ABSTRACT
Globalisation seems to pose two kinds of threat to nation-states. First, if it is the case that they developed as political units which were functional for early industrialisation, then they are likely to be weakened or severely disrupted as the new economic globalisation increasingly requires new, larger or reconstituted political units. Second, if they developed as institutions whose coercive and normative powers enabled them to achieve the ‘cultural branding of their flocks’, then their capacities for such social control might similarly be weakened or severely disrupted by the new cultural globalisation. 1 But globalisation is not just an external force impacting upon nation-states, it is also a process which the policies of nation-states can promote and guide. The relationship between nation-state and globalisation thus depends to a significant degree upon the effectiveness and appropriateness of the economic and ideological management strategies which state élites employ.
