ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the central aspect of global transformation as it relates to political life, namely, its effect on states. The notion that states and the state system might be obsolete or at least out of step with prevailing social and political conditions makes little sense if no plausible alternative to the state exists. The advent of a territorially-based sovereign state fully justified in law was bound up with a historically specific type of rule, that of kings and princes. Medievalism gave way to Westphalia for material reasons as well as through a revolution in ideas. Materially, the early middle ages were impoverished. By necessity, most people grew their own food, so were confined to small villages or estates. Nationalism first arose in the eighteenth century, partly in reaction to Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. This begs the question of whether and to what extent cosmopolitanism goes strongly against the grain of sovereign and particularist states.
