Susan Strange, in her paper “The Declining Authority of States”, argues that the accelerating pace of technological change is an important factor in the shirt in the state-market balance of power. The extremity of the advances made in the past century shed light on both the power of the state, but more importantly on the power of the market and how it has become the master of the state. She uses the atomic bomb as an example of how a piece of technology that could destroy a state undermined the power of the state by taking away its ability to work to control one of its main purposes – repelling attack by others.
Another example developed this month when North Korea carried out their third nuclear test. Security Council diplomats are attempting to enforce sanctions to corral the nuclear ambitions, such as limiting banking transactions, the use of certain tech items, and mandating far more stringent inspections of ships bound to and from North Korea.
Although the nuclear test will make the American, as well as the Chinese, government angry, the test also was a means of proving themselves as players in the political society. In this political play, the globalization of advancements in technology outplay the governments surrounding them – or at least cause everyone to question the true power of governing structures.
