Volume 2 (April), 2019: 64 – 76. THEORIZING STRUCTURAL CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES OF FRAGILITY, DECLINE AND FAILURES OF THE WESTPHALIAN STATE MODEL: CRITICAL REVIEW OF PARSON AND COMTE

Theorizing Structural Causes, Consequences of Fragility, Decline and Failures of the Westphalian State Model: Critical Review of Parson and Comte

By

Alex IghoOvie-D’Leone, PhD

Department of Political science and Public Administration, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State Nigeria

Email: alexoviedleone@gmail.com

 

ABSTRACT:

Recent spate of fragility, decline and eventual collapse of the Westphalia state construct is indeed becoming worrisome. This trend does elicit need for critical academic research and manifold reasons have been adduced to rationalize answers to the litany of posers this phenomenon presents universally. As varied as answers proposed by scholars are, there is seemingly no definitive theoretical explanadum yet that succinctly captures all dimensions of this phenomenon. In this instance, I argue that, there is need to (re)construct a theoretical frame that both aid our understanding and also help us to effectively tackle the stiff challenges posed by these trends. To achieve this, this paper attempts to marry Talcott Parson and Auguste Conte’s theoretical postulations in the context of highlighting the statutory ‘structural functionality’ of the state and what constitutes the ideal pathways or ‘stages of growth’ which the modern state is expected to evolve through to become stable over time. I also argue that, potential ‘structural dysfunctions’ of the state however, tend to change over time depending on the characters and demands of the incumbent logics prevalent in each periodic era in that evolutional pathway. The parameters for assessing state fragilities, decline and failure ought then to be analyzed against the backdrop of dysfunctions in ‘structural-functional’ variables in each periodic era. The paper concludes that, fragility, decline and imminence of failures of the Westphalia state model is indeed a universal phenomenon linked dialectically to the adversities of the constitutive framework of the global capitalist system as they impact domestic settings currently. States of fragilities, decline or failures all seemingly have primary roots in internalized trajectories relative to pressures of multiple externalities.

KEYWORDS: Agent-Structures, AGIL Paradigm, Globalization, Growth Stages.

Introduction

Almost every known human society is said to consist of some kind of ideal or model social systemic arrangement where series of animate ‘social agencies’ actively interact with other inanimate ‘social structures’ in the pursuit or attainment of strategic or long-term individual and system-wide goals and objectives. And as expected, in virtually all social systems, multiples of interacting and overarching unit parts attempt at all times to work in unison and tandem with systemic goals. Even when and where there are emergent frictions between the unit parts, there are installed systemic rectifiers that attempt to modulate or mitigate such frictions with a view to rectifying and stabilizing potential dysfunctional operations of the system (See Parson 1970 and 1977; Easton 1965 and Almond 1965).

It is generally accepted by scholars that virtually all social systems have a dire need to perform a series of strategic functions in order to survive over time. Scholarship in this sub-area of study is varied. But this paper takes special interest in Parson and Comte despite the marginal imports usually attached to their postulations in analyzing recent trends in much of the advanced or technologically compliant core and semi-peripheral capitalist regions. However, when applied in a combination to analysis of trends in the peripheries, I argue that the duo can offer us a veritable stand plank to succinctly understand the vagaries of crisis of states of fragilities currently besetting locations like Africa and much of Latin America. This is because much of the countries in this region technically are yet to transit into Comte’s ‘scientific stage’ where they are ideally supposed to apply rationality and empiricism to tackle tasks of attaining the goals preset by the Parsonian AGIL paradigm functions. Whatever technology available in these locations, they are at best applications of foreign finished techno-products with little or no intellectual inputs co-opted from the indigenous environments. As it were, it is obvious that many countries within this regional cluster are still lagging behind and still semi-fixated in Conte’s ‘theological stage’ where we see overt reliance on frenzied religious sentimentalities and ritualization as means to invoke potentialities for divine interventions in the profane or mundane affairs of men. Parson and Comte therefore present us with a composite critical prism useful to disaggregate the widespread dysfunctions stemming from pervasive states of fragilities playing out across this region in the recent time.

According to Parson’s AGIL paradigm (1970), the critical list of a state’s existential imperatives consist of four basic functions spanning from: First, we have adaptation functions (what I call here ability to formulate and implement policies needed to manage the economy, polity and society nexus so as to engender internal economic well-being, peace and security); Second, we have goal maintenance functions (what I term here the pursuit of national growth and development in all sectors of the society); and third, we also have integration functions (what I will refer to as the deepening of internal cohesion through socialization in all sectors of the society) and fourth, we have latency or patterns maintenance functions (what I refer to here as defense of sovereign integrity in all their ramifications).As it were, the challenges of performing these functions are ideally allotted to a series of ‘agents and agencies’ mandated to act within ambience of sundry operating institutional ‘structures’ and definitive normative environment both within and outside the state’s sovereign territory.

The overall performance or ability by a state to perform all these manifold functions has been rated severally by scholar to span the rubric of fragility, decline, failing and to failed or collapsed state capacities. Such a schema appears seemingly overtly elongated and tendentious amounts to a semantic conflation. In my conception, I argue that, a workable frame of analysis can be one that reduces this continuum to a three-frame schema. This I present here as consisting of a scenario: ‘where or when such structural-functional tasks become overbearing and seemingly unwieldy for a state to perform then it is said to have become fragile. On a graduated scale, when such failing state capacities result in emergence of competing ‘shadow state structures’ seeking to usurp the de facto rights to perform such tasks from the state, the state can be said to be on a decline. Furthermore, when such shadow state structures eventually overshadow, eclipse or overthrow the state and appropriates all sovereign rights to perform such ‘structural functions’, the state can be said to have totally collapsed or failed. The conception, growth and eventual collapse of a state are constant staples trapped ideally in the ‘stage growth’ processes alluded to by Comte.

It is a truism that virtually all social systems are never ever static for long periods of time. Historical evidences abound in this area. The idea here is that, both the internal and external environments of any social system – including also its operating logic(s), tends to change over time or across multiple periodic eras and such outcomes would usually be the functions of how the system is able to respond to the intervening stimuli emanating from these dual environments. Therefore, for us to fully grasp the far reaching implications of such endogenous and exogenous stimuli on overall systems’ fidelity or integrity – which can cause it to become fragile, degenerate or tether on the verge of collapse, there is need for us to also capture the essence of a feasible growth pathway or what constitutes the ideal calibrated evolutionary stages likely to be charted by the state in its progression towards stability.

Long ago, Conte (1856), in his notion of ‘growth stages’, provides us with one useful analytical frame that can assist us to achieve such an objective here. In his analogy, he envisages a three-stage process pertaining to the origins, development or evolution of a generic social system format into a state construct we can cast in the ideal-type Westphalia state model. These are: the theological stage (where the prevalent societal episteme was premised on religious beliefs derived from series of divine precepts that subsume all human knowledge and activities to dictates of the supernal or supernatural deities ranging from exaltation of primitive fetishism, polytheism and then to monotheism).

We also have the metaphysical stage (which captures or projects a naturalistic overview of a society as consisting of a dynamic process entailing a series of symbiotic inter-exchange and interactions between man, nature and natural law provisions).Finally, we have the scientific stage (that projects a more rational and an empirical view of society where testable ideas and theories consisting of all the austere rigours demanded by empiricism are brought to bear on the entirety of all human endeavours.

However, given recent trends in human annals, I am inclined to propose a fourth growth stage as an addendum to the Conte schema - this I will call the stage of globalization. This view tends to project a much more cosmopolitan outlook of human society from a universal prism now increasingly redefined by increasing inter-connectivity and inter-dependency of human societies across the globe owing to recent giant leaps sustained in the areas of international telecommunications and transportation technologies.

To fully address the issues raised in the foregoing section, the rest of the paper is structured into four subsections: Section 2 expatiate on an overview of the characters of state evolutions through Comte’s ‘growth stages’ as applicable in the era of globalism; Section 3 highlights a critical interrogation of the consequences of states of fragilities for the global inter-state system; Section 4 focuses on a proposed new approach that will require state capacity building needed to meet the sundry challenges of emergent internalized and externalized globalizing pressures on the statutory roles of the state; and Section 5 is the concluding section which captures a surmise of key tentative findings made from the analytical frame presented in previous sections.

Overview of Characters of State Evolution under Globalism and Implications for Potential Slide into ‘States of Fragilities’

Given the foregoing analogy, I am inclined to posit here that, between Parson and Conte (as elongated here in the foregoing), the incumbent arrangements within human societies as prevalent universally or within the context of the generic Westphalia state model show that, states will ideally be compelled to perform their four cardinal ‘structural functions’ differently and in response to the types of challenges posed by the emergent globalist stimuli emanating from both their internal and external environments within this periodic era. We can then also envision a discernible shift in the expediencies, the operating logics, manners and consequences of prosecuting these functions in this periodic era as states evolve through all four stages in their life circle.  I argue further that, the larger view then point us in the direction where we can say, the characters, outcomes and consequences of state fragility, decline and failures in this periodic era, would obviously differ sharply from previous eras given variations in emergent environmental stimuli now impacting on a state’s potentiality for systemic fidelity or instability.

At the onset, challenges posed by intervening environmental stimuli to the state during the theological era, from Comte’s point of view, were such that, internally, the state needed to interpose itself strategically in the interface between the predominantly peasant society and minority of the feudal oligarchies for it to survive over time. Under the feudal mode of social production, divinely-coated claimants to absolute rights of Kings to rule, to suppress popular dissents, to arbitrarily intimidate and grossly appropriate private resources, were the operating logics utilized in the context of ‘agency-structure’ relations during this era. However, these arrangements were sustained so much so as to facilitate achievements of the Parsonian AGIL paradigm functions of adaptation, goal attainment, integration and latency of pattern maintenance of the state. States during this era were however rated in accordance with degrees of their fidelities in accordance with their abilities or inabilities to excel in prosecuting these ‘nefarious’ operating logics. And that multiple populations revolted against these types of lopsided ‘agency-structure’ arrangements of civic governance, was only to be expected of in an era that was devoid of any meaningful ambits for awards for personal freedoms and individual opportunities for prosperity.

With reference to the metaphysical era, this period presented a sharp transition from preeminent influences of the supernal on human conducts generally to an emphasis on the dialectics of human agency and nature co-interacting beneath the supernal influences. It was also a period when humans began to assume full rational responsibilities for outcomes or consequences of their overall social conducts and activities. The roots of latter demand for increasing privatization of property, claims centered on territoriality and demands for security for raw material supplies were sown and they were intended to also help expand the scope and content of the statutory state functions to other far flung lands abroad. In essence, all statutory state functions became prone to a series of intervening externalities that were ideally driven by endogenous exigencies. The drive for imperial dominance and external Colonies in far flung locations abroad was notably initiated at this instance in human annals. It was a prelude to the scientific era.

Within the context of trends in the scientific era, increasing wave of industrialization has tended to expand the statutory state executive functions and supervisory and overarching controlling roles they hitherto played on overall human conducts or activities. The state, from Hobbes’ point of view for instance, became an all-embracing, all-sovereign ‘Leviathan’ with exclusive and inherently innate capacities to exert or project its obviously unquestionable authority over large swathes of land, natural resources and multiples of human populations and to the exclusion of any other competing sovereign entity.

The intervening externalized stimuli operational during this era, actually transmuted into some kind of remotely vague yet effective modicum for projecting state authority and power far and wide across the global system. Here, the stimuli from the externalities had instead, acquired the characterization of remote drivers that were overtly covert in nature as well as in their practical applications. These were most times, seemingly embedded in the nefarious intrigues or chicaneries of the logics of global imperialism and European colonial domination. And latently, this trend also reverberated in the now extant so-called Cold War Superpower ideological rivalries that expired in the early 1990s. Spike in globalism was largely responsible for this critical transition as it seems.

I have interposed the stage of ‘globalism’ into Comte’s original ‘stages of growth’ postulations so as to enable us capture contemporary trends in the Parsonian structural functional requirements states must perform to survive in the context of the evolving global village arrangements. I therefore argue that, this era actually presents us with new kinds of challenges and consequences of sundry agency-structure ‘social actions’ that now radically impact the ‘structural functionality’ of the state in the contemporary time. Perhaps, these challenges are the most fundamental of all environmental stimuli ever to be witnessed in human annals right from inception of organized human societies. Spanning from adversities of emergent internalized competing ‘shadow state’ structures founded on assertive brands of militant religious fundamentalism, to a series of corporate-greed induced economic melt-downs, to dramatic climate changes and global warming, to fast receding national sovereign frontiers due to open cyberspace anarchy, to huge flux of human migrations across international frontiers, to the spike in international gangsterism and criminal activities and then to the looming apocalypse stemming from the growing nuclear-weapons threats presented by the so-called rogue states of Iran and Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK), the very essence of the universalist Westphalia state construct, is apparently under a series of strategic assaults on virtually multiple fronts.

As is now obvious, non-state actors (multinationals, trans-nationals, intransigent communities, global criminal and terror social networks) are increasingly becoming emboldened by the declining capacities of the Westphalia state to perform most of its statutory sovereign functions. This has resulted also in their unsettling attempts to increasingly usurp and appropriate statutory state functions at will and at the slightest indications of a state’s failing capacities.

A critical accounting of ‘states of fragilities’ (Ovie-D’Leone, 2019), decline and failures in the era of globalization cannot therefore be ideally reduced to the seemingly current lopsided scholarly fixations only on trends occurring presently in the peripheral capitalist regions – the so-called Third World or developing countries belt. I argue that, this analytical view is a lopsided one that currently predominate Eurocentric perspectives on ‘state of fragilities’, decline, failures and collapse as associated with the Westphalian state construct. I am also inclined to contend further that; this evolving phenomenon is the unavoidable outcomes of the long term ‘push-pull’ effects of the kinds of dis-equilateral interactions occurring over the years between operating ‘agencies’ and ‘structures’ deeply embedded in the current structural outlay of the exploitative global capitalist system. It is a structural construct that has been perceived severally by scholars ranging from Modernization to dependency and World System theorists. Position of dependency theorists is quite instructive for us in this analysis.

The global capitalist system is generally captured as a three-fold layered structural outlay by ‘dependency’ theorists like James (1997); Amin (1976) and Rodney (1972).  This structure consists of the core, the semi-periphery and the peripheral regions. Wallerstein (2004) also captures similar structural arrangements in his ‘World Systems’ theory (See Wallerstein, 2004). Against this backdrop, I argue again that prevalence of state fragilities, decline and failure under the incumbent trends of globalization, is an evolving overarching phenomenon that is occurring across all civilized human societies on a global scale. What we see today, are disparate impacts of state fragilities, decline and collapse (with minimalist adverse effects) noticeable in the core regions and spreading through the semi-peripheral region (with medium adverse effects) and then to the peripheral region (with very deep seated implications or challenges for prospects of states fidelities and  continuities well into the future).

Variations in the effects of ‘states of fragilities’, decline and collapse currently experienced across the three regions of the global capitalist system, therefore owe deep roots in the lopsided nature of the operating logic of exploitations, dominance and peripherization of other regions by the capitalist core. I contend further that, the ‘push-pull’ effects of the age-long rift between regions within the capitalist systemic arrangements will portend to progressively intensify and degrade the state statures across all regions on the long haul. This is owed to prevalence of the two dominant forces of globalization – increasing inter-connectivity and interdependence of human populations across the globe which has tendentiously reduced the geo-spatial gap effects of differentials and inequalities between each region as well as allowing remote trends to impact global trends most of their time. Increasing spate of outsourcing of sovereign functions of states is another defining feature of globalism.

As current trends show, just as emergent non-state actors are increasing snatching and misappropriating sizeable chunks of state territories and functions in the peripheral regions, so also they are increasingly being contracted out voluntarily by failing and even ‘stable’ states alike in the core regions. The intent is to allow new non-state actors to act as substitutes or surrogate ‘social agencies’ with defacto rights to exercise delegated mandates to perform some key traditional state functions. In this context, the modern state – in all its varied manifestations, can then be said to be witnessing simultaneously, disparate degrees of ‘states of fragilities’, decline that ideally points us in the direction of imminence of a general system-wide decline and potential collapse of the Westphalian state construct on a global scale. Save the seemingly lopsided fixation on rends across the peripheral regions, there are yet any collective global governance policy initiatives needed to respond to this menacing hydra head across existing multilateral forums.

In any case, with respect to ongoing policy approaches, evidence abound that, they are merely targeted at salutary treatments of ‘states of fragilities’, decline and failures in the peripheral regions. Consequently, I argue that such an approach portends to tackle only one dimension of this unfolding ominous multi-faceted universal phenomenon. In my conception, an ideal approach needed to be adopted here, it would seem, is one that should be premised on a ‘collective global governance initiative’ (where state actors and non-state actors co-interact as well as collaborate freely as co-equals) with the aim of tackling such a universalist problem now besetting humanity in general. Gains made already in tackling the so-called ‘Tripple Cs’ (Co-ordination, Core values of humanity and the range of ‘Commons’ problems according to Coglianese (2000), could act as an inspiration to jumpstart a global moratorium on the current state construct.

As it were, from the foregoing analogies, it becomes evident that, the roots of ‘state of fragilities’, decline and failures are dialectically linked to the pervasive social, political and economic inequalities witnessed in the recent time mostly, as pervasive within the peripheral regions. It is a universal truth that pervasive inequalities in any state’s instance tend to dwarf a state’s capacities to deliver on concrete social and public goods that can enhance the general well-being of their citizens. It is a ripe environment for outbreak of social dissents and potential conflict outbreaks of all sorts across the social divide. It is a volatile tinder box that readily precipitates ‘state of fragilities’, failures and eventual collapse.

As we all know, structurally the global capitalist system as presently premised on the logic of perpetuity of exploitation of surplus of labour, dominance and peripherization of the fringe regions by the core. This is what actually foments such pervasive inequalities within the system. Therefore, a collective global governance initiative aimed at effectively tackling these ‘global reach problems’ ought to incorporate a feasible formula that will radically re-cast the global capitalist systemic array of structures, agencies and functions in the light of how we can disperse the ethos of ‘social equity’ across all regions. This option is what readily underpins our shared sense of a common humanity now living in a global village setup and what seem perhaps one of the most feasible panacea to rectify current defaults of the global state construct. The consequences of aggravation of the current trends of global ‘states of fragilities’ portend doom for the global order, it would seem. I will highlight the range of probable consequences in the next section.

Consequences of ‘State of Fragilities’, Decline and Failures in the evolving ‘New’ New Global Order

Scholars have tended to think along the line of the conceptions of a ‘New’ New evolving global order in the sense of arguing that something ‘new’ or novel is evolving within the new wave of globalism. In my conception, besides the growing interdependence and inter-connectivity between peoples and nations through global IT networks, I see ‘New’ trends in the lights of societies also re-inventing themselves to counter intrusions by multiple externalities. Consequently, we see a scenario where humanity is now experiencing the foundations of its very existence being uprooted or supplanted by new ideals and new methodologies for social conducts that are at variance with the original ideation characterizations that hitherto distinguished human national clusters. These trends I argue have strategic implications for the characterization and the potential consequences of ‘states of fragilities’ generally across the global space.

The consequences of states of fragilities, decline and eventual collapse are quite dire by any standard analytical parameter. Elsewhere I have argued that ‘whence states form, why states fail and how states can re-build’ are critical causations that tendentiously define potentials for a potential slide into ‘states of fragilities’, decline and eventual collapse by any state (Ovie-D’Leone, 2019). In this instance, I also contend that, under universalism of globalizing influences, any instance of ‘states of fragilities’, decline or a potential failure would adversely impact the global system as a whole. From potentials of huge out-flux of refugees fleeing potential crises regions emanating from any instance of state collapse, to structural dysfunctions of region-wide and indeed global-wide infrastructures in host countries receiving these refugees, the enormous challenges of re-settlements and integration of alien communities amongst indigenous populations, actually presents us with a wide array of strategic security, economic, social and political implications that portend to threaten the incumbent global governance and institutional order any day (Ovie-D’Leone, 2019).

In any case, if we tackle this issue further by applying the Parson’s AGIL paradigm and for ease of analytical fluidity, we can also condense these consequences into just four categories as follows: with regards to the functions of adaptation – the borderline between the domestic and global frontiers as we all know, is fast fading or receding. This is compounding the so-called international ‘security dilemma’ and also mitigating the initiatives needed to be taken by states to act decisively in formulating and implementing feasible policies abstract from any forms of nefarious external meddling. Such policies are needed to buoy their national economies and to enthrone law and order internally. A fragile, failing or failed state will obviously offer an auspicious environment for emergence of ‘shadow state structures’ which will begin to contend for control over a state’s sovereign territory, resources and people. To counter such threats will require a robust and a very expensive global collective security initiatives – the likes akin to the on-going global war against international terrorism as initiated by President George W. Bush in his cabinet address in 2001 as highlighted by Bazinet (2001).

Pertaining to the functions of goal attainments, it can be argued that the endemic nature of global poverty, hunger and diseases world-wide obviously is more amplified in the so-called Third World regions where we now experience spikes in ‘states of fragilities’, declines and potential collapses. This does present us with formidable multi-layered threats to the very essence of implementing a universal approach to attainment of human security, welfare and wellbeing that ordinarily underpin the goal maintenance functions of any state. Obviously, these are grim challenges that a single state cannot tackle alone even in a normal circumstance. A failed state will therefore obviously become a general humanitarian burden on all of humanity, especially as exhibited recently in locations like Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo DRC and much of other regions now experiencing one form of political and social upheaval or the other as highlighted by Curtis (2018); Heinrichs (2016); and Saikal (2014).

With regards to the functions of integration, increasing wave of human migrations, transnational labour mobility through global social employment networking schemes, will all tend to mitigate or downgrade the capacities of any contiguous refugee destination nation to implement measures needed to attain its goals of internal integration. One of the grim fall-outs from this will be new demands for the integration of immigrant communities internal in receiving states, even if temporarily and with potentials for offshoots of Xenophobia and rise of ultra-right nationalism as now pervasive across the global system. This is especially prevalent in places like Hungary, Germany and the USA as highlighted by Nyiri (2003) and Mesco (2015). These are all ominous trends that will create a domino effect with potential to spew out shockwaves first from across a sub-region where we have such a failed state incident and where this will potentially gradually permeate the entire global system like the Syrian refugee crises presently depicts as highlighted by Heinrichs, 2016 and Mesco (2015).

For pattern maintenance functions, we can conceptualize a two-fold implication here consisting of the following instances:

a) A failing state will potentially aggravate the maintenance functions of contiguous states. We all know the national frontiers of states are becoming increasing more globalized and easily permeable to a wide range of externalities. Consequently, a failed state incident will only aggravate the challenges of securing and policing such a national border against nefarious criminal and terror gangs. Obviously, this also poses a strategic security challenge for global governance initiatives as highlighted by James and Soguk (2014).

b) Domestic problems are fast transmuting into universal ‘commons problems’ – to use a terminology coined by Coglianese (2000). Such a scenario has tendencies to mitigate state capacities to act alone on the world stage leading to loss of key sovereign rights when eventually other states get involved in their domestic affairs. James and Soguk (2014) present this gloomy picture succinctly in their work. In this light, a failed state is an obvious invitation for all sorts of ‘unwelcome’ externalities into a national and indeed a regional governance structure, especially, in the context of the unfolding wave of globalism. This trend has its attendant implications for fomenting international real-politicking in such a location and with potentials to easily degenerate into a tinder box at the slightest provocation. Consequently, globalization in this instance, besides reducing the geo-geospatial gaps of social inequalities between competing civilizational communities it is laden with potential triggers for multiple explosive civilizational conflicts at the slightest provocation. The global order can best be perceived as sitting on an explosive tinder box that portends an imminent global apocalypse. What can we then do to stem this ugly tide, one may ask? Emergent scholarship is seemingly in its formative stage. Attempts would be made to offer some feasible antidote needed to tackle this unfolding hydra-head on the global stage in the next section.

Overview of a new approach to tackle ‘structural dysfunctionality’ of the state under Globalism

That the modern state is experiencing series of critical entropies at this instance of human annals, it is only to be expected of a social construct that has seemingly outlived its original usefulness and limits of its original statist-based operating logics. Under the incumbent trends of globalization, the modern state construct obviously is faced with series of competing and contradicting social operating logics that are urgently demanding inclusion and most of which are also anathema to the continued sustenance of the original essence of the state construct itself in its present fixation on the Westphalia format. To tackle the spike in ‘states of fragilities’ we must find ways to address the sundry challenges to sovereign authority of the state in the light of the emergent competing operating logics emanating from multiple shadow state structures and now demanding inclusion in the public space under globalism.

The series of these competing logics include the following: a) an assertive brand of religious fundamentalism that outlaws or forecloses inclusiveness of other rival religious belief systems within a given state instance; b) a borderless flow of human traffic, goods, information, capital and services across sovereign territories and cyberspace anarchy. These demands would tendentiously backstage the hitherto exclusive or now seemingly extant supervisory and controlling roles of the states over such traffics as prevalent in the recent past; c) we can also add a radical rise of ultra-far right nationalism that forecloses immigrations from selected regions of the globe owing to popular xenophobia and racial discrimination. The menu also includes populist demands on their governments not to subject a nation to or to allow it co-exist with any form of supranational globalist control over its internal affairs ultra-right nationalism); d) we also have an unfolding scenario of emergent national civic cultures characterized by overt reliance on internalized identities or ideation patterns of politics that pits different racial groups into competing camps within a state instance. These are trends we presently observe in the USA, Hungary and France now fixated in identity national policing.

However, to tackle the sundry challenges posed by these new demands emerging from unfolding globalism, this paper will again take recourse in Parson’s AGIL paradigm as a basis to proffer ways and means needed to re-configure the modern state and inter-state system with a view to help build new capacities for states to survive the strange terrains now unleashed on them by sundry new demands for inclusiveness by externalize forces of ‘multiculturalism’, ‘globalism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’ in the public space. This approach consists of the following stages:

With regards to Parson’s pattern maintenance functions, it would seem there is a dire need to broaden the conception or implementation modalities of national security (an initial fixation on statist-based militarist conception) to span across five other dimensions of the conception of security postulations by the ‘Copenhagen School’ as highlighted by Buzan, Weaver and de Wilde (1998) in their notable ‘securitization thesis’. This view broadens the narrow militarist and statist-based conception of national security to now encompass the full rubric of human security, environmental security, social security, state security and economic security. Against this backdrop, I argue that, since all human communities in this stead would share such common values embedded in these sundry conceptions of security, pattern maintenance functions should now be focused not only on how we can sustain the structural fidelity of atomistic human social organizations within a single state instance, but rather, our focus ought now to shift towards how we can promote the universalism of human existence in a secured global village order.

With reference to adaptation functions, I am inclined to propose that, since national borders are already fast rescinding, the tasks of maintaining internal law and order ought also now to be broaden to incorporate a wide range of other cognate collective regional and neighbourhood governance initiatives and strategies needed to be implemented by key states and non-state actors in any specific state instance. This implies that, the state now needs to accommodate and exploit some useful synergies in the strategic roles played by dominant non-state actors like Multinationals, Transnational as well as immigrant communities active within and across the sovereign territories of any state.

It is also true that, goal attainment functions have been radically re-defined under globalization in such ways and manners that national economic goals have become increasingly inter-dependent and inter-connected leaving no space for government dominance abstract from the dynamics of national and international market forces. Thus, since it is now evident that global market forces exert perhaps the most profound impacts on overall national economic performances worldwide, there is an urgent need to also equilibrate or level the operating environment of the global economy by eliminating all forms of regional bloc exclusivities or restrictions in place of a truly universalist free market economic model that allows free flow of goods, services and capital unhindered.

As per the evolving new globalist challenges on the integration functions, we all know that this role is very crucial for the sustenance and survival of the state under globalization.  In this light, I argue that the essence of an evolving global village construct demands the urgent entrenchment of a communitarian ethos founded on the shared values of our common humanity. Thus, instead of the sacrosanct claimant to the exclusivity of national citizenship rights, we should now begin to thinker along lines of an evolving ‘global citizenship’ right award that eliminates all forms of visa restrictions on human migration. And instead of state frontiers, regional hubs needed to administratively process human migrations across inter-regional or continental borders can subsist. But this should be prosecuted outside the austere fringes of the current national or indeed regional frontier arrangements.

Conclusion

Against backdrop of the foregoing analogies, the paper concludes as follows: a) increasing rates of societal inter-connectivity and inter-dependence evident in the context of ongoing globalization will tend to aggravate the push-pull effects of the long drawn struggles between the core, semi and periphery regions of the global capitalist system and with catastrophic ramifications for sustenance of the existing Westphalia state construct; b) implications of aggravating the push-pull effects of the core-periphery struggles within the global capitalist structural arrangements portends to also increase the structural strains and stresses witnessed currently in the inter-state system and with its attendance potentials to aggravate ‘states of fragilities’, decline and failures. Consequently, more states will potentially collapse globally save there is a radical systemic overhaul of the current operating logics inhered in the global capitalist system.

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