Thirty Years Since 'The End of the Nation State'

Twenty years ago I participated in the collective work What moves us? Six values up for debate (Mina), coordinated by the late Josep Maria Terricabras. I was assigned the section on democratic values. In one conversation, an essay by Kenichi Ohmae, published a decade earlier, in 1995, came up, analyzing the decline of the nation state. Terricabras told me: "It's very interesting, but it doesn't contribute anything to us [Catalans]. I think he was right. end of the nation state It generated considerable debate, which I don't know if it's still relevant today. It raised an important question: the durability and relevance, or not, of the nation state in a globalized world. The nation state has often been perceived as an immutable entity, forgetting that its historically very recent formation. Although it was a pillar for overcoming feudalism and promoting Enlightenment ideals, the idea could be problematic. Blindly adhering to the concept led to Jacobin ideas or worse. However, according to Ohmae, the question wasn't exactly whether the nation state is good or bad in itself, but whether it still remains a functional and reasonable structure.

Ohmae, a Japanese businessman, was one of the first to declare the irreversibility of globalization (Trump, among others, is showing that this is no longer so clear). In any case, the resistance to publishing the book with its original title in countries such as Spain or France (the Ediciones Deusto version was called The deployment of regional economies) was a symptom of the discomfort generated by the main thesis: the global economy and the conventional nation-state are incompatible. For Ohmae, the nation-state, with its obsession with borders, is an obstacle to global economic prosperity. He argued that globalization is not the result of individual decisions or corporate conspiracies, but an unstoppable historical process, as was also the feudal economy. Cartography and economics, in his view, are no longer linked. He illustrated this idea with the example of Italy, where the economic realities of the industrial north and the agrarian south are radically different: there is no "middle Italy." He proposed Singapore as a model: a prosperous city-state where the coherence of a common economic project overcomes the enormous cultural heterogeneity. In the new global context, information, not geographical proximity, would become the determining factor of economic activity.

If we analyze Ohmae's predictions from a thirty-year perspective, we will notice that some important variables were not taken into account. Although technological changes in information transmission have been impressive, the idea of a global network completely free of centers and peripheries seems hardly credible. Digital infrastructure, despite being virtual, requires enormous public investment, something Ohmae did not emphasize enough. Here is a nice paradox: to overcome the functions of the conventional state through new technologies, a strong state is first necessary to promote and finance them... Furthermore, the distinction between centers and peripheries persists, especially with regard to language and content. The viability of minority cultures in the digital world often depends on the political will of institutions and, ultimately, on the support of a state that promotes them.

Ohmae's proposal to divide nation-states into economically independent zones, as in Japan, with regions like Kyushu and Kansai, with economies more powerful than many entire countries, was truly unusual. The central argument was based on the idea that the nation-state brings together contradictory realities but with homogeneous legislation that restricts development. Applying this model to European contexts could generate significant tensions. While in Japan, Ohmae's proposal would have only economic and administrative consequences, in Europe it could affect cultural and national realities. Ultimately, Ohmae was right to anticipate the decline of the nation-state as we knew it, at least at the end of the 20th century. This decline, however, will certainly not translate into economic regionalization. People, including those in this corner of our world, do not just seek economic prosperity; we also aspire to be part of a standardized culture and speak an institutionally recognized language. If we play in the independent economic regions and look closely at the map of Catalonia, we might be in for a bit of trouble.