Jakub Grygiel's article on the dwindling importance of states is a fascinating read. Grygiel seems to believe that the rise of so-called 'stateless groups' represents a troubling movement away from a state model of international relations.

"The state is no longer the be-all and end-all, and many modern [political] groups prefer to disrupt rather than control political and administrative activities. [...] Their objective is to weaken, disrupt, and delegitimize the state, thereby creating the space for themselves to function and gain authority."

This is possible because of the tactical (and necessary) positioning of nonstate groups in a liminal space, which forces them to wage a sort of virtual guerrilla warfare. It is also successful because there is always discontent fostered by the compromises that make up both democracies and non-democratic nation-states. Non-state groups can functionally appeal only to a sub-sect of the population, whereas state bodies must accomodate, or at least recognize in some nominal way, a plethora of voices and perspectives. The organizing potential of social networking and other modern technological advancements means that resources and organizing can be decentralized, and that members can be diffuse. He suggests that states can fight this by controlling new technologies, but notes that this will only stave off immediate trouble and not provide a long-term solution. Instead, Grygiel promotes the decentralization of power and infrastructure to limit the growth and effectiveness of attack from these groups.

I'm not sure I'm sold on this explanation, and mostly because of the conclusions he draws. I agree with many of Grygiel's observations, but find it troublesome that he doesn't see the effectiveness of a non-state political group as even potentially constructive. Instead these groups, in his definition, work mainly to aggravate existent tensions within state structure. When Grygiel is talking about non-state political groups, he is often using this term to implicitly refer to terrorist groups.

Such an important shift in the organizational structure of political groups must be an augury of greater social change, and if there's a shift away from statehood, this ought to eventually trickle down (or up) to the states themselves, inciting revolution or evolution. What I took from Grygiel's observation is that we're moving beyond the imagined community of Benedict Anderson's time (the state), and towards an entirely new sort of imagined community (the virtual network). Grygiel says that "a state may have to abandon some of its key characteristics in order to defend itself from stateless actors," and I, for one, am eager to see what this will look like.