulates a renewed theory of the state in political economy. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes, he discusses the potential outlines of a state system that allows for democratic governance within and peaceful cooperation between sovereign nation­states.
1144923730
Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism
“This maverick thinker is the Karl Marx of our time…In recent decades, Mr. Streeck has described the complaints of populist movements with unequaled power. That is because he has a convincing theory of what has gone wrong in the complex gearworks of American-driven globalization, and he has been able to lay it out with clarity.”
—Christopher Caldwell, New York Times


Taking Back Control? examines the ongoing tug of war between the forces of globalism and those of democracy, between centralisation and decentralisation, and between the unifica­tion and the differentiation of states and state systems. On this territory are fought the defining geopolitical struggles of our era, which will determine the advance of global capitalism and shape the prospects for its social and democratic regulation.

The neoliberal revolution of the 1990s gave rise to a politics of scale aimed at the centralisation and unification of states and state systems. This was the “New World Order” proclaimed by the United States in the wake of the Soviet collapse. But it proved to be ungovernable by democratic means. Instead, it was ruled through a combina­tion of technocracy and mercatocracy, failing spectacularly to provide for political stability, social legitimacy, and international peace. Marked by a series of economic and institutional crises, hyperglobalisation called forward various kinds of political countermovements that rebelled against and ultimately stopped the upward trans­fer of state authority in its tracks.

Exploring the possibility for states and the societies they govern to take back control over their collective fate, Wolfgang Streeck formulates a renewed theory of the state in political economy. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes, he discusses the potential outlines of a state system that allows for democratic governance within and peaceful cooperation between sovereign nation­states.
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Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism

Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism

Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism

Taking Back Control?: States and State Systems After Globalism

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Overview

“This maverick thinker is the Karl Marx of our time…In recent decades, Mr. Streeck has described the complaints of populist movements with unequaled power. That is because he has a convincing theory of what has gone wrong in the complex gearworks of American-driven globalization, and he has been able to lay it out with clarity.”
—Christopher Caldwell, New York Times


Taking Back Control? examines the ongoing tug of war between the forces of globalism and those of democracy, between centralisation and decentralisation, and between the unifica­tion and the differentiation of states and state systems. On this territory are fought the defining geopolitical struggles of our era, which will determine the advance of global capitalism and shape the prospects for its social and democratic regulation.

The neoliberal revolution of the 1990s gave rise to a politics of scale aimed at the centralisation and unification of states and state systems. This was the “New World Order” proclaimed by the United States in the wake of the Soviet collapse. But it proved to be ungovernable by democratic means. Instead, it was ruled through a combina­tion of technocracy and mercatocracy, failing spectacularly to provide for political stability, social legitimacy, and international peace. Marked by a series of economic and institutional crises, hyperglobalisation called forward various kinds of political countermovements that rebelled against and ultimately stopped the upward trans­fer of state authority in its tracks.

Exploring the possibility for states and the societies they govern to take back control over their collective fate, Wolfgang Streeck formulates a renewed theory of the state in political economy. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi and John Maynard Keynes, he discusses the potential outlines of a state system that allows for democratic governance within and peaceful cooperation between sovereign nation­states.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781839767296
Publisher: Verso Books
Publication date: 11/19/2024
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 6.33(w) x 9.48(h) x 1.18(d)

About the Author

Wolfgang Streeck is a Senior Research Associate and Emeritus Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. He is a Member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Member of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Political Economy beyond Globalism: States, War, and Capitalist Democracy

Part I: The Demise of Centralism
1. Global Politics and Regional Planning
The Neoliberal Interlude
A Critical Moment

2. The Demise of the New World Order
Globalisation and Hyperglobalisation
A New European Order: The European Union
Forever Unfinished

3. Stuck: Between Globalism and Democracy
What Next? A Tug of War
Left Globalism
Culture versus Unculture
Democracy as a De-proletarianised Value System

4. Breaking the Deadlock: Democracy and the
Politics of Scale
Economic Crisis and State Systems
Megalomania?
Decomposing Complexity

Part II: After Three Decades
5. A Dual Crisis I: Capitalism
Stagnation
The Neoliberal Crisis Sequence
The Central Bank State as the Last Stage of Neoliberalism
Keynes from the Ashes?
Debt without Remorse?
The Emergency State
Clueless
The Great Uncertainty
Capitalism and Nothing Else

6. A Dual Crisis II: Democracy
States between Democracy and Globalism
Globalism against Democracy
Democracy against Globalism
Post-globalist Democracy?

Part III: States and State Systems
7. Integration and Differentiation
Gibbon: Unity or Diversity?
The Contemporary State System: A Survey
Metamorphoses of the Nation-State
Statehood and the Constitutive Particularism of
Human Socialisation
Excursus I: Scotland and Catalonia
Excursus II: Germany in Comparison
‘Taking Back Control’
Confederation or Empire?
The Dimensions of States and State Systems, and their Political Economy

8. The European Union: From Neoliberal to Geopolitical Integration
Europe as Battleground and Place of Desire
Before Ukraine: Critical Fault-Lines, Impending Failure
More Unity through Less Unity?
Integration by Militarisation?
After Ukraine
Liabilities Old and New
Beyond Superstate and Empire
Learning from Europe

Part IV: Beyond Globalist Centralisation
9. Mega-statism and Its Limitations
The Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal Globalisation:
Eight Theses
Globalisation and Hyperglobalisation
Global Market Economy, National Democracy
Unity from Above: Global Governance
Global Governance as Technocratic Utopia
Another Plan A
Global Governance as Liberal Empire
COVID: The (Long-Hidden) Costs of Globalisation
COVID and the Fiscal Crisis of the State: A Conjecture

10. Small-Statism and Its Possibilities
Simon: Decomposing Complexity
Keynes: National Self-Sufficiency
Deglobalisation and Alternative Development
Global Polycentrism
Disentanglement: COVID and the Supply Chains
The Keynes-Polanyi State: National, Sovereign, Democratic
Better Smaller
‘Economic Patriotism’: Globalism and Back
Big Crisis, Small States
The Question of Money
Democratic Particularism and Global Collective Goods
Cooperative, Not Imperial: A Prospect of a New International Order

Epilogue
Index
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