Discuss the changing nature of modern state with reference to transnational actors. (2017, 15 Marks)
The modern state, in Max Weber’s definition, claims a monopoly of legitimate violence over a territory and, in the Westphalian tradition, recognises no authority above it. Transnational actors (firms, NGOs, networks, platforms) now share functions the state once held by default. The question is whether this marks its decline or its reconfiguration.
From a single sovereign to many centres
Robert A. Dahl called democracies polyarchies, rule by many competing groups; world politics has acquired a similar pluralism. James N. Rosenau (Turbulence in World Politics, 1990) saw a state-centric world coexisting with a multi-centric world of “sovereignty-free” actors. Susan Strange (The Retreat of the State, 1996) argued that authority had leaked upward to markets, sideways to private bodies and downward to sub-state actors. Kenichi Ohmae’s “borderless world” is the extreme claim.
What has changed
- Lost monopolies: over information (global media and platforms reach citizens directly), standard-setting (ISO, accounting boards, credit-rating agencies) and force (armed networks and private security firms).
- The fiscal state: mobile capital forces tax competition, and corporate tax is now negotiated internationally. The OECD’s 15% global minimum tax was diluted by the “side-by-side” package of 5 January 2026, which largely shields US-parented groups.
- Accountability from outside: NGOs and rights networks scrutinise how states treat citizens.
- Violent actors at the table: the United States signed the 2020 Doha agreement with the Taliban, a non-state armed movement that is now Afghanistan’s de facto government.
- The disaggregated state: Anne-Marie Slaughter (A New World Order, 2004) shows regulators, judges and police forming transgovernmental networks, a new form of state activity rather than a retreat. Government gives way to governance.
What has not changed
- States constitute markets: property, contract and corporate personality are state law. The corporation is a creature of the order it is said to escape.
- Borders, citizenship and migration control remain state monopolies, and in places have hardened.
- Reassertion since 2008: export controls, investment screening, industrial policy, data localisation and sanctions; in the pandemic, people looked to governments.
- India shows the pattern of selective acceptance: the FCRA amendments (2020), the IT Rules (2021), the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023), the Karnataka High Court’s rejection of X’s challenge to the Sahyog portal (September 2025), and the 2016 Model BIT adopted after the White Industries award and the Vodafone and Cairn tax disputes.
Perspectives
- Realists say the state remains the only unit that makes binding rules over territory.
- Liberals and transformationalists (David Held) argue that sovereignty is now shared and layered.
- Marxists say the state was never autonomous: it serves transnational capital. B. S. Chimni (2004) sees an emerging imperial global state, in which international institutions and a transnational capitalist class narrow Third World policy space.
Conclusion
The modern state has been reconfigured, not retired. It is less the sole author of outcomes and more the indispensable regulator of everyone else’s activity. It still decides how much room transnational actors get, but it exercises sovereignty by negotiating with them rather than by commanding alone.