World View/Anthony O'Halloran: Few concepts have become so all-pervasive in contemporary politics as globalisation. Barely heard of until two decades ago, it has become a genuine buzzword.
The notion offers great hope to advocates of cosmopolitan citizenship. At last citizenship can be released from the nation state's embrace. Cosmopolitan visions no longer seem quite so utopian.
In the early years of this century, cosmopolitans are entitled to be optimistic. Evidence of an emerging global order is everywhere. Understood as an evolutionary process where political, economic and social forces are escaping the reach of the once-dominant nation state, globalisation clearly signals a new game in town. This is most evident in the economic sphere.
Contemporary footloose capital is truly global in its organisation. It has the capacity to act independently of the sovereign nation state - and must therefore be clearly distinguished from international trade, which takes place between sovereign nation states. Global capital, on the other hand, can be categorised as genuinely supranational. Capital's increasing autonomy makes globalisation particularly apt for 21st century politics.
Cosmopolitans point out that citizens are living in an increasingly interconnected world. Travel and communication are the most obvious manifestations of this trend.
The following statistics from 2000 are very revealing: 1.5 billion airline passengers per annum, 180 million internet users, 900 million telephone lines, two billion radio sets, and an incredible 16,500 transnational civil society organisations.
The communications revolution may provide particularly fertile soil for an emerging but as yet embryonic cosmopolitan citizenship. National citizenship relies on an "us and other" relationship to sustain it. Global communications, whether in electronic or face-to-face form, should theoretically break down such relationships. Perhaps "other" is not so different, a cosmopolitan might argue.
Similarly global civil society provides spaces for supranational social and cultural intercourse. Barriers and differences become less important. Commonality, shared understandings and non-antagonistic relationships come to the fore. In overall terms, state-centric understandings of citizenship are eroded.
Is such an optimistic account on the part of cosmopolitans justified? A more realistic analysis would go as follows. Citizenship is conventionally defined as membership of a political community. Membership of this community brings with it a package of rights and obligations.
Crucially, members share a sense of overarching common identity whether ethnic or civic. Members share a sense of belonging. For at least two centuries the sovereign nation state has constituted community, with citizenship the glue holding it together.
Citizenship and identity are therefore rooted in the nation state. As such citizenship is understood in state-centric, not supranational, terms.
It can be further argued that while globalisation certainly signals a radically transformed world order, it is not the end of statehood.
The state is not redundant - transformed but not transcended. There is a deterministic tone to much of the contemporary discourse on globalisation - a mistaken view that the state has lost its capacity to influence and shape economic outcomes.
Nothing could be further from reality. The state continues to demonstrate a tremendous capacity to adapt. As a highly robust and adaptable political entity, it will remain a key feature of our political architecture. Obituaries declaring its demise are premature in the extreme.
However, cosmopolitans continue to argue that citizenship is frequently interpreted in innately positive terms. Conjuring up images of pro-active members of the polity, it celebrates participation. No wonder then that its decline is frequently mourned. However, cosmopolitans correctly challenge many of the assumptions underlying this state-centric form.
By its very nature it has an exclusionary meaning, creating a strong sense of "us and other". In its extreme manifestation it dehumanises others, so that non-citizens are deemed different. In the absence of an "other", state-centric citizenship simply does not exist.
Is globalisation actually eroding state-centric citizenship? In terms of citizens' self-perception the answer appears to be in the negative - and this is crucial. Eurobarometer surveys which measure attitudes to European integration provide researchers with excellent evidence on identity above the level of the nation state. In the context of European integration citizenship and identity remain rooted in the nation state. Although cosmopolitan tendencies are not entirely absent, evidence of an emerging supranational identity is lacking.
Cosmopolitan citizenship is therefore not a serious empirical possibility in the foreseeable future. Citizenship is likely to remain territorially bounded. This conclusion, however, should not depress cosmopolitans. There is still a lot to be positive about. It is now clearly recognised that the state is synonymous with singular notions of identity. Cosmopolitans should not abandon their quest.
There is an increasing recognition that multiple identities are not only feasible but are already a feature of our everyday lives at statal level.
There does not have to be an "either-or" dualism between state-centric and cosmopolitan notions of identity. Rather, different identities can co-exist.
One of the EU's great achievements is to have compelled a reassessment of the conflated relationship between citizenship, identity and the state.
Cosmopolitans should also remember that there is much they can do in their everyday lives to encourage pluralist notions of identity.
While admittedly these acts occur at the micro level, small steps can generate an incremental dynamic. They include getting a sense of the other in our everyday encounters, which may be ephemeral or long term.
They should be seen as reflective and discursive spaces where the participants strive for mutual understanding.
Embracing and cherishing them may enhance the capacity to understand difference and diversity.
Similarly, electronic communications provide us with the capacity to create global friendships. References to electronic communities and e-democracy tend to exaggerate technology's potential to replicate human relationships. Although these electronic encounters will never be a substitute for face-to-face communication, they can at least consolidate conventional friendship. They may also trigger new face-to-face encounters.
The forces of globalisation will not displace territorially based citizenship. However, state-centric citizenship will most probably continue to be relativised. In time citizenship may be divorced from singular notions of identity. The prospects of such pluralism emerging should be enough to encourage cosmopolitans to remain engaged and pro-active.
Anthony O'Halloran, research fellow from the department of government, University College Cork, is a visiting professor with the department of political science, California State University at San Marcos