Envoi: The Need for Jarlsberg Constitutions

Abstract

Today we see a tension in how sovereignty is shared between the local and global scales, post the nation-state. There are now two lines of attack on sovereignty. One proceeds through the idea of universitas. The other attacks the territoriality of the Westphalian contiguous-and-non-perforated state itself. A nuanced reading of the concept of sovereignty suggests that there are decisive economic arguments militating against the existence of colossal countries—at least as contiguous and exclusive jurisdictions. While some literature touches on the structure of the state and its relation to the economy, there is only an anemic treatment of what should be at the crux of constitutional designs. This clinging to the idea of the nation-state, even when moderated by decentralization, is anachronistic. It is imperative to understand that the issue is no longer the role of the nation-state. The concept of the hard-bordered nation-state is itself flawed. Not because of the ‘hard-border’ as much as the national scale. As discussed in this monograph, hard-borders could very well be still needed, but cannot function properly beyond the city-region scale (a city and its hinterland). The nation-state is moribund. It is becoming irrelevant, especially to economic activity. What is gaining ground is a new paradigm of continentalization where the global and local scales are effacing the need for national coagulations.

Wherever something is wrong, something is too big. If the stars in the sky or the atoms of uranium disintegrate in spontaneous explosion, it is not because their substance has lost its balance. It is because matter has attempted to expand beyond the impassable barriers set to every accumulation. Their mass has become too big. If the human body becomes diseased, it is, as in cancer, because a cell, or a group of cells, has begun to outgrow its allotted narrow limits. And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units such as mobs, unions, cartels, or great powers.

Leopold Kohr (The Breakdown of Nations (Green Books, 2001) 1)