Fear and Global Risk: Failed or Rehabilitated States?

Abstract

Fear has played a key role in the shaping of sovereignty. The subjection of individuals to a ruler's power is determined by fear, and in particular by fear of violent death, according to an interpretation first put forward by Leo Strauss. Following this trajectory, the paper sets out to examine the concepts of fear and safety in the light of the emergence of the modern European State. On the one hand, it aims to illustrate the link between the birth of the nation-State and the logic of safety; on the other, it seeks to highlight the close connection between the emergence of global fears and the political commitment to new safety policies.

Many old fears have resurfaced and taken the centre stage: the fear of violent death or natural disasters, the fear of social insecurity caused by economic crises, and the fear of foreigners. Such fears, which were thought to have been overcome through new safety and protection standards, have found a new sounding board in globalisation, as the most suited means for their rapid proliferation and spread. These fears manifest themselves as real illnesses of the global age which risk undermining social stability, with repercussions on European politics and society.

In the present context, States are called to reassert their prerogatives and exercise their sovereign, national function. Globalisation is promoting the reverse process. The European Union itself is affected by these ideological and political dynamics. The re-nationalising of European political life is a concrete risk in the present atmosphere of anxiety and neurotic fear, in which even public policies are acquiring markedly securitarian overtones.