The Future of the State in an Era of Globalization BOB JESSOP L ively debates over the future of the nation-state resurfaced in the 1980s as scholars and politicians began to suggest that it was now too small to solve the world’s big problems and too big to solve its little ones. Among the most frequently cited problems were:(1) the rise of an un­controlled and possibly uncontrollable global capitalism,(2) the emer­gence of a global risk society,(3) the challenge to national politics from the politics of identity and new social movements based on local and/or transnational issues; and, more recently,(4) the threat of new forms of terrorism and decentralized network warfare. But there is little agreement about what these problems mean for the state – especially as such chal­lenges are politically constructed and contested. Prognoses include the rise of a single global Empire; a western conglomerate state centered on the United States; a series of supranational states modeled on the Euro­pean Union; the rise of a fragmented neo-medieval state system; a shift from largely state-based government to network-based governance; the re-scaling of the powers of the national state upwards, downwards, or outwards; and minor incremental changes in secondary aspects of the na­tion-state that leave its primary features intact. This paper reviews some major changes in the postwar state in advanced capitalist societies and re­lates them to other changes, including the increasing integration of the world market. But it first offers six clarifications regarding what is really at stake in the debate over globalization and the future of the state. Six Clarifications First , all forms of state are based on the territorialization of political power. A formally sovereign national state exercising control over a large territorial area is only a relatively recent institutional expression of state power. It results from a specific, socially constructed division of the glo­bal political order into many territorially exclusive, mutually recognizing, 30 Jessop, The Future of the State ipg 3/2003