ABSTRACT
In this chapter I examine the difficulties faced by the modern state in coping with the problems thrown up by such factors as the ethnic and cultural diversities, globalisation and transnational communities that are characteristic of our age. I argue that the modern state is not the culturally neutral instrument of order that it is often assumed to be, but is committed to the vision of a homogeneous and self-contained polity made up of a single demos; that this vision acquires a particularly disturbing orientation when the state takes the form of a nationstate; and that not only the idea of the nation-state but that of the state itself needs to be radically rethought in order to develop political structures adequate to our times.
