Theory of the Global State
Globality as an Unfinished Revolution

This book, first published in 2000, analyses global change which critiques modern social thought and global theory, examining global-democratic revolution.

Martin Shaw (Author)

9780521592505, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 November 2000

316 pages, 1 b/w illus. 1 table
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.64 kg

This ambitious study, first published in 2000, rewrites the terms of debate about globalization. Martin Shaw argues that the deepest meaning of globality is the growing sense of worldwide human commonality as a practical social force, arising from political struggle not technological change. The book focuses upon two new concepts: the unfinished global-democratic revolution and the global-Western state. Shaw shows how an internationalized, post-imperial Western state conglomerate, symbiotically linked to global institutions, is increasingly consolidated amidst worldwide democratic upheavals against authoritarian, quasi-imperial non-Western states. This study explores the radical implications of these concepts for social, political and international theory, through a fundamental critique of modern 'national-international' social thought and dominant economistic versions of global theory. Required reading for sociology and politics as well as international relations, Theory of the Global State offers a historical, theoretical and political framework for understanding state and society in the emerging global age.

Part I. Critique: 1. Globality: historical change in our time
2. Critique of national and international relations
3. Intimations of globality: Hamlet without the Prince
Part II. History and Agency: 4. Internationalized bloc-states and democratic revolution
5. Global revolution, counterrevolution and genocidal war
Part III. State: 6. State in globality
7. Relations and forms of global state power
8. Contradictions of state power: towards the global state?
9. Politics of the unfinished revolution.

Subject Areas: Political geography [RGCP], International relations [JPS], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Globalization [JFFS]