The New York Times - October 14, 2013
Singapore — Every five years, the United States National Intelligence Council, which advises the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, publishes a report forecasting the long-term implications of global trends. Earlier this year it released its latest report, “Alternative Worlds,” which included scenarios for how the world would look a generation from now.
One scenario, “Nonstate World,” imagined a planet in which urbanization,
technology and capital accumulation have brought about a landscape
where governments give up on real reforms and subcontract many
responsibilities to outside parties, which then set up enclaves
operating under their own laws.
The imagined date for the report’s scenarios is 2030, but at least for
“Nonstate World,” it might as well be 2010: though most of us might not
realize it, “nonstate world” describes much of how global society
already operates. This isn’t to say that states have disappeared, or
will. But they are becoming just one form of governance among many.
A quick scan across the world reveals that where growth and innovation
have been most successful, a hybrid public-private, domestic-foreign
nexus lies beneath the miracle. These aren’t states; they’re
“para-states” — or, in one common parlance, “special economic zones.”
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