World state or global governmentality? Constitutive power and resistance in a post-imperial world

摘要

This article addresses recent theoretical discussion about the state under conditions of globalisation, focusing in particular on recently popular 'world state' theory, as articulated by Martin Shaw and Alexander Wendt. It suggests that while world state theory is useful to the extent that it historicises the function of the state, it can be challenged for its uncritical approach to the question of how state power is actually constituted. To make this argument, the article refers first to an emerging Marxist critique that focuses on liberal hypocrisy and the role of imperial violence in the formation of the world state. However, while this approach reveals the elision of many forms of violence in world state theory, it shares world state theory's tendency to avoid exploring the role of more constitutive forms of power. Challenging this view, the article turns to Foucault's theory of governmentality and some recent applications of it to Imperialism, Empire, and the War on Terror. These works speak not only to the importance of governmental reason in determining modes of sovereignty but encourage us to adopt an open-minded attitude towards the sorts of resistances it might provoke.