‘The Political Economy of State

Rescaling’

Ch. 5 in JESSOP, BOB (2007) The Future of

the Capitalist State, Cambridge: Polity.

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The Political Economy of State Rescaling

FUNCTIONS AND CRISIS OF THE NATIONAL STATE

• Core function is to assure coherence between capital accumulation and social reproduction

• However, declining coherence between national economy, national state and national society

• With Atlantic Fordism, national scale was primary; post-Fordism does not accord primacy to any scale

• Crisis in the national character of the Keynesian Welfare National

State: 1) perception of ‘big government’;2) disappointment about economic expectations (full employment, etc.); 3) singularity of regional and local economic problems not addressed by state; 4) migration exposing contradictions of Welfare State; 5) crisis of forms of political representation; 6) surge of both populism/nationalism & cosmopolitanism/liberalism

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@africanstates

The Political Economy of State Rescaling

CHANGES IN POST-FORDISM

• From Keynesian Welfare National States (KWNS) to Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes (SWPR)

• Enhacing national competitiveness becomes core to the national state

• Changes posed by: cities & regions, triad power (USA, Germany & Japan), cross-border regional links, multilevel governance, potential role for global state

• Transformations in the ‘scale’:

1) multiple new scales (such as the global scale)

2) scales not nested amongst them (trade amongst cross-national borders bypasses national state)

3) Nation, regions and local spaces become the most important spaces of competitiveness. They pursuit entrepreneurial strategies (innovation)

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The Political Economy of State Rescaling

NO ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL STATE?

• What we witness is note emergence of a globalized flow-based

economy, but the re-articulation of the national territorial state

and/or emergence of new scales as dominant

• 3 trends:

• Denationalization of the state: vertical hollow up, upwards to

supranational instances and downwards to regions and local instances

• Destatization of the political system: from government to governance,

(involvement of non-state actors)

• Internationalization of policy regimes: domestic policies shaped by

international actors

etiope@gmail.com

@africanstates

The Political Economy of State Rescaling

NO ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL STATE?

• And 3 counter-trends:

• State attempts to articulate interscalar relations

• Increase in the role of the state in metagovernance (articulating how

governances is constituted and takes place)

• Shaping the development of international policy regimes (through

participation in international institutions)

etiope@gmail.com

@africanstates

The Political Economy of State Rescaling

NO ROLE FOR THE NATIONAL STATE?

• Poulantzas (1973) summarized 3 functions of the state (techno-

economic, political and ideological) into one: ‘securing the social

cohesion of a society divided into classes’

• This function remains valid today. The erosion of functions

associated to KWNS is replaced by other functions linked to the

SWPR

• The national state remains the primary site for these functions. In

particular, in managing political linkages across territorial scales

etiope@gmail.com

@africanstates