The Cosmopolitan State: Redefining Power in the Global Age

The discourse of globalization resembles an Indian god: it has many faces, is full of mystery, all-powerful and it confirms the attitude with which it is approached: fear or hope. However, my thesis points in another direction: globalization, in a socio-theoretical context, is tantamount to a revolution in the social sciences, forcing a change in perspective, a change of paradigms from the — as I would argue — predominant “methodological nationalism” to a “methodological cosmopolitanism” (Beck, 2006; Beck & Sznaider, 2006). I will first examine this thesis in general and then, as a second step, develop it in more detail using the example of a key topic, the concepts of power and state.