“A combination of internal pressures (Ethnic and regional forces) and external threats (EU, UN, TNC, Global market, etc.) has produced what is commonly referred to as a ‘crisis of the nation-state’.” Elaborate. (2016, 10 Marks)
The nation-state joins Max Weber‘s state, holding a monopoly of legitimate force over a territory, to the nation, a community that believes it should rule itself. Its defining attribute is sovereignty. The “crisis” thesis, voiced by Kenichi Ohmae (The End of the Nation State, 1995) and Susan Strange (The Retreat of the State, 1996), holds that sovereignty is squeezed from below by identity and from above by global forces.
Pressure from below: ethnic and regional forces
- Incongruence of nation and state. Ernest Gellner defined nationalism as the demand that political and national units coincide, yet about 200 states contain thousands of self-conscious communities; the Kurds span four states.
- Secession and autonomy: the Scottish referendum (2014) and the Catalan crisis (2017) in Western democracies; Myanmar’s insurgencies; the flight of over 700,000 Rohingya in 2017, which exported one state’s ethnic crisis to Bangladesh.
- State fragility, as in Sudan or Haiti, where no authority holds the monopoly of force.
- India: Left-Wing Extremism, North-East insurgencies drawing cross-border sanctuary, and ethnic violence in Manipur from May 2023 that led to President’s Rule in February 2025.
Pressure from above: external forces
- EU: the clearest case of pooled sovereignty; EU law prevails over national law and eurozone members have surrendered monetary policy.
- UN and international law: Chapter VII enforcement, the Responsibility to Protect (2005) and the ICJ’s July 2025 climate advisory opinion qualify absolute sovereignty, though the veto shields the five permanent members.
- TNCs: UNCTAD estimates that about 80% of world trade runs through value chains coordinated by transnational firms, strengthening their hand over tax and labour rules.
- Global market: capital mobility disciplines budgets and currencies; Dani Rodrik‘s trilemma holds that deep integration, national sovereignty and democracy cannot all be maximised together.
Crisis or transformation?
- The burden is uneven: developing states lose more in WTO and IMF bargaining and suffer graver internal conflict.
- Strong states reassert control: Brexit (2016), pandemic border closures, tariffs and export controls, and the US decision in January 2026 to quit 66 international bodies show sovereignty being exercised, not surrendered.
- India’s state-nation model of linguistic states, Sixth Schedule autonomy and negotiated accords shows that diversity can be accommodated rather than fatal.
Conclusion
The pressures are real, but they amount to a crisis of the classical, absolute model rather than of the state itself. Authority is now shared and contested, yet the state remains the institution that must respond when either pressure becomes acute.