As the new millennium unfolds, the state is rising again in public and
scholarly imagination. Two decades ago, the dramatic end of the Cold
War fueled speculations that the state was an anachronistic organization
that soon would be swept away in the coming wave of liberalization and
globalization.1 Such speculations were not without basis. As once powerful
states from Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union collapsed like dominoes,
while liberal ideology, the consumer culture, and the Internet revolution
expanded their reach across the globe, the days of state sovereignty
seemed to be numbered. States appeared no longer able to hold out against
the assaults from such global entities as the International Monetary Fund,
Microsoft, Citibank, CNN, and McDonald’s.