The Nation-State and Global Order

This engaging introduction to contemporary politics examines the historical construction of the modern territorial state. Opello and Rosow fuse accounts of governing practices, technological change, political econoy, language, and culture into a narrative of the formation of specific stated forms. This revised edition reinforces their central arguments that the current neoliberal state does not represent a fundamentally new form, but is an attempt to reconstitute the managerial state in the context of globalization. Incorporating the most recent scholarship, other significant change in the new edition include more emphasis on the interconnections of state and state-system, discussion of emerging forms of international violence and war, and attention to the increasingly multicultureal character of states. Studies of state formation in Congo, England, France, Germany, Iraq, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, Turkey, and the U.S. Enrich the discussion, which ranges from ancient Rome to the present.