Introduction: Political Economy beyond Globalism: States, War, and Capitalist Democracy

Part I: The Demise of Centralism
1. Global Politics and Regional Planning
The Neoliberal Interlude
A Critical Moment

2. The Demise of the New World Order
Globalisation and Hyperglobalisation
A New European Order: The European Union
Forever Unfinished

3. Stuck: Between Globalism and Democracy
What Next? A Tug of War
Left Globalism
Culture versus Unculture
Democracy as a De-proletarianised Value System

4. Breaking the Deadlock: Democracy and the
Politics of Scale
Economic Crisis and State Systems
Megalomania?
Decomposing Complexity

Part II: After Three Decades
5. A Dual Crisis I: Capitalism
Stagnation
The Neoliberal Crisis Sequence
The Central Bank State as the Last Stage of Neoliberalism
Keynes from the Ashes?
Debt without Remorse?
The Emergency State
Clueless
The Great Uncertainty
Capitalism and Nothing Else

6. A Dual Crisis II: Democracy
States between Democracy and Globalism
Globalism against Democracy
Democracy against Globalism
Post-globalist Democracy?

Part III: States and State Systems
7. Integration and Differentiation
Gibbon: Unity or Diversity?
The Contemporary State System: A Survey
Metamorphoses of the Nation-State
Statehood and the Constitutive Particularism of
Human Socialisation
Excursus I: Scotland and Catalonia
Excursus II: Germany in Comparison
‘Taking Back Control’
Confederation or Empire?
The Dimensions of States and State Systems, and their Political Economy

8. The European Union: From Neoliberal to Geopolitical Integration
Europe as Battleground and Place of Desire
Before Ukraine: Critical Fault-Lines, Impending Failure
More Unity through Less Unity?
Integration by Militarisation?
After Ukraine
Liabilities Old and New
Beyond Superstate and Empire
Learning from Europe

Part IV: Beyond Globalist Centralisation
9. Mega-statism and Its Limitations
The Contradictions and Limits of Neoliberal Globalisation:
Eight Theses
Globalisation and Hyperglobalisation
Global Market Economy, National Democracy
Unity from Above: Global Governance
Global Governance as Technocratic Utopia
Another Plan A
Global Governance as Liberal Empire
COVID: The (Long-Hidden) Costs of Globalisation
COVID and the Fiscal Crisis of the State: A Conjecture

10. Small-Statism and Its Possibilities
Simon: Decomposing Complexity
Keynes: National Self-Sufficiency
Deglobalisation and Alternative Development
Global Polycentrism
Disentanglement: COVID and the Supply Chains
The Keynes-Polanyi State: National, Sovereign, Democratic
Better Smaller
‘Economic Patriotism’: Globalism and Back
Big Crisis, Small States
The Question of Money
Democratic Particularism and Global Collective Goods
Cooperative, Not Imperial: A Prospect of a New International Order

Epilogue
Index

Taking Back Control?

States and State Systems After Globalism