Nation-states are past their democratic peak, says Rana Dasgupta

Rana Dasgupta discusses the decline of nation-states, exploring new political models and the future of global community.

More than 99% of humanity lives in nation-states. But nations are less than 200 years old, and today many countries are sliding into xenophobia, debt and a cost of living crisis. With the liberal ideas that underpinned the nation-state system human rights, dignity, security for all — in retreat, millions are feeling abandoned by the nation-state, and turning to cross-border migration in desperation.

Rana Dasgupta

At the same time, nation-states are proving ill-equipped to handle urgent planetary threats such as climate change and ecological collapse. Is the nation-state system in decline? Will it be, or can it be, replaced by a new system?

Novelist and essayist Rana Dasgupta explores these themes in ‘After Nations: The Making and Unmaking of a World Order’, a fascinating historical and political analysis of the nation-state. He spoke to Sunday Magazine about his new book, and what a ‘post-nation’ future might look like. Excerpts:

You began as a novelist, switched to reported nonfiction, and your new book is a world historical analysis of the nation-state. What prompted this transition?

All of my work is in some ways about forms of community that are not the nation. In my first book, Tokyo Cancelled, a lot of travellers were stuck together in an airport, and they started telling stories. The idea of being in an airport is that they’re not in any national space, particularly. It was my attempt to create an image of what a global culture – of storytelling, of cosmopolitanism – might look like. So, some of my intellectual concerns have remained constant. But as a writer, you’re constantly looking for new ways to tell the story you want to tell. And as I’ve gotten older, or as the world has become more strange, I’ve felt the need to speak to the reader directly, rather than to invent stories about this.