Restructuring the Political Arena: Globalization and the Paradoxes of the Competition State

Abstract

The contemporary transformation of the nation-state into a ‘competition state’ is one of the most important consequences and indeed causes of globalization. This relationship between the competition state as a collective agent on the one hand, and wider structural changes in the world economy on the other, raises key questions of structure and agency in the globalization process. The transformation of the advanced industrial state from a ‘national industrial and welfare state’ into a ‘competition state’, like other structural changes, is the result of individual and group actors attempting to adjust to changing structural conditions, and thereby in turn shaping not only the processes but also the outcomes of structural change. In attempting to adapt to a range of complex changes in cultural, institutional and market structures, both political and market actors are increasingly seeking, directly or indirectly, wittingly or unwittingly, to reinvent political structures and institutions in a wider global context.

This chapter is derived from a paper presented at the Joint Conference of the International Studies Association and the Japanese Association for International Relations, Makuhari, Japan, 20–2 September 1996. An earlier version appeared in Government and Opposition, Vol. 32, no. 2 (Spring 1997). I am grateful to Kal Holsti, Randall Germain and numerous others for comments on these and earlier attempts to develop the ideas contained here.