The Resilience of the State

Description

In this politically incorrect essay Samy Cohen, one of France’s leading specialists in international relations, attacks a new sacred cow: the theory of the decline of the state. According to this received wisdom, under the impact of globalisation states are in decline and frontiers being gradually abolished. The outcome could be at worst an unregulated and anarchic world, at best the emergence of international civil society, stronger than local institutions and political authority. Cohen demonstrates that the situation is not like this at all: that what he ironically calls the ‘transnational-state-decline’ theory is a fashionable fable at university seminars, but in no way a reality. A good illustration of this, he says, is what happens to NGOs. Those valorous moral organisations seem at the outset to herald a world without borders, but few of them are independent of states or even of armies, and even fewer are capable of autonomous and freely informed expression. Cohen contends, first, that the state ‘is fighting back’, for good or ill; that it retains its freedom of manoeuvre and is resisting pressure to make it more virtuous, more transparent, or more willing to share responsibility. Second, he emphasises that the state which ‘fights back’ is the best or the worst thing possible: there is no shortage of state authority, but there is a strong risk of a shortage of concerted policy, not only at the continental level but at the level of the old Europe or the Third World.

Reviews

‘The Resilience of the State is … a simple but brilliant work, so subtle that even the adversaries of the thesis it defends cannot reject Samy Cohen’s conclusions.’ — Jean-Jacques Roche, University of Paris, II

‘coherently argued, well-structured, provocative and makes a real contribution to current debates in International Relations.’ — Claire Heristchi, University of Aberdeen

Author(s)

Samy Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at CERI Sciences Po, Paris, specialising in foreign policy and defence studies. He is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, notably on French defence and foreign policymaking, the relationship between states and non-state actors, democracies’ war on terrorism and Israel's war against terrorists.