The review has an order. At first I have collected together my understanding of these four articles one by one. Later, I have put together the critiques that emerged in my mind after having gone though the papers. Globalization as a phenomenon is intriguing as well as conceptually difficulty to formulate in ones mind. The reason for choosing articles on this topic was precisely the same. I hope to take home some understanding of the concept from this exercise.

Michael Mann in his paper has enumerated four theses which indicate towards a increased pressure on the nation-state. These theses are, spread of capitalism in the post modern, post colonial world, emergence and importance of new global limits, especially of environmental and pollution threats, emergence of new transnational 'civil society', social movements for peace, human rights and environmental and social reforms and the emergence of 'world state' (Martin Shaw) in the backdrop of reduced state and hard Geo-politics and demilitarization. This he does to analyze empirically how these theses indicate towards the affects of globalization on the modern nation-state's power and sovereignty. He calls them nation-state-weakening theses. [3] Along with this he also talks about two political counter theses, one of which talks about the state institutions both domestic and geopolitical still having causal efficacy in terms of their social power and the second talks about the variations in the social life caused by different states being varied themselves and the effect this variation would have on globalization. To see the effect of globalization on nation state in terms of transformation, decline or gaining strength, Mann puts out two questions: is the social significance of national and inter-national networks declining relative to some combination of local and transnational networks? And to the extent that global networks are emerging, what is the relative contribution to them of national/inter-national versus local/transnational networks? Mann puts these questions across for his purpose stated above because the national and inter-national networks are constituted or fundamentally constrained by the nation-state.

Mann states that capitalism is more or less global now but he also asks the question are its global networks pure in the sense of being singularly universal. He indicates towards a mixed scene when he says that the MNC although heavily depend on the nation-state for its economic networks as their R&D remains in their home state and they depend on their home state for human capital from education system, communications infrastructure and economic protectionism. On the other hand they are MNC's sales reach, organization of production and investment flows are very much transnational in nature.

He asserts that while capitalist transformation is weakening the nation states of the north, through including them in a pluralistic stage of word trade, a very risk laden global financial market, it is strengthening of other states would take place because of economic development. On the demilitarized global stage, Mann says that this would weaken the hard geopolitics of the north and economic interests, new global limits and identity politics would give rise to soft geopolitics elsewhere. While identity politics could actually help in imparting strength to the nation-state through making the international and sub national networks emerge strong via partnerships with transnational networks. Mann's major contention seems that how the nation-state transforms itself in wake of these pressures would not be generalized and would depend on the level and type of the state. On global interaction networks, Mann says that they are strengthening in general and are deriving this strength from more globally present transnational relations which are ultimately feeding on technology and capitalism, and global interaction networks seem to be getting mediated by inter-national relation which they are also a function of peculiarities of nation-state especially in the north. Mann says that society has always been present in multiple, overlapping and intersecting forms of interactions and the same looks to be the case with globalism.

Held in his paper, analyses the military, economic and political globalization. He says that Globalization and regionalization in the military sphere seems to be complementing each other then being rivals. Military globalization after the cold war and fall of USSR doesn't seem to be edging off. The regionalization of military structure because of overwhelming costs of defense, the sourcing of production, existence and working state of different military alignments like NATO, the trade of military technology, seem to have worked towards the existence of global, stratified military linkages even after the end of cold war. The fact that in today’s world no nation can afford to go to war and the ever preparedness of nation-states for war makes it important for Geo-politics to play its role. While the existence of nation-state depends on its ability to defend its boundaries, the current status of world military order which indicates towards lesser role of an isolated nation being going the defense road alone, makes it harder to achieve. It is more about a cooperative and Geo-politically oriented way out.

Talking about the economic globalization, Held points towards the increased (and changed in composition and intensity) global trade. The liberalization impetus, along with a system for institutionalizing trade and increased spatially spread production and developments in communication and technology leads us to a stage where the local firm is in direct competition with the entire world. This brings about a change in the state policy, as the pressures are not just on liberalizing policy regime in tariffs and quotas but also in terms of domestic regulations and competition law. Additionally a increased concern for human development to ward off bad impacts of the liberalization process puts extra pressure on the state. This Held says leads to a transformation in state autonomy as the state's policy making is affected by this as well as the presence of WTO makes the state renegotiate its sovereignty. He talks about the impact of the global financial flows and the risk involved on the state's economic powers. The increased flow and intensity of funds has shrunk the macroeconomic policy space for the nation-state. Along with that the risks involved with a financial crisis of the sort of 1997 East-Asian crisis makes the need of warding off such systemic problems. One look at the global financial architecture though reveals that the financial globalization is not state managed is more of a market phenomenon. In that light, the state's role in warding off any systemic risks is limited and policy space is shrunk. The other part of economic globalization stressed by Held is the globalization of production through the MNCs. He stresses that the current globalization of business and production activity is not just centric to MNCs but SMEs are also getting linked through the presence of better communication technology. Along with this the intensity of the business globalization is far more in degree as ever in past. The MNCs are present in much more countries, are linked up more extensively with local economies and are free of the colonial aspirations of their host states. The changes in FDI policies and investment regimes make it possible for them become part of institutionalized production as contractual arrangements regularize inter-firm networks. Held, points out that even though the production of MNCs is relatively far less than the total production of the world, they impact the economic autonomy and sovereignty of the state in a big way.

Held defines political globalization as shifting reach of power, political authority and rule. [4] Held says that today's global politics is not just Geo-political in nature; it is also affected by the global economic, political and ecological questions. There are a number of players involved like the intergovernmental organizations, international agencies and regimes, and quasi-supranational institutions like the EU. Along with this there are a number of non state players whose concerns are not just international, national or regional but global in nature. These include the transnational corporations, pressure groups, social movements as well as domestic and intra-national pressure groups. With the communication technology improvements these multiple players and their multiple agendas are able to find audiences in real time and this plurality of concerns has a great impact on the politics of the current day. The international legal regimes, like that of the human rights, also exert pressure on the power position of the current day state. Held has argued in his paper that these three kinds of forces working on the state, namely military, economic and political globalization have not altered the autonomy of the state to a level where it is tooth less. Rather this process has seen pluralization of agendas as well as players at the Trans, inter, intra national level as well as domestic level. Held sees a transformation of the state's power, autonomy and sovereignty as a result of this. Held sees the current world order as 'messy' with multiple layers of governance with the interstate network embedded in the regional as well as global political sphere.

McGrew in his article has concentrated on bring froth the fault lines of the globalization debate between the skeptics, globalists and the transformationalists. He argues that the conceptualization of globalization as something ending in a single state of integrated market with price and interest rate convergence done by skeptics and globalists alike is flawed. According to him the transformationalist approach of viewing this phenomenon as a differentiated process which finds manifesting itself in all areas of social life and not just culture and economy id better suited for the nature of globalization.

McGrew is also not party to the view which tries to define globalization as a mono-causal phenomenon depending on any of the factors like, technology, capitalism or western modernity. He seems to be more inclined towards the argument which sees glabalization as a multi-causal phenomenon. While he doesn't adhere to limiting globalization to a modern day phenomenon, he also criticizes the thesis which tries to reflect that globalization impacts the social democracy and functioning of welfare state through limiting the scope of its macroeconomic policy. He is more comfortable with a approach which reflects its differential consequences and presses upon how it is managed, contested and resisted.

He asserts that the process of globalization and regionalization has not undermined the competence of the advanced capitalist states, and the fact that there is a renewed interest in the regional network linking suggests that the state policies are being effective. When the skeptics and globalists are of the view that the emergence of stronger international legal, trade, security regimes takes away the autonomy and sovereignty of the nation state, McGrew is of the view that the process might constrain autonomy and sovereignty of a state but it doesn't makes it immobilized or renders it ineffective. It just alters the way and the areas in which policy is required. On the effects of globalization on democratic form of a state McGrew is of the view that “contemporary globalization calls for a radical rethinking of what democracy must involve”. [5] He says earlier in his paper that globalization also effecting emergence of new progressive political forces and civil society. He also says that as the idea of sovereignty is changing in the wake of globalization the conceptualization of democratic citizenship is also getting differentiated from the earlier citizenship in the territorial space of state. The two general conclusions that he draws from the debate of globalization is that understanding domestic politics would henceforth also include the understanding the nature of linkages between national and world economies and that globalization implies reinvention of politics itself.

Martin Shaw in his paper argues that it is faulty to place globalization against nation-state, as globalization doesn't undermine the autonomy of the nation-state but transforms the nation-state.

He argues that it was not the current wave of globalization that did away with the autonomy of the world nation state but it was the war and the order of power that emerged after that. He talks about the Second World War and the fall of Europe and thus the fall of classic nation state. After the war the emergence of the USA and USSR as victors and the breaking of bone of most important states of that time Britain, France, Germany led to the fall of the nation-state. While Britain and France were left as very less powerful, lesser western states gave up their military power and joined the western bloc. Shaw, further contests that after the fall of the classic nation -state, the world witnessed the emergence of a new powerful state that can be defined as a state bloc of which both the soviet and the American blocs can be an example. And after the fall of USSR, there was the emergence of the 'western state' as a more closely integrated bloc. The western state has developed into a massive, institutionally complex and messy agglomeration of state power centered on North America, western Europe, Japan and Australasia. On the basis of post modern, modern and premodern categorization of the states, Shaw tries to categories the states of present age and sees as to how they stand vis-à-vis the Global emergent state.

In the first category he puts the advanced capitalist countries of the west like the USA, Britain and France and others. Amongst them while he says that the USA, Britain and France are capable of going alone in a war the other western nations like Canada have totally surrendered their military might to the NATO and the UN. Even then the USA and other powerful countries are depended on the global power network to such large extend that It is not easy for them to assert their autonomy. The second category includes modern nation-states like India, Brazil and Russia which are according to Shaw never going to engage the west militarily and have partially integrated themselves in the power networks of the western state. The third category includes the per-modern states parts of Africa and former Soviet Union, where the state is not yet reached a stable nation-state level. Shaw, problematizes the emergence and presence of nation-state and the global emergent state as the case of interdependence and mutual constitutiveness.

Shaw's Theses of the emergent global state concentrated in the North Americas and other advanced capitalist countries seem as a faulty assessment. He seems to be concentrating on the outcomes when he says that it was the Second World War which finished the autonomy of the classic nation-states. The colonial jest of that time's nation-states to acquire foreign resources led to the wars and he seems to have forgotten that if that time's globalization was institutional and just, it could not have ended up calling a war on the world. Along with that, the emergence of the Shaw's western state, concentrated in a bloc centered on North America, was fed or not by the process of globalization needs to be ascertained.

The other three papers by McGrew, Mann and Held take or support tranformationalist position on the globalization debate. While that seems to be a better way to understand the process or phenomenon of globalization, it needs to be ascertained where that kind of stance can take us - To the messy global order given by Held, or the differently layered social sphere with multiple networks working together scenario put forth by Mann? There is a need to explain or at least make an attempt to see whether, the mess and orderlessnes the process of globalization creates is getting organized to whatever possible level or not. In that light the case of EU, which is witnessing a new set of Norms of dealing within itself, with a clear order and legitimate authority in the form of the commission, needs to be concentrated upon. It would be interesting to see if the nation-states of the current times are getting themselves in a order on the basis of norms of interactions or continue to remain disorganized and fragmented based on the assumption of autarky. This view is typically a constructionist view.

More or less all the four authors have concentrated on how the phenomenon of Globalization is affecting the autonomy, sovereignty, power of the nation state. While Shaw's theses is markedly different and has been talked about above, the rest of the three are of the view that globalization is transforming the state's sovereignty, autonomy and form. While there are less territorial concerns, the networks of power exist side by side the emergence of civil society and identity politics.

The authors were not able to put in place the states which were defined as per-modern by Shaw and are know as underdeveloped nations in the debate of globalization. While these states are mostly at the receiving end of the globalization because of lack of resources, technological preparedness and stable state, a look at them can let us know which factors are necessary for a smooth functioning of the coexistence of Trans and intra national networks (e.g. law and order, communication technology etc)

The four articles reviewed were,

Michael Mann 'Has Globalization ended the rise and rise of Nation State', in Review of International political Economy, Vol. 4, No.3, September 1997.

David Held, 'The end of the old order? Globalization and the prospects for world order' in Review of International Studies, 1998

Anthony McGrew, 'The Globalization Debate: Putting together advanced Capitalist State in its place', in The Global Society, 12(3), 1998.

Martin Shaw, 'The state of Globalization: Towards a theory of state transformation', in Review of International Political Economy, 4, 3, 1997.