The relationship between globalization and national sovereignty has long stood at the center of debates within contemporary political economy. On one side, globalization is understood as the accelerating integration of economies, technologies, and cultures into a planetary network, where flows of capital, information, and labor cut across borders with unprecedented speed and intensity. This process appears to undermine the autonomy of the nation-state, eroding its capacity to regulate markets, protect local industries, or safeguard cultural identity. On the other side, national sovereignty asserts itself as the principle of territorial control, juridical independence, and the right of political communities to determine their own destinies. Sovereignty functions not only as a legal category but also as a symbolic expression of collective identity and the institutional coherence of the state. The encounter between globalization and sovereignty is therefore not a superficial contest of interests or policies but a profound structural antagonism that defines the shape of the present epoch.
From the perspective of Quantum Dialectics, this antagonism is not accidental or contingent upon temporary historical conditions but emerges as a systemic contradiction. Globalization and sovereignty represent opposing yet interdependent movements of cohesion and decohesion, the universal dialectical forces that govern transformation across both physical and social systems. Globalization tends toward decohesion by dissolving traditional boundaries, scattering production chains, and fragmenting older forms of cultural and political coherence. Sovereignty, by contrast, embodies cohesion, seeking to reassert unity, preserve territorial integrity, and stabilize collective life against the turbulence of global flows. Their interaction cannot be reduced to a zero-sum contest where one triumphs over the other; rather, it must be understood as a dynamic process where each depends upon and reshapes the other.
To fully grasp this interplay, it becomes necessary to integrate the insights of Marxist political economy and world-systems theory with the ontological method of Quantum Dialectics. Marxist analysis shows globalization as the logical extension of capital’s drive to overcome spatial and temporal barriers, while world-systems theory situates it in the longue durée of core–periphery hierarchies and shifting hegemonies. Yet both frameworks, while invaluable, require supplementation by a dialectical ontology that sees globalization not as a linear march toward integration, but as a contradictory quantization of planetary space. In this view, globalization is mediated by capital accumulation, state power, and the contradictory forces of cohesion and decohesion operating at multiple quantum layers of the social order. National sovereignty, far from being abolished, is reconstituted within this dialectical field, at once constrained and transformed by the very processes that seem to undermine it.
Marx was among the first to grasp the inherently expansionary nature of capital, describing it as a restless force that “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” This dynamic is not an incidental characteristic of capitalism but lies at the very heart of its logic. The pursuit of surplus value demands that capital constantly transcend the limits imposed by local labor supplies, domestic markets, and finite resources. In this relentless drive to overcome barriers, capital expands outward, seeking new territories for accumulation and new frontiers for profit. Globalization, therefore, is not a recent or accidental development but the contemporary intensification of this world-historical tendency that has characterized capitalism from its inception.
From the standpoint of Marxist political economy, globalization can be understood as a multidimensional process in which the contradictions of capital take specific forms. One dimension is the spatial expansion of capital, manifested in the relocation of production to regions with cheaper labor costs and looser regulations. This results in the integration of peripheral economies into global supply chains, where they provide raw materials, semi-finished goods, or labor-intensive manufacturing for the consumption of the advanced capitalist core. Another dimension is the temporal acceleration of capital’s circuits, as financial innovations, digital platforms, and just-in-time production drastically shorten turnover times. The rapidity of these cycles intensifies competition and increases the pressure on workers and states alike to conform to the imperatives of global capital. A third dimension is the emergence of new forms of dependency, in which the classical core–periphery relationship is rearticulated. While advanced capitalist states dominate finance, technology, and cultural production, weaker economies are locked into asymmetrical relations of dependence, supplying low-value goods and vulnerable to capital flight, debt crises, and external shocks.
Yet this same process that seems to dissolve the authority of national sovereignty simultaneously depends on the nation-state for its reproduction. Far from being rendered obsolete, states serve as indispensable agents of global capital. They enforce property rights, guarantee the sanctity of contracts, and provide the legal frameworks through which accumulation can proceed. They maintain labor discipline, using laws, policing, and sometimes coercion to ensure that workers remain productive, compliant, and available to global industries. They regulate financial systems, managing currencies, overseeing banks, and intervening in crises to stabilize markets. Without these cohesive functions performed at the level of the state, the turbulent forces of globalization would collapse under their own contradictions.
This reveals a fundamental paradox: capital, by its very logic, seeks to dissolve national boundaries and undermine the autonomy of sovereign states, yet it is simultaneously dependent upon these very states to secure the conditions of its existence. The contradiction is therefore inscribed in the heart of globalization itself. It is not a simple story of sovereignty disappearing under the weight of planetary integration, but of sovereignty being reconfigured and instrumentalized as the guarantor of capital’s restless expansion.
Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory offers a powerful lens through which to deepen the analysis of globalization by placing it within the longue durée of the capitalist world-economy. Unlike accounts that treat globalization as a novel phenomenon of the late twentieth century, Wallerstein insists that the modern world-system has, from its very origins in the sixteenth century, been global in scope. It was born not as a collection of isolated national economies but as a single, integrated structure of production and exchange, marked by persistent hierarchies of power and wealth. This systemic integration unfolded through conquest, colonialism, and the expansion of trade, laying the foundation for the enduring patterns of inequality that continue to shape globalization today.
At the core of Wallerstein’s analysis is the recognition that the world-system is organized into a core–periphery–semi-periphery hierarchy, a stratification that reproduces unequal relations across centuries. The core states exercise dominance through their technological superiority, financial control, and military might, enabling them to monopolize the production and export of high-value goods. In contrast, the periphery is relegated to the supply of raw materials, cheap agricultural commodities, and low-cost labor, its economies locked into dependency and external control. Between these two poles lies the semi-periphery, a zone of partial industrialization and limited autonomy. Semi-peripheral states act as buffers, absorbing political and economic pressures that might otherwise destabilize the system, yet their development remains constrained by structural dependence on the core.
Within this hierarchical arrangement, sovereignty is unevenly distributed. Core states enjoy what might be called substantive sovereignty: their political autonomy is backed by economic strength and military power, allowing them to shape global institutions and set the rules of international exchange. Peripheral states, by contrast, are often confined to nominal sovereignty: they may formally control their territory and maintain a flag, a government, and international recognition, but in practice their policy space is sharply curtailed by debt dependency, foreign investment pressures, and external interventions. Even their capacity to regulate their own economies is subordinated to global capital flows and the dictates of powerful international financial institutions.
Globalization, particularly in its neoliberal phase since the 1970s, has only intensified this asymmetry. The deregulation of finance, the rise of transnational corporations, and the creation of global trade regimes have further concentrated power in the core while eroding the autonomy of weaker states. Structural adjustment programs imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank exemplify this process: while formally respecting sovereignty, they effectively compel peripheral nations to restructure their economies in line with the imperatives of global capital. In this way, globalization strengthens the very forces that subordinate weaker states, while simultaneously reinforcing the sovereignty of those at the system’s commanding heights.
Thus, world-systems theory demonstrates that globalization should not be understood as the negation of sovereignty, but rather as its hierarchical reconfiguration. Sovereignty persists, but its distribution is deeply uneven: strongest where global capital is anchored and weakest where it is exploited. What appears as a universal process of integration is, in fact, a stratified order in which sovereignty is a privilege of the powerful and a fragile fiction for the weak.
While Marxist political economy and world-systems theory reveal the capitalist and hierarchical logics that drive globalization, Quantum Dialectics offers a broader meta-theoretical framework through which to interpret the dynamic contradictions of the process. Rather than treating globalization and sovereignty as simply opposed forces locked in a zero-sum struggle, Quantum Dialectics situates them within the universal interplay of cohesion and decohesion, the fundamental dialectical forces that shape both natural and social systems. By applying this lens, we see globalization not as a linear process of integration or disintegration, but as a contradictory movement of fragmentation and reconstitution, destabilization and reorganization, carried forward by the restless expansion of capital and mediated through political forms.
From this standpoint, globalization can be understood primarily as a force of decohesion. It fragments national spaces by integrating them into transnational circuits of production and finance, where domestic economic planning loses its former coherence. It dissolves traditional cultural forms by introducing globalized patterns of consumption, mass media, and identity, thereby undermining long-standing traditions and solidarities. It disperses production chains across multiple territories, making each state dependent on a fragile web of global logistics rather than self-sufficient economic structures. It destabilizes political orders, as governments are forced to adapt to the demands of international markets, global investors, and supranational institutions.
At the same time, sovereignty operates as a force of cohesion, pushing back against these centrifugal tendencies. It seeks to reassert unity over fragmented social space, preserving territorial integrity and institutional continuity. Sovereignty stabilizes collective identity through symbols, laws, and rituals of national belonging, providing the population with a sense of security against the volatility of global markets and cultural shifts. It attempts to contain and manage the disruptive flows of capital, people, and ideas by erecting regulatory frameworks, border controls, and cultural protections. In this way, sovereignty functions as the centripetal counterweight to globalization’s centrifugal pressures.
Yet cohesion and decohesion must not be imagined as absolute opposites. In Quantum Dialectics, they are always entangled, each generating and conditioning the other. Globalization does not only dismantle—it also creates new forms of cohesion at higher levels of organization. The institutions of global finance, digital infrastructures linking billions of people, and organizations such as the WTO or IMF represent emergent structures of order born out of the very forces of fragmentation. Conversely, sovereignty does not survive in its traditional form of absolute independence. Instead, it adapts, becoming what may be called relational sovereignty, where state authority is exercised through constant negotiation within transnational networks. A nation-state may still exist as a coherent political unit, but its autonomy is partially refracted through international treaties, economic dependencies, and global regulatory frameworks.
This entangled condition reflects what Quantum Dialectics describes as the quantum-layered structure of social reality. At one layer, the nation-state persists as a coherent form, providing order, legitimacy, and identity. At another, it exists simultaneously as a node within larger planetary structures, enmeshed in global flows that exceed its control. Sovereignty thus transforms into quantum sovereignty—not an indivisible, self-contained essence, but a dynamic field of relational entanglement. In this view, sovereignty is neither wholly eroded nor fully intact; it is reconstituted as a dialectical phenomenon, suspended between autonomy and dependency, cohesion and decohesion, within the unfolding contradictions of globalization.
When viewed through the lens of Quantum Dialectics, the relationship between globalization and sovereignty does not appear as a smooth process of transition from one to the other, but as a field of unresolved contradictions that define the political economy of our present moment. These contradictions are not accidental disruptions but necessary expressions of the tension between cohesion and decohesion operating at multiple layers of the global system. Each contradiction highlights how globalization and sovereignty interpenetrate, contest, and reshape one another.
The economic contradiction is perhaps the most visible. Global value chains depend on the free movement of goods, capital, and labor across national borders. The very efficiency of contemporary capitalism rests upon open markets, international specialization, and the circulation of commodities within a tightly integrated global system. Yet at the same time, states face growing demands for protectionism, the reshoring of industries, and policies of economic nationalism. Workers and communities destabilized by outsourcing, automation, and financial volatility demand that governments reassert sovereignty over their economies. This contradiction reveals the dialectical double movement of globalization: while it expands capital’s reach beyond borders, it simultaneously generates the political pressures that compel states to close and defend those very borders.
The political contradiction emerges in the tension between supranational institutions and nationalist movements. Organizations such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and regional blocs like the European Union attempt to enforce forms of planetary cohesion, establishing frameworks of law and governance that transcend individual states. Yet these same structures often provoke resistance from populist and nationalist forces, who reassert the demand for closure, independence, and self-rule. Brexit, the resurgence of protectionist policies, and the proliferation of “sovereignty first” political rhetoric illustrate how globalization simultaneously builds and fractures political authority.
The technological contradiction lies in the globalizing capacity of digital platforms versus the attempts of states to assert control. The internet, social media, and digital infrastructures have dissolved boundaries of communication, creating planetary networks of information exchange. Yet states increasingly intervene with censorship regimes, firewalls, data localization laws, and forms of techno-nationalism aimed at protecting national interests. What appears as an infrastructure of planetary cohesion simultaneously becomes an arena of sovereignty struggles, where control over digital flows is equated with political and economic power.
The ecological contradiction exposes the limits of fragmented sovereignty in the face of planetary crises. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion demand coordinated global action, since ecological processes do not respect national borders. Yet sovereign states often act in competition, prioritizing short-term national growth, fossil fuel interests, or geopolitical advantage over long-term planetary survival. The dialectic here is stark: planetary cohesion is a material necessity, but political cohesion remains trapped within the sovereign state system, producing paralysis and uneven responsibility.
The military contradiction underscores the violent dimensions of sovereignty in a globalized world. While economic interdependence and international institutions point toward integration, geopolitical rivalries and wars demonstrate the persistence of sovereignty as a principle worth defending, often through force. Military interventions, territorial disputes, and conflicts over spheres of influence show how sovereignty is not only preserved but also imposed within globalization. War thus becomes a brutal reminder that global interconnection does not dissolve the logic of state power but intensifies its antagonisms.
Taken together, these contradictions demonstrate that globalization does not simply replace sovereignty, nor does sovereignty stand unaltered against globalization. Instead, sovereignty mutates within globalization, transforming into new relational forms, while globalization itself fractures upon the resilient structures of national power. The dialectical interplay of cohesion and decohesion ensures that neither pole can be fully realized in isolation. The world order that emerges is not a seamless global unity, nor a return to absolute national independence, but a contradictory and unstable synthesis where globalization and sovereignty remain locked in perpetual tension.
In the framework of Quantum Dialectics, contradictions are never understood as static deadlocks or irreconcilable oppositions. Rather, they function as generative tensions that drive systems toward new levels of organization. The antagonism between globalization and sovereignty, far from signaling a permanent impasse, points toward the possibility of a transformation in the structure of world order itself. The clash of cohesion and decohesion at the planetary scale suggests that humanity is moving toward a new dialectical equilibrium, one in which neither globalization nor sovereignty is abolished but both are reconstituted within a higher synthesis.
At the level of planetary cohesion, we can imagine the gradual emergence of institutions of global governance oriented toward collective needs rather than narrow national interests. Such institutions would have to be designed to address challenges that no single state can solve alone: ecological sustainability, climate change mitigation, nuclear disarmament, migration, pandemics, and global poverty. Rather than functioning as instruments of core state domination, as is often the case with existing global institutions, these emergent structures could embody principles of justice, solidarity, and peace. Their authority would not rest on coercion but on the recognition that planetary survival requires coordinated action—a recognition increasingly inscribed in the material realities of ecological and economic interdependence.
At the same time, local decohesion remains indispensable. A higher synthesis does not entail the erasure of cultural diversity, national identity, or community autonomy. Instead, the dialectical balance demands the preservation of plural forms of belonging and self-rule within the broader global order. Local autonomy ensures that the richness of human cultures is not homogenized under a single planetary model, while democratic self-determination grounds political legitimacy in the lived experiences of communities. In this way, the decohesive element of globalization—the proliferation of cultural forms, the assertion of local identities—becomes a positive force, enriching rather than fragmenting the planetary whole.
The desired outcome is a dialectical equilibrium, a multi-layered system in which planetary and national levels coexist not as mutually exclusive domains but as entangled layers of coherence. Sovereignty, in this view, ceases to be conceived as an indivisible essence tied to territorial exclusivity and becomes instead a relational phenomenon distributed across multiple scales of governance. States retain meaningful agency in shaping their internal life and defending their communities, while also participating in higher-order structures that address shared planetary problems.
This vision can be conceptualized as a form of planetary sovereignty. It is not the establishment of a world state that abolishes nations or centralizes power in a singular authority, but rather the construction of a dialectical structure in which sovereignty itself is redefined. Nations would continue to exist, preserving their agency and diversity, but they would operate within a broader coherence oriented toward the survival and flourishing of humanity as a whole. Planetary sovereignty thus represents the sublation of the contradiction between globalization and sovereignty: a structure that preserves their differences while transcending their antagonism, making possible a just, sustainable, and plural global order.
From the standpoint of Marxist political economy, the contemporary crisis of globalization reveals that the contradictions inherent in capitalism are reaching a new historical threshold. The relentless outward expansion of capital, in its drive to maximize surplus value, has produced profound forms of decohesion: it destabilizes national economies, dislocates working populations, and undermines the institutional coherence of states. Yet the attempts of governments to reassert sovereignty through authoritarian controls, militarized borders, or protectionist economic policies have not restored stability. Instead, these strategies often intensify systemic fragility by fragmenting global circuits of production, provoking geopolitical rivalries, and exacerbating class antagonisms within and across nations. The world system thus oscillates between excessive globalization and reactionary retrenchment, with neither pole capable of resolving the contradictions at stake.
Seen through the lens of Quantum Dialectics, this moment can be interpreted as a phase in which decohesion has outpaced cohesion, producing systemic disequilibrium. The structures of cohesion that once stabilized capitalism—national states, developmental regimes, and even global institutions like the IMF or WTO—are increasingly unable to contain the turbulence generated by capital’s expansive motion. The dialectical balance has broken down, generating crises of legitimacy, recurrent financial shocks, ecological emergencies, and the rise of political extremisms. These crises are not isolated but interconnected, forming a pattern of cascading contradictions that expose the limits of the current order.
The revolutionary task, therefore, is not to attempt a nostalgic return to closed national sovereignties, nor to surrender entirely to the unregulated flows of neoliberal globalization. It is instead to consciously reorganize the dialectic of cohesion and decohesion at the planetary level. This entails several crucial transformations. First, global cohesion must be subordinated to human needs rather than the pursuit of profit. Planetary interdependence should be structured not around capital accumulation but around collective goals such as ecological sustainability, equitable development, and universal access to the means of life. Second, planetary interdependence must be reconciled with democratic sovereignty. Communities and nations must retain agency and self-rule, but in ways that are compatible with and enriched by their participation in broader global frameworks. Finally, the capitalist world-system itself must be transformed into a cooperative, solidaristic, and ecologically sustainable planetary order, one that preserves diversity while enabling coherence at a higher level.
This revolutionary project requires moving beyond the binary opposition of globalization versus sovereignty. The task is not to defend sovereignty against globalization, nor to surrender sovereignty to globalization, but to dialectically sublate both into a higher synthesis. Such a synthesis would take the form of planetary solidarity with plural sovereignties, a configuration in which nations and communities maintain their distinctiveness while participating in an overarching structure of planetary responsibility. In this way, the contradictions that currently destabilize the world system could be transformed into generative forces, opening the path toward a new epoch of global political economy grounded in justice, sustainability, and shared human flourishing.
When examined through the combined lenses of Marxist political economy, world-systems theory, and Quantum Dialectics, globalization and national sovereignty no longer appear as separate or externally opposed entities. Rather, they emerge as contradictory poles of a single evolving system, locked in a dynamic relationship that has shaped the contours of the modern world. Globalization embodies the force of capital’s expansive decohesion—a restless motion that dissolves boundaries, disperses production, and integrates societies into planetary circuits of accumulation. Sovereignty, by contrast, embodies the force of cohesion—the political and institutional framework that seeks to stabilize territories, consolidate collective identities, and enforce order within a turbulent global environment. It is their interplay, rather than the victory of one over the other, that structures the logic of the contemporary political economy.
The defining crisis of our epoch is that the balance between these two forces has been broken. Decohesion has outpaced cohesion, producing systemic disequilibrium. Global markets, financial flows, digital networks, and ecological processes have exceeded the capacity of nation-states to regulate and contain them, leaving both national and global systems destabilized. States struggle to defend sovereignty but often do so through authoritarianism or militarism, deepening instability. Meanwhile, unregulated globalization generates inequality, precarity, and ecological devastation. Neither pole, in isolation, offers a viable resolution.
The path forward, therefore, cannot be found in choosing globalization against sovereignty—embracing a borderless neoliberal order that erodes self-determination—nor in choosing sovereignty against globalization, retreating into closed nationalism incapable of addressing planetary crises. Instead, the solution lies in their dialectical sublation: the reorganization of both globalization and sovereignty within a new synthesis. This would take the form of a planetary political economy that integrates global cohesion with local autonomy, planetary responsibility with cultural plurality, and collective survival with democratic self-rule.
In this perspective, the contradiction between globalization and sovereignty is not a deadlock to be lamented, but a doorway to be opened. It signals the possibility of entering a new quantum layer of human history, where the dialectical interplay of cohesion and decohesion may be consciously directed toward the construction of a coherent, just, and sustainable planetary civilization. Such a civilization would not abolish nations nor dissolve sovereignty, but would embed them within a broader field of planetary solidarity, where diversity and unity coexist as entangled layers of coherence. By embracing this dialectical horizon, humanity can transform the crisis of the present into the foundation of a new epoch.
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