Growth and Development: The New Role of the State in the Context of Globalization

The State's role in development is bound to change significantly as a result of many new challenges, of the multitude of changes the world has experienced over the past thirty years, and of the new demands which have come to the fore (particularly in the fields of environment, sustainable development and international governance). This inevitable change can be understood in two complementary but separate ways. On the one hand, at the national level, the State must now bite the bullet on a whole series of critical questions about the overall direction of development: environmental protection; improvement of the living conditions of the population, (not to mention the working conditions of the labour force); the promotion of democratic freedoms and fundamental human rights; and the practice of "good governance" at all levels of the political and administrative structure, which implies the participation of civil society in the design and execution of major economic and social projects. On the other hand, at the international level, the State can no longer ignore the growing interdependence of nations brought about by the process of globalization. The expression "global village", even if it seems overstated, nevertheless denotes a real situation in which the global is present at different levels of economic and social life in human communities, whether national, regional or local. Because of this growing interdependence, the State (both in developing countries and in transitional or developed ones) can no longer take major decisions "in total independence", that is, outside of any international co-ordination or global oversight. A range of international regimes bears witness to this truth: WTO rules on world trade, IMF regulations over current international financial supports, IAEA controls over nuclear programmes, etc. Thus, to continue to fulfil its role as an actor in development, the State must face up to a twofold challenge: globalization which is swamping it from above, and which requires a global response; and regionalism, which is undermining it from below, demanding that the aspirations of human communities and social groups be taken into account at local level. To be sure, this twofold movement does not mean the death of the State; but it must learn to improve its ways of working, if it is to play its role fully in this new context.