Fragmented States and International Rules of Law

Globalisation, as the latest phase in the development of the world system, involves a fragmentation and restructuring of state forms, in which law is being called upon to mediate shifts in the structures of power. A historical and empirically rich analysis is needed to help understand the nature and changing forms of statehood, as well as the possibilities and limits of law, and the paper explores these in the context of some aspects of business regulation, especially income taxation. 1. GLOBALISATION AND STATE FRAGMENTATION In 1995, the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council identified and publicised three main ‘thematic priorities’: globalisation, regulation and governance, and social integration and exclusion. Both the selection of these topics, and the way in which they have been expressed, are very revealing of much current public discussion. The issues themselves are far from new, indeed I myself have been concerned with all three during most of my academic life. However, in current discussions they appear under new and modish guises: now we have the concept of globalisation, replacing internationalisation; governance, instead of government or the state; and social integration and exclusion, instead of class, race and gender. The newer terms are, I think, rather more fuzzy and elusive about the nature of the social processes to which they refer. The inflection results, I think, partly from changes in the character of those processes, but more significantly, from new ways of perceiving and shaping those processes. Not surprisingly, there is considerable debate and contestation about all three. Many are ambivalent about the current fashionable discussions of globalisation. Has there really been such a transformation of international interactions, resulting in a global homogenisation of social and cultural life, as the term suggests? Why has the concept become so popular in both academic and everyday discussions? In some cases, it seems to result from an abrupt awareness that common assumptions about our social world are no longer valid, without too much inquiry about how far they ever were: a realisation that we don’t just live in and can’t just study a society, a single legal system, or a national state, and that the world contains a multiplicity of diverse and interacting societies, states, and legalities. But if this is the case, why the term globalisation, which misleadingly suggests an increasing global homogeneity, rather than awareness of diversity or interconnectedness, as I think internationalisation does? In another perspective, globalisation debates seem to result from post-Cold War concerns, to envisage and construct a New World Order, which might be more cohesive and coordinated than was previously possible. Yet if globalisation is about