Everything seems to be going “global”.  Some examples will show this:

Wars are looking more and more like global police actions, rather than international conflicts.

The financial systems allows money to flow globally, very much like in the heyday of the Gold Standard.  Even the Fed admits that it is constrained by global considerations.

Telecommunications and the Internet seem to know no borders, and speak their own language of transnationality.

News are hardly local anymore.  The canned products of CNN, BBC, WSJ and NYT, among others, assume a global audience and a global distribution.

Supply chains transcend the limits of the logistically possible.  The whole world seems like the proverbial “last mile” of old. 

Corporations operate unapologetically in a world not restricted to their regional offices, personnel and legal systems.  They become ever more like globally linked organizations, supra-national in nature.  Patents and copyrights are enforced globally.

Even terror seems to be global in reach and ideological claim.  Religions speak of hundreds of millions of followers.

But, in the face of all this, why do we still have to put up with nation-states?  And with the corollary: a very old idea of citizenship tied to the existence of the very same nation-state.  Does this markedly un-global idea of citizenship diminish the possibilities of individuals, both in the online world (economic and political rights) and the physical world (migration, exclusion)? 

I must say it does.  To investigate I will post here further.  I don’t think we will see the demise of the nation-state soon, but we will see a change in the character of citizenship.