Theory of the global state: globality as unfinished revolution

This ambitious study rewrites the terms of debate about globalization. Martin Shaw argues that the deepest meaning of globality is the growing sense of worldwide human commonality as a practical social force, arising from political struggle not technological change. The book focuses upon two new concepts: the unfinished global-democratic revolution and the global-Western state. Shaw shows how an internationalized, post-imperial Western state conglomerate, symbiotically linked to global institutions, is increasingly consolidated amidst worldwide democratic upheavals against authoritarian, quasi-imperial non-Western states. This study explores the radical implications of these concepts for social, political and international theory, through a fundamental critique of modern ‘national-international’ social thought and dominant economistic versions of global theory. Required reading for sociology and politics as well as international relations, Theory of the Global State offers a historical, theoretical and political framework for understanding state and society in the emerging global age. • Major new contribution to debates about globalization, by an important scholar of international relations and sociology • The first major work from a historical sociology perspective to account for global change, and an original criticism of mainstream accounts of globalization • Will have widespread appeal to students of globalization in IR, politics, sociology and geography departments