Conference paper

HOW MUCH STATE DO WE NEED?

Rüdiger Voigt ; Institut für Staatswissenschaften, Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften, Universitaet der Bundeswehr München, München, Deutschland

Abstract

Contemporary states are undergoing a process of rapid transformation that encumbers their functioning and sustains their permanent crisis. Their external sovereignty is undoubtedly on the wane, both in relation to the global economic actors and the transnational and supranational political structures. Internally, the hierarchical functioning of government has been called into question. Although the state’s share in the social product is constantly increasing, so are the demands for the state’s support and regulation in various areas, resulting in a permanent fiscal crisis of the state. The author claims that the contemporary metamorphoses of the state and the prospects of its development can be understood solely by analyzing the changes in the contemporary society. The industrial society, even the “service society” (Dahrendorf), is being transformed into an information and communication society, in which the key processes are the production and the distribution of knowledge, while the central power resources are mechanisms of the monopolization of knowledge. The information and communication media play the central role in social and political processes. The new increase of social inequality has intensified the tendency of social desolidarization. The new level of social dynamics, mobility, complexity and contingency requires a new type of state. The author calls it the “cooperative state” – the state that provides for the production of essential collective goods in the cooperative process of negotiation and bargaining, in which a plethora of social actors take part.

Keywords

state; desolidarization; information society; cooperative state

Hrčak ID:

24224

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/24224

Publication date:

30.12.2002.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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