Ulrich Beck criticises nation-state politics

The German sociologist Ulrich Beck urges the end of nation state politics in Europe. "Cosmopolitan Europe was consciously conceived and launched after the Second World War as the political antithesis to a nationalistic Europe and the physical and moral devastation that had emerged from it. ... The decline of the nation-state is really a decline of the specifically national content of the state and an opportunity to create a cosmopolitan state system that is better able to deal with the problems that all nations face in the world today. Economic globalisation, transnational terrorism, global warming ... There are a host of problems that are clearly beyond the power of the old order of nation-states to cope with. The answer to global problems that are gathering ominously ... is for politics to take a quantum leap from the nation-state system to the cosmopolitan state system. ... More than anywhere else in the world, Europe shows that this step is possible."

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