ABSTRACT
By the same token, it can be argued that the crises of self-determination in the contem-
porary world are not only associated with the traumas of the Global South, but that in one
form or another, they afflict long-established and relatively powerful polities as well. After
all, the term national self-determination refers not only to the mutual independence of
nations, but also to the relationship between a nation and its ‘own’ government. It is inti-
mately linked to the concept of popular sovereignty, as the Abbe´ Sieye`s implied over two
centuries ago when he insisted that the French Third Estate constituted the nation. In the
twenty-first-century world, the sense of a gap between nation and state is growing ever
more acute amidst the onslaught of global economic and technological transformations,
international migration waves, and borderless environmental changes that are overwhelm-
ing people’s capacity for absorbing and adjusting to change. Frustrated citizens grow
increasingly alienated from socio-political elites and government institutions that at best
are seen as ineffectual in the face of these challenges, and at worst are perceived as collud-
ing in, and profiting from, them.
