ABSTRACT
The ideological stability of the nation-state system as we have known it is being profoundly disrupted by the emergence of globalizing forces. In many cases, national democratic structures are being undermined or reduced to residual procedures – elections between tweedledum and tweedledee parties. Unable to cope adequately with transnational pressures, many governments are responding by setting up mechanisms to bypass civic accountability. Too often governments use the pressures of globalization as an excuse for making policy on the run, and then, ironically, use the excuse of the ‘national interest’ to argue that we have no choice but to globalize everything. This is one of the core issues of contemporary politics. We are as a result seeing the uneven internationalization of the state-civil society relationship. Corporate capitalism and the globalizing market have come to frame almost all dimensions of social life. However, in pushing to breaking point the contradictions of the political and social, alternative possibilities are emerging. The processes of globalization open-up new political opportunities and new ways of thinking, especially for transnational and international coalitions of social movements.
