By Tammy Findlay

There is general agreement on the Left that ‘globalization’ is causing devastating consequences including rising inequality, poverty, polarization, and militarization. There is equal agreement that globalization poses a strategic dilemma to those interested in a progressive and socially just alternative to these processes. But there is little agreement on what this alternative strategy should look like. Many (feminists or otherwise) argue that because capitalism has become globalized, forms of resistance must follow suit. Calls for global civil society or global feminism are common in this regard. Others disagree with such prescriptions, pointing out that ignoring or bypassing the nation-state is not the answer. They insist that nation-states are actively engaged in processes of globalization, and therefore strategic attention should be placed on how to transform, or democratize, national states.

In this article, I will provide an overview of this debate, demonstrating that one of the few points of convergence in the globalization literature between many feminists and others is around a problematic understanding of globalization and the place of nation-states in it. I will use two examples of feminist organizing, Beijing + 5 in 2000, and the 2002 forum of the Association on Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), to illustrate this point. In response, I will argue that social and political movements must continue to focus on the nation-state. I will argue further, however, that discussions of democratization of the nation-state and, more specifically, of democratic administration, remain largely separate from feminist interventions around democracy. I conclude by suggesting how they might be brought together more effectively in Canada in the form of ‘femocratic administration,’ and take the 2000 World March of Women as an example of a feminist democratization that is nationally based, but is still linked internationally.

Globalization and the State

Activists and academics have struggled to understand globalization, and the role of nation-states in it. In this section, I will briefly review the idea that globalization is a force beyond the control of nation-states, and the corresponding assertion that civil society either already has, or must, become globalized. I will then turn to responses that challenge such assumptions, insisting that rather than bringing about the demise of the nation-state, globalization is precisely about restructuring the state to serve the global economy.

Globalization as Beyond the State

The idea that the nation-state has been replaced by the market is celebrated by the Right, but it is not uncommon to hear about the decline of the state from the Left as well. For many analysts, states are losing power to the market and multinational corporations and financial institutions, and also to sub-and supra-national levels of governance and popular movements. Further, it is believed that technology has challenged the state’s ability to control its own national boundaries (McBride 15). David Held submits that “changes in the international order are compromising the possibility of an independent democratic nation-state” (138). He goes on to say:

The modern theory of the sovereign state presupposes the idea of a ‘national community of fate’—a community which rightly governs itself and determines its own future. This idea is challenged fundamentally by the nature of the pattern of global interconnections and the issues that have to be confronted by a modern state (142).

For Held, the viability of the nation-state is threatened by a number of factors including: a reduction in the number of policy tools available to states, the increasing need for international cooperation and political integration, and the expansion of institutions of global governance (146). Although he does not assume the end of the nation-state, Held concludes that in the face of globalization, we must develop a theory of democracy that goes beyond the nation-state (143).


Conceptualizing globalization as an “epochal shift” beyond the nation-state, Burbach and Robinson similarly argue that “[t]he whole set of nation-state institutions is becoming superseded by transna- tional institutions” (30). In their view, this “epochal shift” is marked by technology, or the “information age,” and by the collapse of socialism (11). The shift, which they trace to the 1970s, “was the transition from the nation-state phase of world capitalism with its distinct institutional, organizational, political and regulatory structures to a new, still emerging, transnational phase” (12). The transnationalization of production and the rise of a transnational bourgeoisie (and especially the transnational financial fraction) are the main forces of globalization (15, 22). For them, “[t]he determinant feature of the current epoch is the supersession of the nation-state as the organizing principle of capitalism, and with it, of the inter-state system as the framework of capitalist development” (30). This transition, therefore, requires strategic reconsideration.

Global Civil Society

Given the view that globalization has usurped the state, the strategic orientation that follows is towards global or transnational forms of organizing. Burbach and Robinson contend that “[w]hat is occurring now is a process of transnational class formation. Social classes are no longer tied to national territories in the same way as they once were” (32). They maintain that “[i]n this period of extra- ordinary conflict, upheaval, and uncertainty, the role of popular classes will be crucial. But their struggles must take on a transnational perspective and engage in transnational organizing” (10).¹ Robinson therefore predicts “the transnationalization of civil society and global processes” (564). Hirsch also believes that[r]estricted to the national state level, social movements fail not merely because of this reduced sphere of action, but also because a nationally oriented politics runs the risk of embroiling itself in spatial competition which threatens to deepen inequalities between regions (289).

Held et al. maintain that “[t]he idea of a political community of fate—of a self-determining collectivity—can no longer meaningfully be located within the boundaries of a single nation-state,” and thus advocate "civilizing and democratizing globalization" (447). Finally, in the Canadian case, Glen Williams argues that political progressives would do well to adjust to current realities and map out their own alternative policy directions within the existing NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] framework… Since capital has internationalized itself, so inevitably must the site of popular control of capital’s activities become supranational if democracy is to be sustained (183f).

He advances the “European Community Model” of trade or a “Community of the Americas” that combines trade with a social and environmental charter, and suggests the creation of “democratic supranational executive and legislative institutions” (183).

Globalization as a State Project

Some take issue with these prescriptions, because they disagree with the basic understanding of globalization that they rest upon. Leo Panitch’s article “Globalisation and the State” (2003) lays the groundwork for studying the relationship between globalization and the state. His appeal to ‘bring the state back in’ has been important in re-directing attention back to the nation-state. Declaring that “globalization begins at home,” Panitch challenges the claim that globalization is something beyond the nation-state, emphasizing that states are actively engaged in these processes. He states that “globalization is a process which also takes place in, through, and under the aegis of states” (1994: 64). States, after all, are needed, for the market to function—to protect property rights, to provide infrastructure and education, security and defense, and so on (2003: 17, 20). Kagarlitsky adds that “[d]espite the fact that international financial institutions have acquired enormous influence, they cannot pursue their policies except through the agency of states,” maintaining that de-regulation is itself a form of state intervention (297, 299).² Janine Brodie also disputes claims about the powerless state, referring to nation-states as the “midwives of globalization” (Brodie 1995: 16).

In his book, Paradigm Shift: Globalization and the Canadian State, Stephen McBride elaborates this argument with particular reference to Canada. He insists that “[s]tates have been the authors of the globalization textbook” (15). McBride argues that in those cases where states have given up some of their previous functions, they have made conscious choices to do so. He points out that in the Canadian case, the state vigorously pursued a policy of continentalism with the U.S. It has happily signed onto the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and continues to push on toward the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA): “The Canadian State has been extraordinarily enthusiastic about globalization” (17). McBride concludes that “[s]tates have had choices, and they have exercised that capacity for choice to construct neo-liberal globalization” (18), in response to domestic social forces. He does not deny that external factors exist, but he emphasizes that globalization is “embedded in national societies, relying on and susceptible to political processes rather than beyond the control of states or any other entity… [and therefore] action at the nation-state level remains an essential part of political strategy” (16).

Thus, the advocates of supranationalism are suggesting a wrong-headed strategy. First, it bypasses the state, and seeks only to moderate capitalism and its contradictions rather than to move beyond it. As David McNally asserts, “if the best we can do is restrain capitalism, then another world, a world organized to satisfy human needs not corporate profit, is clearly not possible” (231). Panitch further elaborates:

It has become quite commonplace to recognise that some fundamental rethinking is required by the Left. But all too often such rethinking is still cast in terms of grabbing hold of the bourgeoisie’s hand and trying to run faster and faster to match the pace of change set by contemporary capitalism. This involves a fundamental strategic misconception. If effective forms of movement ever are to reemerge on the Left, they will have to be less about keeping up with or adapting to capitalist change, but rather more about developing the capacity to mobilise more broadly and effectively against the logic of competitiveness and profit in order eventually to get somewhere else, that is, to an egalitarian, cooperative and democratic social order beyond capitalism (1994: 61).

Besides accepting global capitalism, advocates of global civil society posit that popular movements should simply give up on the products of their historic struggles, namely, their national democratic institutions. Kagarlitsky stresses that [t]he question at issue is the very survival of democracy. There are no democratic institutions on the global level. Capital is being globalised, not the people… National society and the state remain the level on which social change is really possible and necessary (302).

Globalization Constitutes an Attack on Democracy at the National Level.

Drawing from McBride, we cannot think of globalization and neoliberalism separately. Thus I define globalization as the attempt at universalizing the norms and values of neoliberalism world-wide.³ The basic tenet of neoliberalism is to prevent states from interfering in their domestic economies through nationalization, regulation, redistribution, etc. As McBride notes, “[n]eoliberalism denies the possibility or desirability of national economic strategies” (13f). Globalization (or more accurately, whoever desires it) seeks to put similar restraints on all national states. This is why trade and investment agreements, such as NAFTA, have been called “economic constitutions,” “corporate charters,” or “conditioning frameworks,”⁴ since they serve to concretize, consolidate, or constitutionalize, neoliberalism at the national level (McBride 17, 29, 103).