Towards an International Political Theory of the Transnational State

Abstract

In the course of various “global” phenomena, the state has been turned from an arguably unproblematic concept of political organization into a problematique. In particular, it is less and less obvious that the state may still serve as analytical and methodological starting point of thought in fields like Political Theory, International Relations, and Legal Theory. State sovereignty and globalization, so it was long assumed, do not go together. However, while state sovereignty and globalization are no doubt in tension, early predictions of the state withering away have not prevailed. Instead, new concepts of the state are being advanced that suggest understanding globalization as but a reconfiguration of governance practice, the form of statehood clearly included. In this process, state practice emancipates from the normative confines of the nation and takes new effects on global scales. Put differently, the state takes a shape that, thus far, was exclusively associated with globalization: the state becomes a transnational state. The concept of the transnational state is a forceful vision of a new form of statehood and governance in the making, especially by laying emphasis on an increasingly global mode and form of governance. In particular, transnational state approaches (widely understood) have pointed to the co-emergence and intersection of global political, legal, and economic processes, with power elites no longer rooted in national contexts. In so doing, concepts of the transnational state have stressed emerging forms of governance practices marked by transnational networks, connections, and loyalties, partly culminating in the Marxist assumption of a transnational ruling class. At the same time, the concept provides an analytics of governance, which focuses on the emergence of ever-denser webs of state-like regulation, coming close to, first, an effective (and in part encroaching) reorganization of normativity and, second, the transcendence of national “political” spaces in exchange for perhaps less and less “public” but nonetheless state-like modes of transnational governance. The panel aims to scrutinize the concept of the transnational state with regard to its contribution to a reconsideration of the classical topoi of Political Theory, International Relations, and Legal Theory. Papers are widely oriented towards the overall question of what the paradigm (is it a new paradigm?) of the transnational state means to the emerging field of International Political Theory (IPT). To this end, papers may - raise questions regarding the normative repercussions of the transnational state, the nexus between the transnational state and power politics, the transnational densification of formal and informal regulation within and beyond the state, etc.; - attempt to rethink major concepts of IPT (like sovereignty, community, territory, democracy, the rule of law, etc.) with regard to the transnational state; - take a contemporary or historical stance; - take stock of the transnational state approach’s potential for critique for research on globalization in and across disciplinary fields.

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