The Status of Authority in the Globalizing Economy: Beyond the Public/Private Distinction

Over the past decades, the idea that national sovereignty and the authority of the state have been increasingly challenged or even substantially eroded has been a dominant one.' Economic globalization advancing a neo-liberal dis-embedding of the economy is seen as the major reason for this erosion. Concerns have increased about the negative consequences for the social fabric of societies, deprived of the strong shock absorption capacity that the welfare states had established in the time of the embedded liberalism to use a term John Ruggie coined. 2 The concerns have also helped nationalistic movements to gain power in many high-income countries, not at least in the United States, calling for putting their economy first. Accordingly, a number of commentators have announced a return of the nation state.3 In this special issue, we will show that the retreat-of-the-state thesis as well as the return-of-the-state thesis share the same shortcomings.

They conflate state and authority. As a consequence, both theses underestimate important transformations of authority that have taken place since the end of the "short 20th century," to use Eric Hobsbawm's periodization.