After Nations

Nation-states have long been the basic frame of global politics, and that frame is now straining. American dominance is fading, and many anxious Western countries are sinking into xenophobia and debt. Liberal ideas and institutions are losing prestige, while autocracies such as China, Russia and the UAE gain ground. For people whom nation-states have failed entirely, the only route to a future is a dangerous journey as migrants. The world offers fewer securities and more threats.

Rana Dasgupta asks how this system arose and why it is failing in so many ways at once. His account begins with the fall of ancient empires and follows the spread of European ideas about money and law. It continues up to twenty-first-century tech companies, which now rival states in power, and the return of China as a great power.

His argument is that we need to rethink citizenship, law and the economy for a world that is globalized and ecologically fragile. Blending political and historical analysis, After Nations is aimed at readers who want to know why political control over the world seems to be slipping away, and how some of it might be recovered.