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The Crisis of the State1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Karl W. Deutsch
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Extract

IN THIS PRESENT-DAY WORLD, THE STATE - AND THIS IS TYPIcally the more or less sovereign national state - is both indispensable and inadequate. It is an indispensable instrument to get many things done, to provide many needed services and to deal with many real problems. But it is inadequate to cope with an increasing number of other problems of life and death for many of its inhabitants. No state today can protect the lives of its citizens in the case of thermonuclear war against it, nor against the poisonous fall-out from thermonuclear war outside its borders. No national state can protect the world's ecology, the oceans and the atmosphere, nor can any one state sove the problems of worldwide population growth or lack of raw materials, energy or food. In all these respects, the first and basic promise of government - to protect the lives of its citizens - has become illusory.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1981 , pp. 331 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1981

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Footnotes

1

An earlier version of this article was presented at the First International Congress of the Theory and Practice of the State, Mexico‐City, Mexico, and released by the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin.

References

Footnotes

1 An earlier version of this article was presented at the First International Congress of the Theory and Practice of the State, Mexico‐City, Mexico, and released by the Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin.

2 Piaget, J., Le Structuralisme, Paris, 1972.Google Scholar

3 Miller, J. G., Living Systems, New York, 1976.Google Scholar

4 See note 2 above.

5 See Heckscher, E., The Continental System, Gloucester, Mass., 1964;Google Scholar Schumpeter, J. A., ‘Zur Krise des Steuerstaates’ in Aufsätze zur Soziologie, Tübingen, 1953.Google Scholar

6 Weber, Max, Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Munich and Leipzig, Duncker & Humblot, 1924 Google Scholar. English ed. Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Parson, Talcott, New York 1947.