State power beyond the ‘territorial trap’: the internationalization of the state

In recent years, neo-liberal and neo-Weberian scholars have waged fierce debates over whether or not the capacity of the nation-states to manage economic activity has been weakened by globalization. While siding with the neo-Weberians in their assertion that states retain substantial powers, this paper argues that both neo-liberals and neo-Weberians share a problematic assumption that states are anchored exclusively in the social forces deemed to lie within their national territories. By contrast, it is argued here that capitalist development has tended to promote internationalization of capital, and with this the internationalization of the state. A theoretical approach to internationalization of the state is then outlined, showing how specific factions of capitalist classes can end up sharing concrete interests in specific state policies across national boundaries. The potential for transnational coalitions among various fractions of capital, it is argued, has helped create the current hegemony of neo-liberal approaches among many Third World state officials. Internationalization of the state thus suggests a need to rethink both the bases of Northeast and Southeast Asian economic growth and the nature of the current crisis afflicting countries in those regions. It may prove to be the case that the states which played important roles in Asian industrial development did so less as national entities than as actors within an internationalized system of class and inter-state relations which resulted from historical opportunities no longer available to most developing countries.  1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.