Globalisation, Hegemony and the Political Rearrengement in the Third Millenium, and Some Regional Aspects of Them

Abstract

Basically, there are only two options regarding the institutional re-ordering of the political sphere in the future. The first of these options consists in maintaining the principles of the present political institution, the nation-state, but extending its territorial grasp either by creating a world state or by creating regional political entities which could be built up, like in a puzzle, into a world state. The main element in this first conception is, whatever the form of the path chosen, to replicate the nation-state formula at ever larger territorial levels thereby further eliminating any intermediary stages between the individual and the political institution, that is, totally disregarding the principle of subsidiarity and extending the bureaucratic domination of non-elected officials. Consequently, the democratic order looses its sense because one cannot speak of democracy when the system of national representation is replicated through representatives electing, in turn, less numerous and even less representative delegates at each institutional level, in a similar way as it is today in the United Nations. All cultural aspects of institution-founding communities will be lost; identity will simply mean to be a human being, traditions will be merged in an all-embracing world culture, and the human perlon will be nothing but one among billions, undistinguishable and without character. A multitude constituting the three necessary elements of late modern society – as producere, as consumers, and as a voting machine.

The second option, which represents an entirely new possibility for humanity, a possibility created by the hitherto unknown advances in technologies of communication and information, consists in the elimination of the nation-state and its replacement not by greater but by smaller units of political-institutional ordering. This solution would give priority to regional integration at a much more limited territorial basis than continents or sub-continents. Such an alternative world order of non-state political units will not be based on any pre-existing principle, but follow people's natural inclination to stay together in institutional frameworks of the public sphere which suit their cultural, economic, traditional and way-of- life contexts. Not the territorial grasp, not the possibilities of control, not the unifying wills of certain individuals or groups would determine the size of these new communities but solely the affinities among populations living together in certain areas. In fact, such communities would not be regarded as constituted for eternity, but as living organisms which may change with time, with the modification of relevant contexts in the never-ending succession of generations, and with the fluctuating reality of life chances and opportunities of survival which are conditioned by the unfolding ecological drama from which we cannot escape, and which may inexorably transform the environment in some areas of the earth's surface.